Kindness and Justice Challenge
"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun
makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust
and hostility to evaporate." Author: Albert Schweitzer
Kindness: doing something nice for others, without expectation
of reward. Justice: practicing fairness and standing up for what
is right, even if it is unpopular. Courage: bravery, taking risks
in the face of the unknown. Although these definitions may seem
fairly simple and understandable to adults, putting kindness, justice
and courage into action is not always so easy, especially for each
other. I would like each of us to act on any opportunity
related to the "Do Something" Kindness and Justice Challenge
initiative during the last two weeks of January in honor of Martin
Luther King, it is an opportune time for staff, students and families
to participate as a community. It provides us an opportunity to
focus on our commitment of sharing the responsibility for encouraging
young adults to put into practice these social values we hold true
in our culture. Our participation also ties in well with our school
wide SPIRIT program.
Teens need to see and experience kindness. They also need
opportunities to practice kindness, as well. By providing opportunities
for teens to perform acts of kindness they are able to experience
the good feelings we get when we perform kind acts or offer kind
words to others. To learn something well, for it to become automatic,
requires practice. Sometimes as adults we hold high expectations
for young men and women, and assume that teenagers will just do
or say the right thing. Not so. In reality our children no matter
what age they may be must be carefully taught the meaning of our
social values and the good that comes when we practice kindness
or demonstrate courage by saying or doing what we know is right.
During the next several weeks we will be focusing on the meaning
of kindness, justice and courage at O’Brien encouraging students,
staff and families to participate in the "Do Something" challenge.
To heighten our awareness we will build our "Wall of Heroes
and Heroines" by nominating those we observe putting any one
of these values into practice. Those nominations can be among or
come from students, staff, and the community. Teachers
may have class discussions and identifying individuals both locally
and throughout the world that demonstrate the meaning of kindness,
justice or courage. We encourage families to participate by providing
opportunities students to demonstrate these values outside of school,
as well.
It would be awesome if by the end of this initiative we have a
wall full of our homegrown heroes, but more important is for each
of us to have a deeper understanding of how we can better incorporate
the ideals of Martin Luther King into our daily lives. So I encourage
you to raise that level of awareness by participating in the "Do
Something" Challenge and helping students to put into practice
the meaning of these words. If you would like more information
or ideas for participating in this initiative you can visit the
following websites: http://www.dosomething.org/ or hhttp://www.actsofkindness.org/
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments
of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Martin
Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963 |
