Here's What I Know

Here’s what I know:

• Teachers are special. You are kind, generous, and hardworking. Teachers, administrators, and staff should be safe in their schools.
• Students are our kids. They are young, vulnerable, still discovering who they will be. Students should be safe in their schools.

While working on this post about teachers committing random acts of kindness in response to the one year anniversary of the tragedy at Sandy Hook, there’s news of another school shooting in Colorado.

This should not be. How can this be? What can we do?

Among us, these events probably bring up a range of different emotions: Sadness, grief, anger, horror, and fear, among them. Some of us will feel the need to talk and share; some of us will want quiet time to reflect. None of us, I feel sure, will be at all satisfied that this is just the new normal.

Greg from Kindergarten Smorgasboard encourages all of us to take part in random acts of kindness as a way to honor each of the innocent lives lost a year ago. It starts today and can grow and grow. Now more than ever, we need kindness. Is it the total answer? I don’t know. But I feel certain it is part of the answer. I believe in kindness.

If it feels right, please take a moment to visit these blog posts:

Sandy Hook Remembered & Random Acts of Kindness from Digital Divide and Conquer

RAK in Honor of Sandy Hook from Crayonbox Learning

Remembering Sandy Hook from Good Enough Teacher

Remembering with kindness from Teaching with Grace

Using Writing to Teach Kindness from TheWriteStuff

Kindness for Sandy Hook from TeachNC

Remembering with RAK from Amanda Pauley

Building Community Around the Holidays from Miss Nannini 

Ordinary Shelley’s Extraordinary Day from TheWriteStuff

Remembering from Amee DeWitt

In Remembrance from Growing Firsties Lisa Mattes

Five for Kindness from Elementary Matters

Random Acts of Kindness Class Project from Whimsy Workshop Teaching with Freebie Random Acts of Kindness Class Book Template – Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Another Freebie: Bullying prevention kindness video — because kindness matters. from I am Bullyproof Music

And finally, a note from TpT Teacher-Author Tina ofTotallyTunedinTeacher:

“I am an elementary music teacher in Newtown at one of the 3 other sister elementary schools. I know that all of these wonderful, beautiful things you are all doing to spread the message of kindness truly means the world to everyone in my school district and I’m sure to every single person in Newtown. I’d like to personally say thank you, from the bottom of my heart for helping to teach your students to make our world a better place.

In our schools, we keep reminding our children to ‘Be Kind’ and we’ve been talking about the ‘ripple effect’ to the kids, in the hopes of good happening and spreading everywhere. Thank you to all of the dedicated teachers out there…continue doing what we do to help make this world a better place and help our little ones grow up knowing that we care about them. If we all do one little random act and pass it on, the kindness will touch another and another like rippling waves…let’s work together out here and make it happen. I do know all of the love and support out there is greatly appreciated, especially during this really difficult week.”

**Republished from the TpT Blog**