What can tiny humans teach you about kindness?
The 13th of November is the World Kindness day, so I decided to challenge my students and ask them to do small, simple deeds of kindness for twenty days in November. Once I announced this to them, they got really excited and motivated, even though the challenges were very simple and did not involve any kind of physical effort.
Although I am an English teacher and I spend about an hour a day with these kiddos, I personally believe that my role is not only to teach them English, but also to dedicate some time to make them aware of the simple, but very important things in life. They are still developing and starting to create their own personalities, so I believe that it is very important to consider all of their opinions and make them understand that what they think matters to other people around them, especially to their parents.
The challenges that we did were pretty much easy, like ‘make someone smile today’ or ‘ask someone about their day’. They took the challenge very seriously, but what impressed me the most were their opinions that they shared on this topic. Below, I have shared some parts of our discussions and I believe that you are going to be amazed, too.
What kindness means to them?
When I first introduced the topic and asked them what they think about it, this is what they said:
“Kindness means not insulting someone, because they will feel bad for days and sometimes the bad words can hurt more than anything else” – Antonija Petkovska
“Kindness is about doing good deeds and helping others whenever you can” – Gala Chuguncaliev
“Kindness means smiling to people, even to strangers, in order to make them happy” – Una Trajkovska
“Even when someone is not nice to us, we can’t do the same thing, because that’s not who we are” – Doris Chuguncaliev
“Kindness means that you should show respect to the adults” – Alek Jakimovski
How did they feel when they did the challenges?
“When I asked my mum about her day, she was surprised because I don’t do that very often, but I could see the smile on her face and that made me happy” – Petar Simonovikj
“I said thank you to my mum for everything she does for me everyday – I made her and myself happy” – Andrej Velkovski
“I saw an old person on the street having trouble walking and I asked if I could help because helping others makes us feel better, too” – Mihail Stojanovski
What do the ‘good deeds’ do?
“Helping others makes us feel powerful and important in the world” – Marko Petrovikj
“It inspires other people to do the same” – Antonija Petkovska
“It gives me the opportunity to share my real feelings towards people” – Ena Davidovska
Final Thoughts
When I first started talking to them, I was surprised, touched and proud all at once. This was like a ‘wake-up call’ to remind me that these tiny humans have so much to say, and everything they say is pure and honest. I think that in this “crazy” world we forget that children are sometimes way smarter than us. It is a fact that we should listen to them more.
Written by
Sara Mushanovikj
ESL Teacher