With rising competition where students are often pitted against each other, the school and classroom environments can be really stressful. Deep inside many children feel excluded, teased, ignored and depressed. More than ever, now it’s more important to cultivate kindness into classrooms.
Embracing mistakes
If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything. (Marva Collins)
Mistakes are a vital part of learning process. However, the mistakes committed by students are often viewed negatively by parents, teachers, and students themselves. When mistakes are viewed in this negative space, learning stops and students begin to take that bad grade as a personal attack.
A kinder approach can make the students view mistakes more positively like some common mistakes committed can be discussed as a class focusing on the error rather the person who made it. Even at an individual level, the focus must be on the errors and how it can be corrected not the person involved. If grades can be accompanied by constructive feedback and encouraging words, it will help students be more kind towards themselves, their follies as well as others’ mistakes. This can be a good way to put them on the path of becoming of lifelong learners.
Giving Cheerfully & Accepting Gratefully
We all get moved and inspired when we see people acting with compassion. Such behaviour, in turn, makes us also help others and become better people. Both the person who receives as well as the one who gives receives a sense of satisfaction and elevation. Small kind acts have the power to drive a bigger positive behaviour change that can eventually become a part of the culture.
If in schools we give more opportunities to students to work in groups, collaborate instead of competing and help each other do their best, we can develop a culture where kindness and happiness will be contagious. In many schools, we have occasions like the Joy of Giving week or charity on purpose. However, gratitude and acceptance should be an integral part of everyday classroom learning. Our students must learn to not only give cheerfully but also accept gratefully.
Just a gentle nudge
The spark of kindness resides in everyone; even small actions can fan that spark into a flame. It doesn’t require much to bring out the innate kindness in children. Some small steps as below can go a long way:
- Hanging posters that show kind, helpful behaviour
- Greeting students cheerfully and using a warm tone of voice with students
- Writing an encouraging word on an assignment
- Starting the day with a positive quote
- Sharing stories of kindness
Apparently, the mission of schools must include teaching kindness. Without it, communities, families, schools, and classrooms cannot become places where real learning takes place. If we want our children to develop into happy, confident, well-rounded individuals, then initiatives to cultivate kindness must be taken as a priority.
- Megha Vaishnav