Teacher's "Kindness Crew" encourages students to spread smiles beyond their classroom

A teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, is teaching her students how to practice kindness.
She founded the “Kindness Crew, a student club that puts kindness into practice.
Members of the club are showing the proper behavior even in their homes.

Stefany Bibb believes that love can blossom – and spread — with kindness, attention, and care.

Stefany is a teacher who has spent the last 20 years at John F. Kennedy Montessori Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to the fundamentals, Stefany teaches her young children a vital, yet frequently forgotten, life skill: kindness.

Stefany founded the Kindness Crew, a club for students of all ages. They meet before school to create goals and explore how being nice makes them feel, and then they put these skills into practice throughout the day and beyond. They do things like hold doors open, smile at strangers, offer help to anyone who is having a hard time, and give hugs to show compassion to their classmates and teachers.

“It feels good. It physically feels good to be kind,” Stefany explained.

The Kindness Crew has thus far exceeded Stefany’s expectations for the club. Her students have internalized the lessons and are demonstrating appropriate behavior even in their homes.

Stefany spent spring break on the school grounds creating a unique rock garden. This vibrant location serves as a gathering and sharing space for the Kindness Crew. It also has a bucket of brightly painted rocks, some of which are embellished with encouraging words. Students decorated these rocks, which are now available to anyone in need.

Students may take a favorite rock or share it with a friend. They can have them for a week before returning them to the garden, or they can keep the rock and swap it with one they made. The overall purpose is to make people happy by performing a simple act of kindness, which is a notion that toddlers readily grasp.

Kim Le, a fifth-grader who hopes to create her own Kindness Crew when she enters middle school next year, says the best part about being kind is that it comes back to you if they simply say “thank you”.

Stefany claims that the success of her Kindness Crew is entirely due to the kids’ innate tendency to be good to others, but her students feel she has had a significant influence on them.