Build-It Challenge can be used regularly with students to promote teamwork and communication.
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Newsball is a game that can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy and active listening, while building classroom community.
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As children get older, they face ever more complex situations that can be difficult to navigate.
Particularly salient are moral or ethical dilemmas, which concern issues of fairness, justice, and caring. These are decision-making problems without definitive right or wrong choices that affect other people as well as the self, and thus, they are fruitful exercises in moral reasoning.
With this light-lift strategy, students will practice evaluating and constructing moral or ethical dilemmas to get them thinking critically about others’ perspectives and feelings in challenging situations. Students will reflect on their own judgments of others and the importance of context, and what they themselves could do in challenging times.
Currently, our What Would You Do? strategy is available to schools in our Caring Schools Network. Reach out to Glenn Manning, Senior Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common to learn more about Caring Schools Network.
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Students’ capacity for empathy can be developed by learning to appreciate other people’s stories.
By engaging with others in a structured way and trying to shape a narrative that encapsulates a piece of that person, students will understand the nuances of lived experiences, values, and perspectives. By interviewing others, especially those who may be different from them, they will practice vulnerability and develop trust, which in turn will strengthen their school community.
With this light-lift strategy, students will dive into narratives of self and others to offer more nuanced perspectives and feelings around people’s stories. The narratives will mirror the “Humans of New York” series, and students will study a few of them to get a sense of the expectations (e.g., interviewing other students or faculty members). Humans of Your School provides students with opportunities to connect with those different from them, to listen to different stories and try to understand their different perspectives, and to appreciate differences while also finding commonalities.
Currently, our Humans of Your School strategy is available to schools in our Caring Schools Network. Reach out to Glenn Manning, Senior Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common to learn more about Caring Schools Network.
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Research shows that being kind and caring makes people feel good — by recognizing the appreciation of others as well as beginning to view oneself as altruistic or compassionate.
Studies have also shown that feeling care and concern for others is linked to altruism, and an effective strategy to spark caring is to encourage people to imagine what others are going through and how they feel. Kindness and caring are also contagious. Literally. They can spread and influence people to do good deeds beyond their existing networks.
With this light-lift strategy, students reflect and discuss how to encourage more kindness and caring, for themselves and others, at their school and beyond. They will practice regular intentional acts so they become routine and normalized parts of students’ lives. By reporting back, students will learn about each other’s experiences and likely use them as sources of inspiration. The activity encourages a variety of kind and caring acts, including self-improvement.
Currently, our Everyday Caring strategy is available to schools in our Caring Schools Network. Reach out to Glenn Manning, Senior Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common to learn more about Caring Schools Network.
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Research shows that “likeness begets liking” and that when people find similarity along various dimensions, they can build a sense of relatedness. This strategy helps students get in the habit of noticing similarities — but it’s also important for students to learn how to acknowledge, appreciate, and even value differences from others.
With this light-lift strategy, students will be given the opportunity to talk about differences and similarities with others through various ways of “grouping” themselves. They will also consider how their opinions or viewpoints might differ from others based on certain elements of their identity or experiences. Critical reflections and discussions will highlight why it matters to understand the experiences of self, and others.
Currently, our One and the Same strategy is available to schools in our Caring Schools Network and to schools participating in the Middle School Kindness Challenge. Reach out to Glenn Manning, Senior Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common to learn more about Caring Schools Network.
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Communication and listening skills form the foundation of empathy-building in the classroom and beyond. However, teaching good listening ignores the often poor listening we do daily. By naming and understanding what good listening does not look like, students can better acknowledge their own areas for improvement. The simple yet creative nature of this lesson allows students to reflect on their vulnerabilities, while having fun and building relationships with classmates they might not know very well.
With our light-lift Communication HUB strategy, students will learn about what gets in the way of truly effective listening and practice poor and good listening skills in free-form “School HUB” sessions. Students will create specific goals for their own listening and report back over time.
Currently, our Communications HUB strategy is available to schools in our Caring Schools Network and to schools participating in the Middle School Kindness Challenge. Reach out to Glenn Manning, Senior Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common to learn more about Caring Schools Network.
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Discrimination and harassment amongst students is surprisingly common in many schools, and sometimes happens beneath school staff’s radar, leaving large numbers of students feeling sad, angry, isolated, or ostracized. These actions affect the entire school climate — other students who witness these acts may feel unsafe, fearful, or pressured by their peers to participate. Subtle comments and messages can move quickly between students, leaving adults and students feeling helpless, not knowing how to effectively prevent such cruel behavior.
One of the most common types of harassment reported by students is being teased or excluded based on physical appearance. An individual might be targeted for not looking a certain way or for having a particular prominent feature. As adults, we can counteract this kind of cruel behavior by giving students opportunities to better understand the impact of hurtful comments, develop empathy, and practice compassion in their day-to-day lives.
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How do you know if your school is a caring, inclusive community where students are building healthy relationships and developing key social and emotional skills?
Our School Culture and Climate Surveys help schools better understand the experiences of students, educators, and parents as they relate to:
School values
Safety
Bullying, discrimination, and harassment
Student and adult relationships
Rules and expectations
When schools have more insight into problem areas, they can implement strategies that lead to positive changes in their community.
Currently, our School Culture and Climate Surveys — and related data reports and strategies — are available exclusively to schools in our Caring Schools Network. Reach out to Glenn Manning, Senior Program Coordinator at Making Caring Common to learn more.
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There are many programs, interventions, services, and resources available that can support student well-being and the development of positive school culture and climate. Before adopting new programs or substantially changing current practices, it is helpful to review and consider school-based programs and resources that are already in place. Doing so helps ensure that services are not duplicative of each other and strategically align to support your school’s vision.
Resource mapping is a strategy for identifying and analyzing the programs, people, services, and other resources that currently exist in your school. This information can help school leaders better assess the needs of the school and to make informed decisions about where to focus change efforts.
By the end of this activity, you will have a deeper understanding of the key programs and resources related to well-being and culture that your school is already utilizing, which will give you a solid foundation for planning.
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A growing body of research supports the potential benefits of mindfulness, including stress reduction, emotion regulation, better relationship satisfaction, and improved memory and attention.
Applications of mindfulness, the practice of focusing our attention in a particular way, can be relatively easy to implement and are not time intensive. Given the benefits and feasibility, mindfulness has become increasingly popular across a variety of fields, including medicine, psychology, business, and more recently, in education.
Evaluations of school-based mindfulness practices have shown positive findings, including increased attention, self-control, class participation, and respect for others. Mindfulness practices can also serve as a powerful classroom management tools, reducing stress for teachers and students. Many mindfulness activities can be easily interwoven into routine classroom activities and lessons. They can also be extremely useful during transitions, for example, settling down after beginning a new class. Given the potential benefits and the ease of implementing mindfulness practices, these strategies are well-suited for schools.
While there are many methods of practicing mindfulness, we have provided the following short practices to serve as an introduction. We have also included a list of resources where you may find additional information about mindfulness as well as other mindfulness exercises.
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Digital citizenship is a holistic and positive approach to helping children learn how to be safe and secure, as well as smart and effective participants in a digital world. That means helping them understand their rights and responsibilities, recognize the benefits and risks, and realize the personal and ethical implications of their actions.
This resource list offers useful activities, information, websites, programs, and curricula. While we think each of the identified resources contains valuable information, we do not endorse all the recommendations or views in these resources. Some of the resource descriptions listed below have been pulled from organizational websites.
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Too often the elderly are invisible to others, and perhaps especially to teenagers. As adults, we can teach students to show respect and to demonstrate compassion towards the elderly by giving students opportunities to better understand the impact of discrimination or apathy toward the elderly. We can also help students develop empathy and practice compassion and respect for the elderly in their day-to-day lives.
The following case study includes a short story from multiple viewpoints and a set of questions designed to facilitate discussion about respecting and caring for the elderly and the importance of maintaining commitments and volunteering for selfless reasons.
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The KIND Schools Challenge is a partnership between The KIND Foundation, started by KIND Healthy Snacks, and Making Caring Common to support students seeking to make their schools kinder and more inclusive. Out of 200 ideas that were submitted from across the country, 10 incredible finalists were selected to implement their projects. This toolkit highlights selected concepts that are easy and fun to bring into any classroom.
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The KIND Schools Challenge team at Dodge County High School in Eastman, Georgia have spent the past several months developing a bingo challenge to spread kindness in their school community. They’ve been able to inspire students throughout the school to think twice before being unkind and are excited to continue their progress! Here’s what the students have to say.
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The KIND Schools Challenge team at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy in Fort Worth, Texas has made enormous progress on their work to increase kindness in their community. Their project, "HIT" Your Insecurities, features small group conversations to build community and culminates in a celebratory event where the team will fill piñatas with students’ written insecurities and break them to symbolize overcoming those insecurities. Here’s what the students have to say about their work on the project so far.
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The KIND Schools Challenge team at Fair Park Preparatory Academy in Shreveport, Louisiana aims to create community amongst students from many neighborhoods during the first year of the school’s existence. Their project encourages students to add kind and encouraging messages to a “Kind Box" that other students can take if they need a boost. Here’s what the students have to say about how their work is going so far.
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The KIND Schools Challenge team at Medford High School in Medford, Massachusetts has been working tirelessly to create a collection of videos to help English-language learners (ELL) at their school feel more confident navigating everyday tasks at school and in their community. Here’s what the students have to say about the their project.
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The KIND Schools Challenge team at Allendale Columbia School ("AC") in Pittsford, New York has spent the past several months encouraging everyone in their community to paint a brick with something meaningful to them. Together, the bricks now form a wall of kindness and inclusion. Here’s what the students have to say about their project.
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The KIND Schools Challenge team at the Sacramento Waldorf School in Fair Oaks, California has spent several months developing student-led workshops to promote upstanding in their community. They have not only opened lines of communication between students but have also provided students with a toolbox of ways to help their peers feel safe and welcomed at school. Here’s what the team has to say about the project thus far.
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