18th September Kindness

World Kindness Day is celebrated on the 13th November and there has always been sufficient picture books to cater for each of the thirteen classrooms in my school, but lately every time I step into a bookshop I see another book on 'kindness' and they are not just picture books with kindness as a theme they are much more overt. The word 'kind' or 'kindness' is in the title of the book. Part of me thinks that it is sad that as teachers we are being asked to explicitly teach kindness when it was something that just 'was' and it was taught at home. Nevertheless it has become part of the social skills curriculum and if students do not understand what being kind means, then true empathy will be even harder to teach. One of the teachers at my school suggested I purchase You, Me and Empathy by  Jayneen Sanders for the library and she has been working on kindness with her students.

Along with the many books we have already, here is what has come onto the market recently (and I'm sure I will have missed some) which will supplement that collection.
• Be Kind  by Pat Zietlow Miller and Jen Hill
• I Walk With Vanessa by Kerascoet
• Kind by Alison Green
• Be Kind: You can make the world a happier place! by Naomi Shulman and Hsingpin Pan
• Be Kind! by Stephanie Clarkson and Katie Abey
• Kindness Makes Us Strong by Sophie Beer
• Kindness Grows by Britta Teckentrup
• The Kindness Book by Todd Parr
• Superbuns! : Kindness is her Superpower by Diane Kredensor
• A World of Kindness illustrated by Suzanne Del Rizzo et al.

PS I think you can read between the lines here and ascertain what I think about 'message' books, but just in case you need some more on this topic read this.

13th November World Kindness Day

On the days before 13th November, I couldn't get into my blog and I wasn't feeling 'kind' towards my computer at all and then I went away. Now I'm back and I can once again get into my blog. Not sure what was going on. I had collected together the books I wanted to mention, so I'm doing it now ready for next year.

World Kindness Day is celebrated on the 13th November because this was when it came to be in 1998.

The purpose of World Kindness Day is to look beyond ourselves, beyond the boundaries of our country, beyond our culture, our race, our religion; and realise we are citizens of the world. As world citizens we have a commonality, and must realise that if progress is to be made in human relations and endeavours, if we are to achieve the goal of peaceful coexistence, we must focus on what we have in common. When we find likenesses we begin to experience empathy, and in such a state we can fully relate to that person or those people. While we may think of people from other cultures as being ‘different’ when we compare them with our own customs and beliefs, it doesn’t mean that we are any better than they are. When we become friends with someone from a different culture we discover that despite some obvious differences, there are many similarities.

There are so many picture books that could be used in classrooms to support this purpose. Any book that encourages us to think deeply about others, any book that encourages us to empathise with others, any book that makes us question our role and others' role in the world, any book that makes us feel uncomfortable about our position in the world, any book that causes us to pause...

I have written about this day before and focussed on books for young children about being kind, but today I just want to share some new titles that have been added to the library that will encourage you to pause and think.