Tracking Acts of Kindness At Clinton Elementary School
By Megan FoleyThis article was written by Megan Foley, Special Education Teacher and Positivity Project (P2) leader at Clinton Elementary School in the Clinton Central School District of New York. Megan has led P2 at her school for three years, working to build character education into daily classroom routines.
Ms. Hughes and Mrs. Foley’s 4th grade class at Clinton Elementary won the It’s Cool to Be Kind Challenge, sponsored by KISS FM, Oneida Healthcare, and GPO Federal Credit Union.
Our fourth graders strive to choose kindness every single day, and not only when it is easy. Kindness extends beyond the classroom and into the wider community, which makes a real difference.
Why We Signed Up
It’s Cool to Be Kind is a community-wide challenge involving local media, and that is exactly why we wanted to take part. We wanted our students to feel like they were part of something larger than our four walls.
As the Positivity Project (P2) leader at our school, I already work with students on character strengths every day. This challenge lets students practice those strengths outside the classroom, in front of an audience they had never met.
The Pizza Pie Tracker
The challenge is built around a visual tracker we called the Pizza Pie, a paper pizza cut into slices. The goal is for the entire class to work together to fill in a full pizza by performing specific acts of kindness.
This kind of collaboration helped our students recognize the character strengths and kind gestures other students were doing. A single student couldn’t fill the entire Pizza Pie on their own, so the tracker updated only when the class paid attention to each other.
How Students Earned Slices
To complete the challenge, students were expected to demonstrate a set of behaviors.
- Giving compliments, by verbally praising a classmate’s hard work or a kind trait.
- Lending a hand by helping someone who dropped their books or helping a teacher clean up without being asked.
- Inclusion, by inviting someone new to play at recess or sit at a lunch table.
- Gratitude, by writing thank you notes to school staff, including custodians, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.
- Self-correction, by using please, thank you, and excuse me consistently throughout the day.
What That Looked Like Day to Day
In practice, that meant students told a classmate they did a good job. They picked up trash in the classroom without being asked. They gave compliments to friends. They let someone go ahead of them in line, asked someone new to sit with them at lunch, and held the door for people.
As a class, we also talked about the harm bullying can do and why kindness matters. Those discussions gave students a reason behind the actions on the tracker, so filling in a slice meant something beyond checking a box.
The Day We Found Out We Won
My co-teacher and I were notified that our class had been selected as the winning class. We set a date and time for the sponsors to arrive with music, pizza, and bags full of goodies.
The kids had a dance party, ate pizza and snacks, and were so excited and proud. They were also interviewed about how they show kindness and what kindness means to them.
Being interviewed about kindness was definitely a new experience for our students, but they had answers ready and did a great job participating on their own.
What Changed Afterward
The clearest change came after the challenge ended. Students started actively seeking out opportunities to be kind rather than following a rule. In fact, they kept doing kind things after the challenge was over and the tracker came down.
Kindness beyond the classroom creates a positive ripple effect. We are thankful to KISS FM, Oneida Healthcare, GPO Federal Credit Union, and all of the sponsors who surprised us with a pizza party that turned into a day of dancing, laughing, and celebrating together.