Laura And Lisa Flook: The Value Of Kindness In School

What if schools taught kindness? What type of changes in our society would we see? Two teachers, Laura Pinger and Lisa Flook share their lesson from creating a "kindness curriculum" for young students. This twelve-week curriculum was brought to six schools in the Midwest. A couple of days out the week for twenty minutes, pre-kindergarten kids were introduced to stories and practices for paying attention, regulating their emotions, and cultivating kindness. This curriculum is said to improve kids’ grades, cognitive abilities, and relationship skills. Laura and Lisa explain the importance of teaching kindness, the breakdown of their curriculum, also "kindfulness" in daily life. The Main purpose is to develop a new generation of more compassionate
Kindness is a core value that should be taught in the classroom. Laura and Lisa understand that the school environment can be stressful for students. Certain factors like their home life can be a burden. Some students struggle with socializing with students in the classroom. Being excluded, ignored, or teased is not easy to deal with. The thought of teaching empathy and compassion would be very beneficial to students who witness distressed classmates. Kindness has the ability to connect the students, teachers, and parents together to be a cohesive unit. Learning to enhance their attention and control their emotions are principle skills that could benefit kids in school and throughout the rest of their
Students learn to use their breath to cultivate some peace and quiet.
Caring. Here, we teach kids to think about how others are feeling and cultivate kindness.
Depending on other people. Students learn to see themselves as helpers and begin to develop gratitude for the kindness of others.
Emotions. What do emotions feel like and look like? How can you tell what you’re feeling? We play a game where the teacher and students take turns pretending to be angry, sad, happy, or surprised, guessing which emotion was expressed, and talking about what that emotion feels like in the body.
Forgiveness. Young kids can be particularly hard on themselves and others also we teach them that everyone makes mistakes.
Gratitude. We want kids to recognize the kind acts that other people do for them, so we have them pretend to be various community workers like bus drivers and firefighters. Then, they talk about being thankful to those people for how they help us.
The impact of the curriculum was tested and the results came back in a positive direction. Students who completed the curriculum exhibited more empathy and kindness plus a stronger ability to calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings. Deeper investigations will be in effect in the near future and parent involvement is encouraged as