Charles Dickens once said, “Do all the good you can, and make as little fuss about it as possible.” PW spoke with three educators who are taking these words to heart this holiday season, and throughout the school year, by encouraging their students to make a world of difference in the lives of others.
Dana Kramaroff is a second-grade teacher at New Hanover Upper Frederick Elementary in Frederick, Pa., and author of The Do More Club (Rocky Pond, 2023), a middle grade novel in verse. Her book is about a Jewish boy who starts a club to help spread love over hate in response to antisemitic acts at his school. Like the novel’s main character, Kramaroff started her own club when she was a student, and she has been doing good deeds ever since. She’s also currently in the middle of coordinating altruistic projects with her second-grade class.
“We started the first of our projects for World Kindness Day on November 13 by reading I Am One by Susan Verde, illustrated by Peter Reynolds [Abrams Appleseed, 2022],” Kramaroff said. “It’s about how one act of kindness can ripple and have a bigger effect.”
After discussing the book’s concept, Kramaroff and her students made Take What You Need posters. Each creation began with a poster-sized paper and the words “Take What You Need!” written across the top. Under the headline, they placed up to 12 sticky notes with uplifting messages for passersby to take for inspiration.
Kramaroff said that her students thought long and hard about the messages they wrote, and the types of inspiration they’d like to receive. “While brainstorming and writing them, we talked about how one small act of kindness can really make a difference in someone’s day,” she said. “For example, if someone wasn’t feeling very confident about themselves, they could take one of our ‘Believe in yourself’ or ‘Fail up!’ messages. And, when they look at them, they might feel better!”
She and her students also thought carefully about the places throughout their community where they should place the notes. Their ideas included libraries, coffee shops, places with public bulletin boards, and other venues where people may be getting help, such as the food bank or the Birthday Closet where families in need can get items for birthday parties in their town.
This month, Kramaroff and her class will be reading Out and About: A Tale of Giving by Liza Weimer, illustrated by Margeaux Lucas (Kalaniot, 2023). The story focuses on the Jewish concept of tikkun olam—repairing the world. Being Jewish herself, she is familiar with this concept and wants to share it with her students.
After discussing the title, her students will write/record “mini-pep talks” for others, which will be turned into sound bytes, uploaded onto QR codes, and printed on posters. “We hope that people will scan them and hear a message in a sweet kid’s voice that will give them a little motivation and add kindness to their day,” Kramaroff said.
Her third project will concentrate on “gift writing” to teach her children how their writing can be a treasured gift. Kramaroff will give her second graders a writing prompt to “capture a loved one, a beloved pet, or a place they love.” Their written and decorated responses will be laminated, wrapped in pretty paper, and given as holiday gifts. “This writing will be another way to spread goodness, kindness, and love,” she said, “and it’ll also make the kids feel special!”
Kramaroff is hopeful that each of their altruistic projects will have lasting effects on the givers, the receivers, and the world at large. “We might not be able to change people who may be rude, say mean things, or act in hateful ways, but we can always put more kindness into the world.”
Edette Wilcox is a STEM resource teacher at South Woods Elementary School, home of the Eagles—their school mascot—in Elkton, Fla., where her entire school is currently involved in a daily kindness challenge for the month of December.
“We have Manners Monday, Tidy Up Tuesday, Heartwarming Wednesday, Thankful Thursday, and Friendship Friday, where the kids are tasked with doing random acts of kindness and earning special Eagle Eggs for their classroom to win special in-school activities—like a pajama day or ice cream party,” Wilcox said. But the acts of kindness don’t end there.
“During our STEM resource classes, we were doing different things with dominoes to make Rube Goldberg machines, and I was talking to the kids about cause and effect in science, and how our own actions can affect others like a domino chain,” Wilcox said. And that’s when she had a big or rather, a pie in the sky idea.
Now, in its second year, kids at Wilcox’s school are collecting cereal boxes throughout December for Pie in the Sky, a nonprofit organization in St. Augustine, Fla., that delivers fresh produce and other food items twice a month to seniors who are food insecure throughout St. Johns County.
But, before they donate the boxes, classes will be estimating the number of boxes that will be collected, the length of the path the boxes will make, and how fast the chain reaction will take. They will also be making holiday cards for the seniors receiving the cereal boxes.
And, amid all the STEAM-based excitement around this event, Wilcox knows that the cause—helping their senior neighbors—will have an even greater effect on her students this year than last. “Now that they know more about what they need to do, and how it will impact their neighbors, they are eager to do even more.”
Cheryl Mizerny, a sixth-grade ELA teacher at Kingswood Middle School for Girls, part of the Cranbrook Schools, in Bloomfield, Mich., has always focused her teaching on the whole child and her school’s mission, “Enter to learn, go forth and serve!” This clear vision allows her to develop lessons, choose literature, create experiences, and tie-in their global social studies curriculum to help her students develop greater empathy for themselves and others.
After a recent reading of Refugee by Alan Gratz (Scholastic Press, 2017), Mizerny and her students explored the point of view of the refugees in the award-winning novel and discussed their feelings and concerns surrounding today’s refugees. Following their discussion, Mizerny invited her students to put their words into action and write welcoming and hopeful messages to refugees at a local organization. As they started to gather their thoughts, she offered a few guidelines.
“We talked about how their notes had to be welcoming and inclusive and not mention the hard things the refugees were going through,” Mizerny said. “Their writing needed to be positive, give the refugees hope for the future, and communicate that we wished them the very best.”
The results were thoughtfully handwritten and decorated notes with heartfelt messages. “They were the loveliest cards,” Mizerny said, hoping they would touch the recipients as much as they did her students. “Creating and sending them was both a community- and empathy-building experience.”
Mizerny is already planning another project for the month of December around the picture book, One Small Spark: A Tikkun Olam Story by Ruth Spiro, illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov (Dial, Aug.). She feels it is the right book at the right time, and for the right students.
“My students have a strong sense of justice, fairness, and altruism, and they want to make the world a better place. So, I thought this book would be perfect to talk about how we can help others and to make the world a better place.”
Mizerny said that the book and its topic also meet her goal of choosing books that represent her students’ diverse backgrounds. In this case, she says that her Jewish students will be familiar with tikkun olam, the others will learn about it and perhaps see a parallel with their own religions or beliefs.
After a close reading and discussion of the book, Mizerny will once again call her students to action. “My ultimate goal will be to have them research an organization they want to be a part of or a need they see that they’d like to fill. And then, they’ll be asked to create an infographic advertising the organization or the need—and why they want to be a part of it, what they could do to help—and to share this with the class.”
Mizerny has high expectations for this project, her students, and herself. “Everything I/we do in my classroom is to meet our school’s mission: empathy building and serving others. As an ELA teacher, I feel that I’m ethically and morally responsible for my students, not only to learn how to read and write, but also to become big thinkers, good humans, and future leaders. I want them to see that if somebody cares, something can change!”
