Students at Green Acres know how important it is to show respect to others in their speech. Late in January they had a weeklong celebration of kindness with a focus on eradicating name-calling.
Students participated in memorable activities throughout the week to help them focus on kindness. On Tuesday, they wore exercise clothes or clothes from their favorite sports team to remember to "Blow the whistle on Name-calling and bullying." Wednesday students were invited to wear school colors to remember unity with a theme of, "One school, one purpose, bully free." Thursday the goal was to "Celebrate kindness through empathy—walk in someone else's shoes." They got to have a little fun wearing two different shoes to school. Friday brought an opportunity to wear gold to commit to treating others with kindness and respect.
Throughout the week there were also significant projects the kids were involved in helping them think a little more deeply including a poster contest, kindness pledge, and an essay contest with movie passes as prizes.
Counselor Jill Ramage went to each classroom along with her assistant and taught a lesson on kindness encouraging teachers to add kindness and empathy into their curriculum somehow. Mrs. Gross, 4th grade teacher, took the challenge and used kindness-based questions as prompts in writing assignments.
According to Principal Lisa Gilstrap, "There are lots of exciting things going on at Green Acres. We have recently been the recipients of some major support:
1) The Weber High Quarters for Christmas project provided Ipads and engaging toys for our life skills classrooms (for students with significant disabilities).
2) The Kiwanis and Weber School District Foundation granted us $1,000 to get more books, traditional and electronic, to help us keep up with the need to provide a lot of interesting content on many reading levels.
3) The Green Acres PTA chose to help us update our library… we are the proud owners of updated, beautiful books on the States, U.S. Presidents, technology, and animals. We also received some new DVD’s. We have an extensive library of VHS tapes and, fortunately, we have machines that still play VHS tapes; but, they are very outdated. We will display our windfall of literature at literacy night March 4th.
4) We are currently working to get a new electronic sign outside to help improve communication between the school and families.
5) Next year we will be launching the elementary version of Project Lead the Way (PLTW).”
