DANVILLE — Elementary and Middle School students at Danville will be participating in The Great Kindness Challenge. The Great Kindness Challenge is a week-long, nationwide event to promote a culture of kindness within schools and the community. This year it runs during the last week in January. In 2019, over 13 million students from over 24,000 schools in over 110 countries participated in The Great Kindness Challenge.
“I previously helped to organize and run The Great Kindness Challenge at Royal View Elementary,” Stephanie Kubasky, the K-8 school counselor, said. “It seemed to make a huge positive impact in North Royalton as far as creating a culture of kindness and I thought that would be a great thing to bring to Danville.”
The week will start out with third through eighth graders receiving a checklist of 50 simple kind deeds to do throughout the week. Kindergartners through second graders will be given a simplified version of the checklist. The checklist include deeds such as “Smile at 25 people,” “Invite a new friend to play,” and “Create your own kind deed.” The students are encouraged to do as many as they can during the week. A Family Version of the checklist will also be available for parents to do kind deeds at home too.
Along with the checklists, K-5 students will be assigned a “Top Secret Kindness Mission” to do at some point during the week to spread kindness to other specific groups in the school. These secret missions will be given to the teacher at the start of the week. All students will also be making Valentine’s Day cards to be delivered through Operation Gratitude to active duty service men and veterans.
“If I am crafty enough, we will also have a ‘Be the ‘I’ in KIND’ photo-op,” she said in an email to the school staff. The idea of the photo-op to spread the word about how Danville is participating in the challenge.
At the end of the week, the school will received a certificate authenticating that Danville is a “Kindness Certified” school, joining tens of thousands of schools across the globe.
Kubasky said that parents and community members can find more information about this event, and the Family Version of the kindness checklist, online on the Danville Local School’s Facebook, Twitter, and the school’s website. More information about The Great Kindness Challenge can be found on their website, the greatkindnesschallenge.com.
