Spreading the love
Kindness is contagious, and it’s spreading at Vestavia Hills Elementary Central.
Beginning on Feb. 1, VHEC will celebrate the month of love with a month of kindness, which is loosely based off the service club at Pizitz Middle School.
“It’s harder to do a club [at VHEC],” VHEC counselor Kellie Knight said, because elementary students don’t usually stay after school as often as the middle-schoolers. Knight previously worked at Pizitz Middle School and has helped coordinate this month’s plans for the school. “It’s not just random acts of kindness,” she said. “We wanted to have all month.”
Throughout the month, each class at VHEC will choose an activity that gives back to their community and work together to create it. Knight said some of the activities include putting together gift baskets, visiting nursing homes and creating thank-you cards for nearby Vestavia Police Department and the Vestavia Fire Departments and asking them to visit to say thank-you in person. Some classes may also choose to collect socks, gloves and personal hygiene items for Jessie’s Place and First Light Homeless Shelter in downtown Birmingham.
“We do a lot around the holidays … but we want you guys [the students] to get in that mindset and go even outside of February,” Knight said. “As we talk about homeless shelters who need donations throughout the year … maybe they’ll want to go with their family to visit.”
Once their project is complete, some classes may be able to deliver their gifts personally, which Knight said is a rewarding moment in itself.
“I think that [delivering the gifts] just bridges a connection between the community,” she said. “There’s a reward in serving other people that’s right there, and that can be just as fun as some of those extracurricular [activities] that they choose to do.”
The students also will participate in the nationwide Random Acts of Kindness Week, from Feb. 12-18. It encourages students to experience kindness in the classroom.
“We want to get them [the students] excited about what they’re doing,” Knight said. The school will keep the kindness spirit alive by sharing classroom projects during the morning announcements, which are run by the students, and by incorporating the theme into the monthly lessons that the counselors teach each class.
“When the counselors go in, they will talk about service and kindness and take a pay-it-forward approach,” she said.
While this is only the first year for the event, Knight said she is hoping the students’ experiences stay with them far beyond the classroom walls and the month of February.
“I hope that they’ll ask their parents, ‘Do you think we can go and visit the nursing home?’ or ‘Could we as a family do something like this?’” Knight said. “Hopefully, they’ll take the initiative. That’s the ultimate goal of this: is that they’ll see these needs and start to do them on their own.”