Listen to this – because my two English classes are A-W-E-S-O-M-E.
In our class workbook, my students recently read a story about Random Acts of Kindness. After discussing this concept, I challenged each of my students to do a Random Act of Kindness and write about it. (Well, it was their homework, so I’m not sure if they really had a choice in the matter, but I just wanted them to do something.) After reading their journals, I thought that it might be interesting to do something together as a whole class, to be kind to others.
Each class took this challenge and did an amazing job with it. Since we had to plan for when and where we were going to perform our Random Act of Kindness it did take away the “random-ness” of it, but I still believe it made others feel good and encouraged my students to think about what it means to serve others. Read below to find out what each incredible class did last week. I think it will make you smile.
My 5:00pm class, which consists of mostly teenagers, made cards for the other classes at our school and bought a bag of candy for each class. Then, each student delivered the card and candy to the other classes. While this might not seem like a big deal, it is very intimidating for a teenager to walk into another class of strangers, interrupt the teaching and speak to the teacher in their non-native language. I was so proud of my students for doing this, even if some of them needed a friend to join them as they walked into the classroom for support. For some odd reason, we had extra bags of candy leftover. So, my students decided that they wanted to walk outside and give candy to people in the community. Wow . . . this was really neat to see. As they gave out candy, they found out that people reacted quite differently to their offer of free candy. Some took it willingly, some took it reluctantly, some completely ignored them, and some asked how much they were charging. Afterward, my students had an assignment to write about their “random” act of kindness and giving out candy in the community was undoubtedly the most rewarding part. I love this because that part wasn’t even planned! How fun, huh?
My 7:00pm class chose to help a family living near Riobamba, that recently had a particularly difficult time. The father in the family passed away, and now the wife is left to raise 8 children. Ugh. My amazing students decided to bring things to donate to the family – awesome, huh? The next day, each student came in with multiple items, such as clothing, books, shampoo, food, shoes, and more. Just seeing the generosity of my students filled my heart. But . . . it gets better. The next day, I went with three of my students to deliver the items to the family. There is no way around calling out the truth that this family is very poor. Without going into all of those details, I just need to say that it was a complete blessing that my students wanted to love them during this time. Outside the house, we sat and talked with the mother for awhile, gave her the bags of items from the other students, and then got ready to leave. And you know what was really sweet? Because they live on a farm, they wanted to give something to us to thank my students for their generosity. They gave us a huge bag of habas beans, which clearly shows her heart and her appreciation toward the gifts from my students. Good stuff.
In my last post, I wrote about how these classes helped to positively change my heart during my most difficult months in Ecuador. And now, I am sure that after reading the stories about what they did last week, you can see a glimpse of why I think they are wonderful people. 🙂
As always, now it’s your turn to comment. Choose one – or both – to reply to please. I look forward to hearing from you.
- What is the most special random act of kindness that someone has done for you?
- What is the next act of kindness you would like to do for someone?
im 4 ecuador 