KDKA: See what Kindness in Action looks like here in Pittsburgh

Kindness is spreading through Western Pennsylvania. More than 4,500 students in 12 school districts are participating in a Kindness Campaign.

It started with a club called “Be the Kind Kid” at Avonworth Primary School. Combine that with Lady Gaga’s Kindness in Action Campaign and World Kindness Day, which is Nov. 13, and you have a kindness movement.

It all ties into Fred Rogers’ message about being kind.

Ryan Rydzewski, co-author of the book “When You Wonder, You’re Learning” about the lessons of Fred Rogers, said, “It is tough. Kindness can be really, really difficult, especially in today’s world when it’s not always rewarded. But we’re so excited to have thousands of students and hundreds of teachers answering Fred’s call and taking up that assignment to be kind to one another.”

Bethel Park School District is one of the districts participating in the “Be the Kind Kid: Kindness in Action” campaign.

The challenge is to design, build and share kindness initiatives, maker projects or art installations unique to the needs of a community. At Neil Armstrong Middle School, teachers Sonja Kubinec and Lori Mates are helping the students write poems about kindness and record themselves reading those poems.

“Being kind is cool. Kindness starts with you and me,” one student said, reading his kindness poem out loud.

Once the poems are recorded, the class is creating a QR code that will link to the voice recording and putting it on a hand-painted bookmark. The kids are also weaving friendship bracelets that will double as a tassel on the bookmark.

Mates and Kubinec asked the students: “What is kindness?

“Everyone agreed it’s helping someone else,” Mates said. “It’s being kind. It’s giving a compliment, opening the door. And then we said, ‘What does that look like? Why does it matter?’ And everyone agreed it makes the world a happier place.”

These teachers recognize that academic and sports skills are often highly rewarded in school but that teaching and rewarding kindness can have an important and lasting impact on the community.

“Everybody comes in with different abilities, different talents, and this is a way for each of them to shine and show that they are kind, that this intrinsic reward, this feeling they get, it doesn’t always have to be extrinsic in some physical way, but the intrinsic feeling of giving something and saying, ‘Okay, I made them smile,’” Kubinec said.

The “Be the Kind Kid – Kindness in Action Campaign” culminates with World Kindness Day. The Children’s Museum and the Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh will display what the students across all 12 districts are making to spread kindness.