Being Kind to Your Â鶹ÒùÔº
These tools are a resource for you whenever you need them. You can use them now, or come back to them in moments of opportunity or challenge throughout the year. These tools are intended to help you cultivate and deepen your relationships with students. We imagine you are already doing many of these things. Using these tools can help to celebrate kindness in your classroom.
Deepen connections with your students:
Welcome every student into your classroom with a personal greeting.
Create a document with the name of each of your students. Keep notes about things that each student shares that are meaningful to them, such as aspects of their culture, language, family members, pets, favorite foods and colors. Bring these aspects of their lives into conversation and your teaching. If you don't have anything to write down, set an intention to pay more attention to that student the next day.
Include personal notes to students when handing back assignments. Make sure feedback to them makes clear their strengths as well as how to improve (if improvement is needed).
Share with your students that it is okay to feel nervous or to experience stress at the start of the year and that you are there to support them.
Create lessons that connect to the interests, life experiences, and identities of students so that they can see themselves in the subject matter.
Set an intention for kindness in the morning before school starts:
Write down a few intentions for bringing kindness into your classroom.
Write down a few intentions for specific students, expressing what you most want them to experience that day.
Hold kindness in your heart:
Think of a student in your class, write down something that you appreciate about them, hold that appreciation in your heart.
Send a silent wish of kindness:
To a student whom you know well.
To a student whom you don’t know well.
To a student who may be having a hard time.