Leaning a bunch of things by heart or learning how to be a better person than you were yesterday? What is more important?
Well, a school from Ireland opted for the letter and now everyone is speaking of their brilliant idea to ditch homework for a whole month and assign their students acts of kindness instead.
As the holidays are the time of giving and doing good, the Gaelscoil Mhíchíl Uí Choileáin, Clonakilty elementary school in Ireland are changing the curriculum and make their students show their kindness to those that need it the most.
The acts are expected to spread positivity and happiness around the community. Mondays are all about spending some quality time with the elderly members of the city. This is supposed to teach the kids compassion. They will also learn many new things and will hear fun stories.
Needless to say, the elderly enjoy the company of the little ones and feel important.
Every Tuesday of December is dedicated to helping around the house. The students can choose what to help with without their parents having to ask that from them. It can be simple chores like doing the laundry, getting the trash out, or cleaning.
On Wednesdays, students can choose their own act of kindness and help a random person or people.
As we all know that in order to help others we should first help ourselves, on Thursdays students are asked to take care for themselves.
On Fridays, students drop notes in the bucket of kindness placed in the school. Afterwards, some of those notes are read out loud. The goal is to make everyone feel better about themselves.
Every child is keeping a kindness diary where they write down the nice acts they do during the week.
“In this world, consumed by social media, where our young people are constantly experiencing pressure, there is no better way to show them the way forward in the world than by practicing kindness. We all know that helping others makes us feel good about ourselves…. What’s not to love about that?!? That feel good factor we experience form helping others cannot be quantified. Our message to the children is very simple: they can be the reason somebody smiles today and they can definitely help make this world a better place for others and for themselves.” The school noted on Facebook.
We really love this awesome idea and we hope more schools will follow this example.
