This has been an amazing week at Kipling school. The staff, students, and parents have helped us along the way with all of the great RED week activities. However, no one has been more valuable and worked harder this week than our assistant principal Svetlana Sutic. She had the vision to make this week amazing and so it was. She worked tirelessly and selflessly to make sure that this week was a fun learning experience for our students. I asked her to write the blog entry below about RED week because she has been the heart and soul of the effort.

by Svetlana Sutic

Kipling students and staff have been experiencing an exceptionally exciting week as we celebrate RED Week, which stands for Respecting Each Difference. Our focus for this week was acceptance and appreciation of all of our unique qualities. We have had fun activities planned each day this week. Take a look at the fun we are having while we reflect and build our students emotional awareness of the differences in the world:

Monday we launched the RED week drawing and writing contest for all of our grades answering the essential question “How do our differences contribute to making our school, our community and our world a better place?” We passed out red wrist bands to help remind us each day that our differences are what make us special.

Tuesday was Lunch with Someone Different Day, which proved to be a great opportunity for all of our students to show compassion and acceptance for each other. Many students sought out their siblings, friends in other grades and other classrooms, and Mr McConnell and I had the pleasure to be invited to join our our students!

Wednesday was Swap Teacher Day! Teachers switched classrooms or combined their classes for 30 minutes with special games to facilitate conversations and build our understanding of how we are all different. These interactions provide our students with the opportunity to grow their social competency skills which is important to their healthy well rounded development.

Thursday was the first ever Kipling Music Video recording! What a great way to build a sense of belonging and community for our students so they are proud of their school and excited about what they represent. Our music teacher along with other staff planned and organized the taping, staging and execution of the music video. “What makes you beautiful” by One Direction provided the perfect lyrics representing how we feel about each other and our Kipling community.

Friday brought this great week to an end but only in time…the memories of this week will stay with our children and our hope is in their hearts forever! K-3 had a puppet presentation from Kids on The Block and 4 / 5 heard from founder Diane Christensen, author, presenter of Red Day Pledge Campaign.

RED Day Pledge
I promise to Respect Each person’s Differences. I will show acceptance and appreciation to everyone so that I can be a part of making our school, our community and our world a kinder place.

One final note…we are reminded every day when we look into our children’s eyes how special, different, complex, and loved they are here at Kipling and by their parents! We thank you for sharing your children with us every day and honored to play a part in growing and shaping them into compassionate, accepting, and respectful young adults!

Next week is Random Acts of Kindness Week and here at Kipling we are getting ready. I am very thankful to our first grade teachers Mrs. Comitor, Mrs. Friedlander, Mrs. Winter, and Mrs. Cacioppo for heading this effort.

Each morning next week there will be a special announcement (made by students) about some topic or thought on kindness. The topic for Monday is on what an act of kindness looks like. Here is Monday’s announcement as well as the topics for the rest of the week.

Monday:
This week is National Random Acts of Kindness week. We perform Random Acts of Kindness when we go beyond what is expected of us and reach out to help another person. There are three simple steps to performing a Random Act of Kindness.
1. The first step is to find out what another person needs. For example, Sally has her hands full and she needs to open the door to get to her class.
2. The second step is to think about how you would feel if you had that need. You might feel frustrated if your hands were full and you could not easily open the door by yourself.
3. The final step to performing a Random Act of Kindness is to offer your help. Hold the door open and let Sally enter.
There are hundreds of ways to show someone that you care. This week, look for opportunities to show that you care by performing Random Acts of Kindness.

Tuesday: Kindness and Empathy
Wednesday: Showing Appreciation
Thursday: Making and Keeping Friends
Friday: Passing Kindness On

We are using the sheet below and challenging students to check off all of the boxes by the end of the week. Of course there are hundreds of other ways to do this and we encourage students to think beyond just the ones on this sheet. These help provide guidance to students by encouraging acts and taking opportunities that often occur in school.

In addition to this we have put up a large poster on main street. We want to encourage our students to fill this poster up with their acts of kindness throughout the week.

Our main hope is that this helps our students to see how easy and rewarding it is to do kind acts so that it will extend beyond just next week. This goes along very well with the themes we will be talking about with students when we implement the Leader in Me program. Leadership is not a title or a position rather it is a choice that people make everyday. Anyone can influence others in a positive way by doing small acts. That includes adults as well. A couple of weeks ago I shared with the staff this excellent video from Drew Dudley on creating what he calls “Lollipop Moments”. I am happy to share it with you. We want all of our students to learn that they can have huge positive impacts on the lives of others. Kindness, like leadership, is a choice – not a disposition.