On National Kindness Day, Nov. 13, students at St. Maria Goretti School in Schiller Park teamed up to help those less fortunate by making “kindness bags” filled with essentials like toothpaste, socks, deodorant and soap. Then they took those bags home to hand out to those they meet who are in need.

Learning to be kind isn’t just a one-day event at the school, however. Faculty and staff have dedicated the entire school year to encouraging kindness and acts of service.

The idea came from the archdiocese’s Office of Catholic Schools’ 2019-2020 school year theme “Angels Among Us.”

“I thought that we could integrate that theme with our elementary school-aged children by teaching them how to be an ‘angel in disguise’ for someone,” said principal Claudia Mendez.

Teachers and staff began planning projects and lessons in May and the kindness bags grew out of that planning. Students will take the bags home and, with their parents’ supervision, give them to people in need they see on the street or in other places.

“We recommended that families keep the kindness bag in their vehicle and if they encounter a person in need, to simply offer the bag to that person. The bag itself contains a note with a spirit-lifting message signed by the student that made the kindness bag,” Mendez said.

Other projects this year include collecting soda can tabs for the Ronald McDonald House Charities and attending a Feed My Starving Children packing event.

When a student sees a fellow classmate doing an act of kindness, they can nominate them to receive one of the “kindness certificates” awarded each month.

“By focusing on kindness and service, it is evident that our students are beginning to see themselves as the agents of change towards making their world a more peaceful and loving community.  The all-school kindness bag service project was eye-opening for many of our students as they began to understand the impact that some of the items we collected could have on the person receiving them,” Mendez said.

The teachers also incorporate lessons on kindness and serving others into their classrooms. For example, in her fourth-grade religion class, Danielle Iannelli taught the students about St. Francis of Assisi, the patron of animals, and the students made pet beds and toys to donate to a local animal shelter.

“Through this project the students have the opportunity to see how their service will directly impact those animals. This opens their eyes to kindness on a practical level,” Iannelli said.

This year’s theme is already transforming the students.

“They have really taken to our mission of kindness. Here at St. Maria Goretti we have started a kindness crew. Each week on Wednesday a new group of students takes part in welcoming the other students to school that day with signs, cheers, music, etc.,” Iannelli said. “This kindness crew will also be coming up with plans for additional acts of kindness they can spread throughout the school.”

Focusing on things like kindness and service help students develop compassion and empathy for others in the world around them.

“They see the bigger picture,” Iannelli said. “As teachers, we are always modeling how to treat others within the classroom. This takes it one step further to show our students that there are many people in need of our love and compassion outside our school.”

Fourth grader Alex Krason said making the bags made her “happy.”

“It is important because the people that are going to receive the kindness bags, they don’t have anything and now they are going to have something to use like the soap, the toothpaste and toothbrush, and the granola bars or cheese and crackers.”

So far this year, she most enjoyed making the dog toys and dog beds.

“We made dog toys from old shirts and we made the dog beds from old blankets,” Krason said. “We’re going to send them to the animal anti-cruelty society. It was really fun to make them.”