Kindness Matters

Dear Parents and Community Members, I shared this message with the staff this morning and want to share the same with you. Last fall, York's staff visited each classroom to deliver respect talks. The purpose, as I have learned, was to explicitly address the critical power of words and actions and to emphasize respect and kindness. I am extending that effort to what I call the Kindness Matters Campaign. I'm encouraging students, staff, and the community to treat each other with respect, to understand that we can have differing opinions but still be kind to one another. One way to operationalize this is to encourage others to "commit" random acts of kindness in the halls, in classrooms, in athletics, activities, in the community, and within families. Some examples include: helping a student who dropped his / her books, holding a door open, saying hello and how are you to strangers, paying for someone's coffee behind you in a drive through, simply smiling at others, and paying someone a compliment. There is so much power in kindness, so much more so than in hate. Please help me spread the word and let's use this as a way to act as role models to our students in a time where societal discord is at a peak. If you post about this on social media, please use the hashtag #kindessmatters