Silverthorne Elementary School and Houston Secondary School took kindness to another level this year with their Pink Shirt Day celebrations.
“We have been full of kindness here at Silverthorne. This is something we focus on at all times but this week we went above and beyond,” said Bev Foster, the principal for Silverthorne Elementary School.
Some of the activities that the students indulged in ranged from shovelling snow, to making paper hearts with messages of kindness.
Two of the intermediate classes spent time finding kindness quotes and creating a rainbow of kindness outside of the school office. The kindergarten students were out and about helping seniors shovel driveways and delivering hot chocolate to folks around the school. The grade 1/2 class made kindness hearts with messages on them and hung them on doors around Houston. The grade 5/6 class did a research project around Pink Shirt Day and kindness and gave several presentations based on the research. They even created posters, videos and screen plays.
“We had a class that has been working on how to fill buckets with kindness. This is work that stems from the book ‘How Full is Your Bucket’. We had children doing random acts of kindness across the school such as: helping in the kitchen, delivering hot lunches, offering to help with things in the office, and helping teachers and students in their classrooms,” she said.
The staff at Silverthorne also participated by wearing pink shirts with messages about kindness. The school also gave out one shirt to each division and the teachers chose which child received the shirt.
“All classes participated but in different ways. We have really embraced the importance of what it means to be kind to ourselves and to others,” said Bev.
Over at the Houston Secondary School (HSS), the school celebrated the entire week from Feb. 22 to Feb. 26 with the theme “Erase Bullying and Embrace Kindness”.
Ton Tran, a student with HSS and part of the HSS Leadership class, said that the idea for this year’s kindness week were picked together as a class.
“It is our goal to try to include everyone. It is also in our best interest to grow our community together,” he said.
The HSS Leadership class went around the entire school asking who they would want to give a free lollipop to with a kind message on a card. The class also ran a coffee shop all week during at break with pink-themed drinks and each drink with a kindness message.
On Feb. 24, students were encouraged to wear pink outfits. The school also hosted a kindness bingo to encourage students to do kind things with a draw held at the end of the week. The also had an anonymous apology box as well as a wall dedicated to kindness.
The students also made a wall that spelled the word “kind” and put it in the middle of the school by the office. The school community was encouraged to put up kind messages on the wall and both students and that staff posted the messages.
“We have been doing an anti-bullying day in the past for a while. However, this is the first time we turned it into an entire week,” said Tran.
Priyanka Ketkar
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Silverthorne Elementart School's pink shirt day 2021. (Submitted/Houston Today)
Kindness wall at Houston Secondary School. (Submitted/Houston Today)
Kindness week at Houston Secondary School. (Submitted/Houston Today)
Kindness bingo organized by the HSS Leadership class at Houston Secondary School. (Submitted/Houston Today)
Student-led coffee shop was run by the HSS Leadership class during break all through the week at Houston Secondary School. (Submitted/Houston Today)
