Education

Kindness and its impact on education

Kindness resides in all of us. Our purpose is to increase awareness about this natural human interaction and help create the conditions for the practice of kindness to flourish in the Canadian school environment. Our philosophy is to focus on character strengths, healthy relationships and positive engagement in order to improve academic and human achievement.

Kind Canada’s vision is to develop a national Canadian kindness curriculum for students in elementary and high school. The programming would blend evidence-based learning from research of the science and health benefits of kindness with best practices in learning and teaching. 

Long term impact on students

• Improved well-being and mental health.
• Increased ability for students to reach their full learning potential.
• Reduced achievement gaps to attain academic success.
• Reduced risk behaviours, harassment and violent behaviour.

The practice of kindness

Experiential learning of the principles of kindness will be embedded in the curriculum through a descriptive approach of

• defined learning outcomes,
• focusing on strengths,
• suggested learning activities, and
• daily experiences

This approach will nurture behaviour and shift the culture of the school environment through purposefully including kindness in everyday interactions.

Employing a whole school approach

Our education framework utilizes a comprehensive whole school approach. Evidence suggests that school-wide programmes involving all staff and students promoting well-being are more likely to be effective than class-based interventions.  This is due to the fact that all individuals are modelling the behaviour.  (Wells et al., 2003). “A positive school environment as a whole is linked with teacher and student satisfaction, lower stress levels and better academic results.” Sangsue & Vorpe, 2004