Spreading Kindness and Building Community

Students in the Educators Rising club at Somers High School visited kindergarten classes at Primrose in November and December.

“Educators Rising is a club where we talk about how we can help younger students learn about topics in ways they’ll remember,” said Morgan Sabanosh. “There’s a lot of preparation, but once you get here, it’s a lot of fun.”

Small groups from the club visited classrooms for an hour, leading the younger students through an activity or project related to the story they read aloud to the class. In December, the focus was on kindness and how students can show kindness to the people in their lives.

“We’re reading a book about kindness. It has a bunch of examples of kindness, and it focuses on learning how to be kind,” said Ava Schmidberger.

To start, students were given paper and coloring supplies and asked to draw anything that made them happy. Drawings included rainbows, pets, family members, and even a pizza truck. Then, they added a painted handprint to their drawing.

Once students completed their projects, they gathered on the carpet to listen to the story Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller and Jen Hill. The story helped illustrate the many ways people can show kindness to others. Students also shared different ways that they have shown kindness to someone in their school or community. 

One kindergarten student said they should show kindness by, “treating people how you want to be treated.”

“If someone spilled their drink, you could help them clean it up,” another student added.

To complete their activity, students returned to their drawings. With the help of teachers and the high school visitors, each student chose a word or phrase about how they are kind and wrote it on their handprint. 

“This can help them get engaged and understand why being kind is important,” said Terezina Parubi. “They’ll have their drawing in the future, so hopefully they can look back on it and say, ‘that was fun, those high school kids came and helped us learn how to be kind.’”

Interschool activities like this one help to strengthen the Somers School community, build communication and connections between grade levels, and foster a sense of camaraderie and family within the school district.