Are you randomly acting kind?

I was flipping through my Bloglovin blogs to put them here on my *own* new blog!  And I looked at one of my favorites, The Corner on Character, and she has a great post on MLK and RAK!

Look at my little About Me blurb.  See how I talk about Social and Emotional?  Yet, my blog is all about RTI and reading?  Whattttt?

So I got inspired to write about our Secret Wolves.

Right before Christmas, I signed up to participate in Secret Santa at my school.  I had the BEST Secret Santa.  She remembered me almost daily, sometimes with just something little like a note to take care of myself.  But the BEST thing she gave me was randomly during math class (I teach third grade), one of the ladies from the kitchen came in with a cup of coffee!  French Vanilla, cream, no sugar.  And I already had a cup (or two) of coffee by then, but it was just so perfect, I was blown away. Some presents are silly, like little Santa-shaped stuff that everyone seems to have (or can easily pick up at Wal-Mart).  Some presents are delicious but generic (who DOESN'T like chocolate) because you don't always know the person you chose, so you guess to be safe.  But a cup of coffee, just the way I like it. It blew me away.  (She also gave me other awesome and thoughtful treats like a picture frame, fancy soap, and some decorations!  She's super like that!!)

I said to myself, that's it, we're doing it in class.  I don't believe in celebrating holidays in school.  Sharing about them and celebrating them are two different things in my opinion.  I love when kids share about themselves, including any holidays they participate in.  So I didn't want to do Secret Santas, I wanted kids to be nice.  I've done this in the past, but not so "formally".  We are the Golden Wolves (kids chose the name and the color!), so we became Secret Wolves (they chose the name).  Each week on Monday they pick a name out of a bag, I write it down, and on Fridays they try to guess who picked them.  And what do they do all week?

They are nice.

Yep, that's it!  They were way too obvious the first week, so they got sneakier.  They started telling friends to tell friends nice things.  They started being nice to several people at once to throw them all off the scent.  Prrrretty sneaky, huh?

Then the reveal.  Fridays we gather together and I go down the list of names, giving each kid the chance to guess who picked them.  I ask (and here's one of my favorite parts of all of this), "Student, who was nice to you this week?" and he or she guesses a name.  I say, "Wow, Guessed name, I bet that feels good to be noticed for being nice.  Did you pick him/her?" and if they did, they come to me and get a sticker to give to their Secret Wolf.  If it wasn't them, I say, "They were nice to you, but they won't give you a sticker!  Who will give them a sticker?" and the person who chose them comes to me to get the sticker.  I love the smiles on everyone's faces.  They smile if they got picked, they smile if they "tricked" their Secret Wolf.  They smile when they are reminded of how nice they were during the week.

Try it!  If you don't have class mascots, you could do "Secret Friends".  Goes great with Random Acts of Kindness that I've done in the past.  No prizes, just smiles.

Nice.