The Importance of Kindness in the Classroom by Kelcie

The Importance of Kindness in the Classroom by Kelcie - August 2018 Scholarship Essay

In education today, we are always striving to find better ways to teach reading, writing, and math but lets not forget another valuable subject, modeling and teaching kindness. Some people may think kind people are weak or naive, when really kindness is a trait of strong and brave people. The importance of being kind to others is an appropriate and valuable lesson for the classroom and there are several great evidence based programs for teaching social skills including kindness. A couple of evidence based programs that have been successful in classrooms around the country are Second Steps and Empowering Education, both of which are excellent resources for those in education who are interested in social/ emotional learning for students. These programs are both easily accessible online and could be utilized in any classroom. Empowering Education also has skills that are matched with common core standards.
According to psychologytoday.com, kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous and considerate. You may think looking out for your well being alone is going to better yourself, but studies show that devoting resources to others instead of keeping it all for yourself self is better for your well being. What a great lesson to learn when you are young!
In the 1970s Social Scientists began to study marriages in response to the rapid divorce rate. To study this, John Gottman and his team of researchers would hook couples up to electrodes and monitored their blood flow, heart rate, and how much sweat they produced as they talked about each other and the memories they shared. After 6 years they checked back to see if the couples were still together. The group of couples still together were called the Masters, while the couples broken up were called the Disasters. The studies showed that while being monitored if the couples heart rates went up because they were getting impatient and annoyed with each other, then they ended up in the Disasters group. The couples whose heart rates stayed normal, because they were patient and kind to one another, ended up in the Masters group. How crazy is it that the secret to love is simply kindness.
Showing kindness can be as simple as being nice to your waitress when you go out to eat, and can be as challenging as starting up a fundraiser in your community. You will never know the impact you had on the person you smiled at earlier today. They could have been having the worst day ever and your smile could be the one thing positive that had happened to them all day or week. When we can teach this important lesson to children in the classroom, who knows how many people will benefit from that social skill in the future.
When people benefit from someone else's act of kindness they are likely to pay it forward. The Universities of California, San Diego, and Harvard have the first laboratory evidence to prove cooperative behavior is contagious. Fowler, a scientist involved in these studies that looked at paying it forward stated, “You don’t go back to being your old selfish self. As a result, the money a person gives in the first round of the experiment is ultimately tripled by others who are subsequently, whether that be directly or indirectly, influenced to give more.” He also states, “The network functions like a matching grant,”
In conclusion, kindness is an important lesson to teach in the classroom, there are several evidenced based programs for teachers that can assist in teaching social/ emotional skills. Kindness is a trait of strong people, not weak. Studies show that bettering others can have more positive impact than bettering yourself. Your kindness can inspire others kindness. You never know how your kindness can affect or change someone's life, so be kind!