Students Find That It’s Cool to Be Kind

I called my grandmother and told her I loved her. She’s 76. She lives in Oakland. I felt good because she was happy. I just called to see how she was feeling, and I didn’t ask for anything.

The students in Joyce Shepherd’s second-period class at Savanna High School in Anaheim were talking about kindness. A simple concept, really; and yet we all know the world hasn’t quite mastered it.

Today is National Random Acts of Kindness Day, and Shepherd had asked students in her classes to commit one act of kindness without being asked or thanked in return. I hung around for a while Thursday morning as the students talked about how adults tend to stereotype teen-agers as selfish or troublemakers and how even doing a simple act of kindness made them feel better. The kids are hip enough to understand the project is largely symbolic and, yet, the ones I talked to during and after school said the exercise had an impact on them.

Before I left, Shepherd gave me a list of the students’ acts of kindness.

My mom saved me a piece of pie and my little brother brought it to me. I told him he could have it and he asked why. And I said, “because I love you , “ and he left the room smiling.

It really bugs teen-agers when adults think of them all as self-centered. “I think a lot of adults stereotype us,” 15-year-old Heidi Cupp said, when I talked to her after school. “But a lot of students are more considerate than what people think.”

A man was homeless and he was sitting there on the curb drawing a picture of something, so after we ate, we bought the man some food so he could eat.

Shepherd said she didn’t suggest the project so outsiders would pat the students on the back. If anything, this is a lesson for the students in giving things back to the community, she said. “There are givers and takers in the world,” she said, “and I want my students to be part of the givers. We see so much happening in the world that’s disappointing that I want the students to know there also could be good in this world.”

I listened to my father’s problems when he felt bad.

Aaron Schulze is a junior who tutors younger students in Shepherd’s class. “I think ‘Random Acts’ is really important and it does have a bigger picture,” he said. “Little things can affect people in big ways. . . . Deep down, people are generally good. It just takes something like this to bring out the good.”

At Nicholas Junior High, there was a little boy that was in the 7th grade. He needed $20 for a yearbook. I paid for the yearbook in his name. He never knew who did this for him.

Schulze, 16, said the public may not hear about teen-agers who work in convalescent homes or who spend time cleaning graffiti. And, yes, he says, some teens are self-centered. “I wouldn’t call it a bum rap, but I think a lot of adults prejudge us. There’s a stereotype out there that teen-agers don’t care about other people.”

I helped my dad put carpet and two seats in the van. It made me feel good to help my dad without him asking me to help.

The “Random Acts of Kindness” idea began in 1982 when a woman named Anne Herbert wrote “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty” on a place mat in a Sausalito restaurant. The expression spread to bumper stickers and, so far, has spawned three books from a Berkeley publishing house.

Sometimes in P.E., I help push the students who are in wheelchairs to class because I really care about them.

“This is a very difficult age for them to be going through,” Shepherd said, “and we talk a lot about self-esteem--even though that’s an overused word--but one byproduct of this kind of assignment is that it makes them feel better.”

Yesterday I went to my dad’s play rehearsal, which I never do but he always asks me because he wants to have company to talk with when he’s not in a scene.

I asked Heidi Cupp if she sees the world as a kind place. “I think people are kind to each other when it’s good for them, like when they have time. I think not as many do things they could. I think they only do when it’s appropriate for them, but there are a lot of things people could do to make the world kinder, but they don’t want to go out there and do it. It’s not a cruel world, but it could be lot better if people would just do a little more.”

Nobody was saying the students’ acts would change the world. . . .

A woman needed money to get milk for her baby. I had $5 to get a book for myself, but I ga v e the $5 to the lady instead.

. . . Only that they would make it a little better.