The Kindness Squad
The Kindness Squad at Central Lyon consists of all fourth-grade students and their teachers Mrs. Groen, Mrs. Van, and Mrs. Metzger. Each week Thursday, they find a way to encourage and spread kindness to students, teachers, and the community. The Kindness Squad idea came from a Florida Teacher named Joanne Miller. She has an Instagram account called “Head Over Heels for Teaching” where she shares what her Kindness Squad does. Mrs. Groen, Mrs. Van, and Mrs. Metzger hope that their 60 students encouraging others will lead others to do the same. “Kindness breeds more kindness.”
Each week they focus on a different group that they can share kindness with. One morning, they created greetings to welcome students at CL back to school. They colored clothes pins, wrote messages on them, and clipped them onto students backpacks. For seniors' lockers, they made posters with encouraging notes or messages. The Kindness Squad took time out of their day to teach the second graders some new recess games that they might not have played before and also played with them. Another morning they spent time cleaning up the playground and the school ground. These are some of the things the Kindness Squad does every Thursday.