Woods Creek Elementary School in Crystal Lake starts project to spread kindness

CRYSTAL LAKE – Through her 30 years of teaching in Crystal Lake Elementary District 47, Gail Kelley has always had one rule for her class: Be kind.

The rule applies to everything – whether it be not talking over someone else, or including everyone in the group, Kelley said.

“I want to teach [students] academics,” Kelley said. “But I think more importantly I want to teach them to be kind, productive citizens and just to think positive.”

Through the Classes4Classes initiative, Kelley’s extended curriculum class of fourth- and fifth-grade students at Woods Creek Elementary is learning how to pay lessons of kindness forward.

The Classes4Classes nonprofit was started by former Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis after the 2012 school shooting, according to a news release from District 47. The nonprofit's mission is to "teach children the power of kindness and compassion through their ability to create positive change for others," according to its website, classes4classes.org.

Classes use crowdfunding to buy something another school needs, and once a school has received its gift, it must pay it forward by helping another school.

Woods Creek is the first school in Illinois to participate, Kelley said.

Students in Kelley’s class were paired with a second-grade class at Broad River Elementary School in Beaufort, South Carolina, taught by Crystal Lake native and District 47 graduate Elena Ryan. The two teachers were connected by Kelley’s longtime friend and Ryan’s aunt, also of Crystal Lake.

The Woods Creek class is raising $1,750 to buy two buddy benches for Broad River that children can sit on when they need a friend.

As of Friday morning, Kelley’s class had raised $1,117 to go toward the buddy benches.

The benches are especially needed now because some of Broad River’s benches were recently destroyed after Hurricane Matthew hit the area, Ryan said.

“I attribute all my learning and growth to that district,” Ryan said. “And now that they’re helping me out later in life, it’s just a cool roundabout experience with [District 47].”

After the benches are donated, Ryan said her class will pay it forward by giving something back to Woods Creek.

One of Kelley’s fifth-grade students, 10-year-old Kennedy Markee, has been doing chores and asking neighbors for donations to raise money for the benches.

“I like it a lot because it gives the kids a chance to have somebody at recess,” Kennedy said. “If they don’t have any buddies, they can go sit down and someone can find them.”

Aside from the buddy benches, the project is about making connections with students outside the district, Kelley said. The classes have spoken to each other through a Google hangout and as pen pals.

During the Google hangout, students from both classes decided to make a kindness calendar, where they both complete the same acts of kindness each day, Kelley said.

Ryan said her class has started looking up to the “big kids” in Kelley’s class, and picked up one of their activities of writing sticky notes of kind acts they’ve seen and posting them around the classroom.

The sticky notes started in Kelley’s class after her students read a book called “Pay It Forward.”

“It kind of took on a life of its own, and it’s much bigger than I thought it would be,” Cindy Markee, Kennedy’s mother, said. “What Gail has brought out in these children is amazing.”

Kennedy isn’t the only student excited about the project either, her mother said.

Allison Ritt, whose 10-year-old daughter Alannah is in Kelley’s class, has been making calls to family to ask for buddy bench donations and tell them about Classes4Classes.

“Not only does she understand the concept, but now she’s trying to spread that message,” Ritt said.

For Kennedy, the message her teacher and the Classes4Classes initiative is sending is important, she said.

“Being mean never solves anything,” Kennedy said. “And being kind can always help people be happy.”