Make Kindness Visible

Since our elementary school (where I work as the assistant librarian and recess teacher) is closed to students and families, only essential staff and those of us willing and able to come into the building to put together materials that are distributed weekly or every other week to our students it’s palpable how the “friendship-teamwork” feelings between coworkers is strained or missing. And it’s also a very difficult time for our principals and assistant principals as well! So I brought some little gifts with me to work yesterday, nothing big that would break the bank. I gave our office staff each one of those “King Size” Sharpies (AKA magic markers), since we’re all needing to write names or grade numbers on so many bags for distribution! They were so happy and giggled when I said, “Now don’t say I never gave you anything!😉” To which they said they were very happy to get one, since that had been wanting to purchase one/some themselves but didn’t want to spend their own money on “work tools”.
The school nurse put out a request for “fun posters” in the spring as they were having to put together an isolation room for students who develop a fever at school and would have to wait for someone to pick them up. This way they would have something to do or something fun or interesting to look at. So I bought a couple of sets of those “3D magic eye” or “trick eye” posters, where you have to go cross eyed and then try to refocus to find the 3D image in the picture. I had her choose the ones she wanted for that room, and insisted she choose for the nurses office as well. Then I said, “HECK, take 1-2 for home, too!” Her kids are around my own kids ages. I had 6 leftover, so I boxed them up, stuck a post-it on the box for our principal, “Please accept this gift for your home & office. Let you mind wonder, take time to relax and unwind, and show your boys how to do the same!💜 Amy D.” I received an email later that day from her, thanking me for the gift. She loved them so much that she will be buying some for the hallways at school for our students who need those areas of “Brain-break time” and at least one for each of our classrooms to have!😃😁🥰 She and I reminisced over our childhood memories of the original posters and books in our libraries.
So it will be interesting to see who else will be paying it forward! It definitely helps me to feel better during this time to help others, to build them up and make them feel better, too!