Lessons in Kindness

LOUISE TOBIN PRINCIPAL OF ST. JOSEPH’S NS, TIPPERARY & IPPN DEPUTY PRESIDENT

In December, Minister Foley said that ‘Bullying remains an unacceptable reality in our schools. So lessons in kindness are key’ .

This is a practice that we have been following in our school for the past few years with very positive outcomes. I’m sure many schools are pursuing similar programmes, but nonetheless, I’d like to share what’s working well in our school with you.

In St. Joseph’s, we hold a monthly assembly, with a central, ongoing theme of ‘Friendship’. The assembly of course extends to include other areas of school activity, depending on topical, seasonal and school events and interests, but the recurring theme of Friendship is the central focus each month.

The Friendship theme is explored and expanded as the year progresses. By doing this, we promote a whole school approach to developing positivity and maintaining a culture and an environment of kindness, awareness of others, positivity and friendship.

Our Motto from the outset is simply ‘We Are All Friends at St. Joseph’s’. We remind and reinforce basic strategies, in poem and song form, of Telling If You Have A Problem, Good Manners and Being Kind, Think Before You Speak and Positive Affirmations. We combine the above with a number of positive simple class or individual awards when teacher or staff see pupils showing kind, responsible, sensible behaviours. These awards include Best Line, Safety, Friendship, Morning Line-Up, Safety on the Stairs and Kindness, to name but a few.

Schools Excellence Fund: DEIS

We are also in Year 3 of our Wellbeing4Tipps project as part of the above initiative. Our main focus of work here is on a Growth Mindset Programme for our pupils. We developed a monthly whole school theme. Examples are Positivity, Kindness, Gratitude and Love, and we worked on affirming these topics in practical and meaningful ways.

After the 3 years of engaging with Growth Mindset, we believe we have created a very happy, hugely positive environment for pupils and staff. This would in turn, I believe, account for the very welcoming and tolerant attitude our pupils show towards each other and our newcomer pupils. So many of our schools now serve very diverse communities. We have over 24 nationalities in ours. A continuous focus on kindness and positivity, cultivates a culture of acceptance of all pupils, and in our case has resulted in so much positive good behaviours among very happy pupils, and an atmosphere and culture of welcome, acceptance and of course kindness.

I’m happy to share the positivity:

If you would like to get in touch with Louise in relation to this article, you can send her an email at louisetobin16@gmail.com

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