A Kindergarten and Grade 1 class in Paisley is being awarded the Kindest Class in Canada award.
Teacher of the SK1 class at Paisley Central School Emily Welsh says, her class of 22 students received the recognition from Depths of Comfort. It is an organization which seeks to empower students and teachers to build on their social and emotional teaching capacity.
She says she was notified of the contest through the school.
“I knew from September that I had a kind class. So I thought after all these little acts of kindness that I would enter them in this contest and it turns out that we actually won,” says Welsh.
She says at the beginning of September, they took part in the Terry Fox Run. As part of the annual event, Welsh had her class undertake a writing assignment in which students would describe what they would run for.
“They came up with their own ideas, such as raising money for sick animals, getting sick kids toys, raise money for cancer, do a toy drive, do a food drive, make an elderly person smile, just simple things like that. So I took it upon myself to actually go do these things throughout the year,” says Welsh.
Her class and eventually the school took part in a toy drive and collaborated with the local fire department.
She adds the class also held a cupcake sale, with the $500 collected going towards the Grey Bruce Animal Shelter. The class also wrote cards to staff and patients at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto.
“They are just a very kind bunch and they keep coming up with all these kind ideas to do,” says Welsh.
Welsh says she received word of her class’ accomplishment around a couple of months ago when they receive pizza gift cards to hold a celebration, but was officially announced this past week.
“I am just so proud of them, because individually they are so sweet and so kind and then coming together, it is so crazy,” says Welsh. “It just makes my heart so happy they are this young and thinking of others.”