I am not a writer! I am a passionate teacher, a perpetual learner, a wannabe social innovator, and a person who wants to serve others! I have avoided writing a blog since I left my Ph.D. program in 2013! Writing a dissertation while working full time was hard work and I didn’t care if I never wrote another word! I did write…grant applications, news stories to promote my students’ work, letters, but not a blog.

My friend, Valerie who is an EXCELLENT writer kept nudging me, “You need to write a blog! People need to hear what you have to say, what you are doing!” This site is not ready, I haven’t connected links or added information, but I thought what better day to start than World Kindness Day!

How did I get here? After I finished my Ph.D. program, everyone asked me what I wanted to do with my life. Many thought I would teach at the university level. I wasn’t ready to leave my students. Being a faithful person, I believed that God had a plan for me and it would come to me! When I returned from summer break, renewed, refreshed, and energized from a summer that didn’t involve studying, researching, or writing, I was ready to jump into a new project! I wanted to teach my students about finding their passion, so I contacted a former professor, Dr. Lydia Criss Mays, who spoke at one of my classes. She had quit being a professor to start her own company, See Beautiful and so I thought, who better to talk to my students about finding their passion than her. She quit being a professor (and I know the work it took to get a Ph.D.) to start this company where she could give back to others.

Lydia came in and talked with my students and together we started a service learning project to collect books for a homeless shelter in Utah. My students ran the book drive and collected over 2,000 books! Students went on to work on an independent passion project.

That summer I read three books that impacted my life as a teacher: Teach Like a Pirate  by Dave Burgess, Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner, and  Passion Driven Classroom  by Angela Maiers. Today, my classroom is grounded in a service learning framework where I work to empower my students to become social innovators who are able to find their passion and use that passion to serve others!

The picture above is from one of our service projects last year. We planted a garden to grow food for our “pop up” restaurant and for our local food bank. Thanks to an award from Voya, we are expanding this project to add more raised gardens and Tower Gardens.

It is most appropriate that my fifth grade students are finishing up our Basketeers project on World Kindness Day! They have been working for two months to collect baskets for women exiting a shelter for abused women. They have written letters, collected items, researched about domestic violence and gender equality, and wrapped baskets. The baskets are meant to help women begin their new lives. They wrote beautiful and encouraging notes to place in each basket. We will discuss other acts of kindness and try to spread kindness throughout the day, as we do every day!

Kindness is easy! We can all show kindness. A smile. A note. A word of encouragement. A thank you. A, “How was your day?” An, “I love you.” A bottle of water to someone thirsty, a morsel of food to someone hungry. We can all show kindness, and we can teach our students to show kindness!

Let me leave you with these words from Mother Teresa: “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”

• Uncategorized