CUMBERLAND – Students at North Cumberland Middle School are embracing a new challenge from administration and faculty: the challenge to be kind.
In its first year, the “kindness campaign” at the middle school is an initiative where treating others with respect and patience, and actively thinking about performing acts of kindness, is rewarded. It’s “something that we really try to emphasize in the importance of throughout the school,” Jennifer Carroll said, one of the guidance counselors who pitched the campaign idea.
Principal Bethany Coughlin called the initiative Carroll’s “brainchild,” after the school’s anti-bullying task force team discussed what would be done for bullying awareness month in October. “When talking about bullying,” Coughlin said, “we want to talk not only about what not to do, but what to do – which is being kind to one another.”
This campaign continues all year, and prompts students to actively think about how their actions can affect others in a positive way, Coughlin and Carroll explained. While the school takes bullying seriously, Coughlin said, this particular angle encourages students to demonstrate compassion as a routine.
Teachers, staff and students can nominate students to receive “kindness bracelets,” Coughlin said, if they are “caught being kind.” Since the start of the program, the principal shared, she’s been able to reward students who take pride in having their names announced over the intercom for their nomination.
Carroll sends out weekly and month-long kindness challenges in calendar form to the middle school students. Each day of December is marked off on the calendar with ideas for students to pursue, such as taping change to a vending machine, delivering cookies to their local fire station and helping neighbors bring groceries into their homes.
The challenges and additional activities students complete during their advisory classes, Carroll explained, extends to even a worldwide scale, and prompts students “to be aware of their place in all of it on a daily basis.”
The kindness campaign is encouraged not just at NCMS, but also students’ homes and surrounding communities.
One day in particular stands out to Coughlin and Carroll when they speak of the campaign. The school celebrated “World Kindness Day” on Friday, Nov. 13.
The entire school formed a circle around the building, linking together with a paper chain made up of good deeds the students had done recently. The content students wrote on the paper links, Carroll said, ranged from helping neighbors to lending a hand with chores at the students’ homes.
About 700 students came together to link up with a paper chain to surround the school, where a district drone camera hovered above to capture the children cheer and wave.
“I think the best moment was when the chain finally connected,” Carroll said. “It was pretty moving,” she said, to see the entire school unify and linked as one.
Asked what the feedback of the campaign has been like from students thus far, Coughlin said, “I think it’s become part of our community here, part of our culture, so we see that it is catching on.”
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Students at North Cumberland Middle School form a chain around the building on 400 Nate Whipple Highway on ‘World Kindness Day,’ Nov. 13. The school-wide event was part of the ‘kindness campaign,’ a new initiative that aims to prompt students to actively think about performing acts of kindness at NCMS, in their neighborhoods and surrounding communities.
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BRITTANY BALLANTYNE Valley Breeze Staff Writer
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