Week at LVMS 

February 11-15, 2019

 

 

Please join us in spreading this message of kindness outside of school as well.

 

 

 

Making Caring Common (MCC), a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, researches and develops effective strategies for promoting kindness and caring in our youth.   Here are five strategies researchers at MCC suggest will encourage kindness in youth:

 

1.  Make caring for others a priority.  “Children need to learn to balance their needs with the needs of others.  Children need to hear from parents that caring for others is a top priority.”
2. Provide opportunities for children to practice caring and gratitude.  “Daily repetition – whether it’s helping a friend with homework, pitching in around the house, or having a classroom job – make caring second nature and develop and hone youth’s caregiving capacities.”
3. Expand your child’s circle of concern.  “Children need to learn to zoom in, by listening closely and attending to those in their immediate circle, and to zoom out, by taking in the big picture and considering the many perspectives of the people they interact with daily, including those who are vulnerable.”
4. Be a strong moral role model and mentor.  “For our children to respect and trust us, we need to acknowledge our mistakes and flaws.  We also need to respect children’s thinking and listen to their perspectives, demonstrating to them how we want them to engage others.”
5. Guide children in managing destructive feelings.  We should “teach children that all feelings are okay, but some ways of dealing with them are not helpful. Children need our help learning to cope with these feelings in productive ways.”