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Ogdensburg students complete 2,500 acts of kindess

| 08 Feb 2016 | 03:21
    The three individual winners of the Great Kindness Challenge pose under the contest race track, used to track the studentsþÄô acts of kindness. From left, Gia Bonard, Jade Lally, and Hannah Panzarella.
    The three individual winners of the Great Kindness Challenge pose under the contest race track, used to track the studentsþÄô acts of kindness. From left, Gia Bonard, Jade Lally, and Hannah Panzarella.
    Mrs. Mongon's fifth-grade classe visited the first-grade classrooms to read their descriptive Native American travel brochures with their reading buddies. The first-graders also shared their books with the fifth-graders to meet the "reading to a younger child" act of kindness.
    Mrs. Mongon's fifth-grade classe visited the first-grade classrooms to read their descriptive Native American travel brochures with their reading buddies. The first-graders also shared their books with the fifth-graders to meet the "reading to a younger child" act of kindness.
    Ms. Cooke's fifth-grade study skills class made a bulletin board with "Take what you need" posters.
    Ms. Cooke's fifth-grade study skills class made a bulletin board with "Take what you need" posters.
    Ogdensburg student Charlotte Gough stands by the poster she made to remind everyone to be kind.
    Ogdensburg student Charlotte Gough stands by the poster she made to remind everyone to be kind.

OGDENSBURG — Kindness is spreading in Ogdensburg School.

For the first time, students participated in the global “The Great Kindness Challenge,” an event where school districts devote one week in January to performing as many acts of kindness as possible, choosing from a 50-item checklist.

From Jan 25-29, the Ogdensburg School held two contests, one for pre-K to fourth-grade, and one for fifth through eighth-grade. For grades 5 through 8, the goal was to see which homeroom would have the most acts of kindness per student, and for grades pre-K to 4, students were assigned different acts of kindness per day and if the whole class had 100 percent participation, the class would receive a point.

“The students got really excited to do these things, even the older kids,” said Ogdensburg School Anti-Bullying Specialist Leanne Paolazzi. “We didn’t think the older kids would be as excited as they were. They wanted to see their checklists and they wanted to keep track, and they really got into it.”

Student in grades 5 through 8 were given the 50-item checklist and checked off the acts throughout the day, and at the end of the day, the lists were collected and counted. The lists were then handed back to the students in the morning, so they could keep working on the same checklist and get to all of the different acts.

The winning homeroom classes were Ms. Donche’s third-grade class and Mrs. Takacs' fourth-grade class with a tie, and Mrs. Cooper’s sixth-grade class. Three individual prizes were also given to the students who completed the most acts of kindness at the end of the week: Hannah Panzarella, Jade Lally, and Gia Bonard.

“They start out performing acts of kindness to be competitive, but as they go they realize that it feels good to be kind and it gives them lots of ideas to be kind, and the hope is that they continue to do these kind acts after the contest is over,” Paolazzi said.

Paolazzi said that due to the support from Superintendent Dave Astor and the efforts of the whole staff, including teachers, paraprofessionals and of course the students, the school’s first “Great Kindness Challenge” was a success.

Since the end of the competition, she said the whole staff has seen a difference. Kids are still doing acts of kindness on their own, she said, from thanking a custodian to writing thank-you notes on a Band-Aid to the school nurse.

In conjunction with the Ogdensburg School, the town council unanimously proclaimed the last week in January, “Week of Kindness” in Ogdensburg. According to the Great Kindness Challenge website, 5,014,362 students inspired 250,718,100 acts of kindness during the 2016 GKC.