Just a few days after Valentine’s Day, a day set aside to recognize love, another day has been getting more and more popular as people work on spreading kindness.
Students at St. Paul Regional High School jumped on board with Random Acts of Kindess Day on Feb. 17, but instead of just recognizing kindness for a day, the school decided to go one step further and do some fun things throughout the week.
Post-it Notes and little clothespin tags were stuck to lockers throughout the school’s halls on Wednesday morning, with messages encouraging students to smile and feel good.
Liz Theroux was one of the students behind the Post-it Note idea. She said she got the idea from celebrity Shawn Mendes, a Canadian singer who created the Notes from Shawn campaign to increase self-esteem among young people, and reduce self-harm.
“I just thought it would be nice to make someone’s day, and make them smile,” says Theroux. After getting the OK from staff, she and a friend created hundreds of positive Post-it Notes with simple, and sometimes silly, messages. Then, they stuck them to random lockers throughout the week.
Christy Schoneck is a success coach at Regional, and she has been encouraging students to do similar random acts of kindness. Another group of students made hundreds of clothespin tags with candy and suckers attached to them, and have been handing them out in the same way as the Post-it Notes, but attaching them randomly to lockers just before the lunch break.
“It encourages kids to smile,” says Schoneck when speaking of both initiatives.
The idea is simple, but the random notes have been getting kids talking, and laughing. Some of the messages on the Post-it Notes, such as “You have cute elbows,” are simply meant to make students smile.
On the back of the clothespin notes, there are also tips and ideas on how students can keep the random acts of kindness going, by doing good deeds themselves.
Regional student Karlie Schoff is part of the Good Samaritans group at Regional, and has been helping making the clothespin notes. She said she’s heard some of her friend asking why they haven’t received a random note yet, which proves that the simple idea is working.
Later in the week, the group was also going to bake cookies to hand out randomly to students, but the idea of helping others doesn’t stop there. The Good Samaritans group offers students a chance to get a few leadership credits, while also taking part in community initiatives outside the school, like Second Harvest.
The school is also well known for its involvement in Santa’s Elves around Christmas, and is looking to participating in a seniors’ tea, among other things. There are just under a dozen students involved with the group right now, says Schoneck.
“We help as much as we can,” she says, adding, sometimes students have to juggle being involve with their school work, so involvement is somewhat limited.
When asked if either Theroux or Schoff had been on the receiving end of a random act of kindness, Theroux said just that morning someone had given her a free coffee, and Schoff said that although she couldn’t think of a specific moment, she has been with her dad in the drive-thru when he’s paid for people behind him, randomly.
“The idea is to just get (students) to pass it on to someone else,” says Schoneck.