Kindness in a Digital World
#DCMOOC
One of last week’s writing prompt was “How do we help our students to become kind and caring citizens who act with integrity in all spaces, including digital ones?”
I find this question hard to relate to my classroom. I very, very rarely have students working in a digital world in my classroom (GASP). This isn’t to say there isn’t technology in my classroom. I present things to students everyday using technology and students are given opportunities to use technology on occasion as well (mostly to graph). I feel that the technology I use in my class is limited since I haven’t figured out a way to incorporate the digital world without taking away from the time needed to fufill the requirements of a very full curriculum. . . A work in progress!
This being said, I did have a great conversation with my husband (who is also an educator) this week on how to teach kindness. We both agreed that this seems like a very vague, and daunting task and we both immediately said modelling kindness would be the best (and quite frankly easiest) way to teach it. I then began to wonder what elementary school teachers did with this idea. They have curriculums that can overlap and although they have ALOT to do in a day, often they would have more time than me (a high school math teacher) to devote to teaching children values.
As I thought about what these teachers might do, I began to reflect on what I do with my 5 year old, Calder. We own the book, Have You Filled A Bucket Today, and have read to our son many times. My husband and I often go back to the book’s premise of being kind to others when speaking with Calder. I realized that although I do my best to be kind to others (modelling), the message of kindness might be relayed better to our son if I verbally acknowledged to him that I was being kind. Let’s face it, alot of what I do goes unnoticed by Calder! The more we talk about kindness with Calder and the more often he gets the message that being kind is one of the things we value most in our home, the more likely he will be to act in a similar way (or at least I hope).
The writing prompt asked about being kind in a digital space and like many people in the #DCMOOC Google + group I feel that in order to help our students (or children) be kind online, we must first teach them to be kind in a non-digital world. I feel then, at an age appropriate time, we can model and show examples of kindness online to our students and children.
