January 23–27 is the Great Kindness Challenge, and I hope you’ll read this beautiful article from Bookology about the kind of change this can inspire at your school. You don’t have to go all hard core, of course. Start small if you’re feeling overwhelmed. Maybe a simple bingo card or checklist of things students could try to do sometime during the challenge. Or simply an invitation each morning during announcements to do something kind for someone you don’t already know well. Even small prompts like that can bring a focus on kindness and inspire new behaviors.
Sharing books with your students on themes of acceptance, belonging, and peace could be a great part of this. I’d love it if you consider sharing We Belong (Salas/Aguilera), along with some of my other favorites, like Be a Bridge (Latham/Waters/Adani), This Is a School (Schu/Jamison), How to Apologize (LaRochelle/Wohnoutka), and Peace (Baptiste/Paul/Meza).
[My Classroom Connections posts share a way to connect one of my books or poems to a classroom topic–often something timely that you might be covering in the next month or so. Please share this post if you have educator friends who might be interested–thanks!]