A Campaign of Kindness for Education

Last week, Jason Markey's blog post inspired me to show the video below to my class.  Jason Markey is the principal of Leyden High School and also fellow 1-to-1 practitioner. The video chronicles the work of Massoud Adibpour who decided to embark on a campaign of kindness by holding uplifting signs along the streets of Washington DC. I briefly met Jason when he hosted Edcamp Chicago. You can read about Jason's planned campaign of kindness on his blog.

I showed the video to my Apache Way class, which is like a homeroom period where we usually read and write reflections on our reading.  I periodically use this time to show the class an interesting video and have them write reflections on it.  Quick sidebar: Several students have chosen to create their own blogs about various topics and I'd like to plug them: Chaney, Cody, Alexis, and Olivia are the most active bloggers in the 7th grade (that I know of).

After the class watched the fulfillment that Massoud felt and the real affect he made on people's day we discussed the video.  We talked about the power that each person has--the power to affect people's lives in a good way or bad way every day, with every interaction.  Several girls stayed after class.  They said they wanted to launch a secret campaign of kindness.  Their plan was to write hundreds of notes and slip them into random lockers.  The notes said things like, "I saw you today and you made me smile, thanks", "You are a funny person, so don't forget to laugh today", "Don't forget that there are lots of people that love you", etc. They were so excited.

The girls stayed after school on Friday to write notes for teachers.  After everyone had left, I let them in the office and they filled the mailboxes with kind words to be discovered on Monday.  I gave them my Flip camera to film their work and promised I would get some student or teacher reactions on film and put a short video together for them.  My heart was swelling with pride all day.

Imagine the exponential ripple of happiness that would tear through our nation if every school launched a campaign of kindness.  John Lennon would be proud.  #campaignofkindness