‘Kindness Day’ Peaks With School Picture
Approximately 600 students and staff join in a group picture that helped wrap up ‘Kindness Day’
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Kindness Day started with a small group of middle school students “who initiated it and sought the help of Mrs. Hoffman to help them organize,” says Andy Hotek, Oskaloosa Middle School Principal.
“Our students wanted to spread kindness. They came to me earlier in the year and said they wanted to develop a anti-bullying, kindness committee or club,” Hotek explained.
So the group met several times during the year, growing along the way said Hotek, “and they’re just really positive kids.”
The group then turned their focus to developing a ‘Kindness Day’. Mrs. Amanda Hoffman then helped the group, “and we had terrific help from our generous community members,” Hotek said of the sponsors that helped to offset the cost of the t-shirts.
Social media is the newest form of bullying to be a factor, along with texting, that has the schools more aware of bullying in all forms. “It can range from simple name calling to some pretty rotten things being said,” Hotek explained, saying, “many times those comments revolve around relationships.” Hotek explained that the school addresses it “right away. As quickly as we can”.
The awareness in bullying has helped to make people more aware of the problem, and that in turn has helped victims feel more confident to come forward. Hotek went on to say, “We’re addressing it more, we’re being proactive”.
“Our hope is with days like this, we believe that positive gets positive, negative gets negative. So if you build on a kindness day, we hope kindness begets more kindness,” Hotek said in closing.
Amanda Hoffman, OMS School Counselor, explained that ‘Kindness Day’ found its roots in October when she took a group of students to the governors 1st Annual Bullying Prevention Conference.
Joining Mrs. Hoffman that day was; Ruby Johnson, Vincent Ramirez, John Hirl and Erica Green. Also joining the group that day were four additional students from the high school.
“When we came back, my middle school students said, ‘we want to do something,'” Hoffman said.
So each of the four students then invited two friends to join the group called ABC (Anti-Bullying Club).
Since October, the goal of the group has been to plan something for the end of the school year. ‘Kindness Day’ was the result.
Hoffmann explained that, as a group, they wanted to focus on kindness rather than calling it bullying prevention or focusing on not bullying. “They wanted to focus on being kind.”
As many of us might remember, passing notes in school could have gotten you in trouble, but Friday was an exception Hoffmann said. “We started out in first period, everybody was given a post-it note and asked to write a kind note to pass along to someone else throughout our school during the day. So it was fun to see the Post-It notes going around the building.”
During second period, the students were asked to write ten kind things that you could do for someone else that would be free of cost, or nearly free of cost. “The list is amassing,” Hoffman said. “We’re going to compile that and post it in the commons.”
The ABC group was in the lunch room during fourth period taking lunch trays back, “they were helping people, they were talking to people, picking up garbage, those kinds of things, to promote kindness.”
Hoffmann said that for seventh period, things culminated with the all school picture. “For me, to look out and see the sea of orange was just amazing.”
With that, it was the culmination “of this teams efforts since October,” Hoffmann added. “To see it come to fruition, and to see 600 OMS staff and students out here on the field… it was just really remarkable.”
Those businesses and individuals who helped sponsor ‘Kindness Day’ were: Mahaska Lodge #644, MUSCO Lighting, The Johnson Family, CLOW Valve, Bates Funeral Chapel, Bill and Ray’s, First National Bank Midwest and Melinda Shanahan.
