February 16th, 2022

Dear Lackner Families,

The staff at Lackner have been truly inspired by our students and their kindness and caring for others this week. Each class was asked to do something special to reflect kindness and caring as part of this week. We realize that not having Valentine’s and treats coming in from home is a change and as a staff we wanted to support our students in their learning and caring within the school environment. The activities within the classrooms took on a whole different level of caring and compassion, bigger than we imagined. We had students thinking about something kind to say to others and writing personal notes to them. We had students putting a lot of effort into their writing to share their kind words with a peer. The artwork that was developed in some of the classes was also personalized for their peers.

Some of the special things I heard from staff and students were:

One student wrote: “Thank you for helping with my math.” Upon opening that note the peer said “You are welcome, I will help anytime.” They were so excited to see what their peers had wrote to them.

Students were excited about keeping their secret valentines’ a secret – the anticipation was amazing.

Here are some of the excerpts that staff shared with me:

Our class did something we called the Portable 1 Positivity Project. We chose a positive word or phrase and visualized what we thought that might look like. We then created our words/phrases to hang up and encourage others to be positive around our school. We were inspired by the Kindness Wall of sticky notes from earlier this year.

For Valentine’s Day, we folded a piece of paper into a grid then used watercolours to paint our designs. We cut out the grid into individual valentines’ cards. Instead of just saying “Happy Valentine’s Day,” we talked about what a compliment is and how it makes us feel good to both give and receive compliments. We wrote a kind compliment to every student.

Our class wrote personal notes to everyone in our class.

Our class made a special Valentine’s Day card for someone at their house. I incorporated this into our letter writing unit. We also made Valentine’s Day cards for one another. Each student received 7 card stock cards of various styles and a list of 7 student names. They used the list as a checklist to ensure they made a card for everyone on their list. This way every student got at least 8 cards (I gave one to everyone as well). We kept it “top secret” so it would be a surprise when we handed out our cards on V Day. Afterwards, students had the option of making more cards for additional classmates. Many did. Lastly, we made and decorated “love monster envelopes” to hang off our desks for our Valentine card deliveries. The kids loved it! They were excited and most really bought into keeping their list of names a secret.

My class made Valentine Gnomes. Students picked a name out of a hat and made a gnome for that student. They wrote a little message to their valentine on the heart or on the back.

My kids drew one name – their secret valentine – from a hat and made them one card. They were super excited and did a fantastic job. They wrote some lovely things about their classmates.

Students picked a name card from a bowl, then they created a card for that classmate. They included a positive message or something they like or enjoy about their classmate.

We did the Kindness Pledge as a class.

After listening to the story “Love is” by Heidi Pross Gray, the students in K2 generated ideas of what love is to them. They then drew pictures and wrote about it. We have one caring class. Many of the students said love is giving toys, food to those who do not have any or hugging their family.

Our class created a kindness puzzle. It began with a heart cut into puzzle pieces. Each classmate and staff in the class had the opportunity to write about what kindness is on their piece of the puzzle and then worked as a class to reconstruct the puzzle.

We as a staff want to thank you for supporting this change within our school. While we know changes to traditions such as Valentine’s are hard, it is not that we are ignoring some of the traditions, we just may be looking at them in a different way. The way in which we celebrated allowed all of our students to be included and cared for. The results were meaningful and staff were able to assess some of the activities for writing and art marks as well.

Yesterday Carnaval was also a big hit!!!

Students loved having some “normalcy” return to their lives. While we still moved in cohorts, the return to a modified outdoor play day for Carnaval was amazing. We would like to thank our French team: Mme Ognibene, Mme. Papastergiou, and Mme. Tulk for all of their hard work organizing this and other fun activities all week. We also thank Mrs. Kraft for all her help with the phys. ed equipment needed for the activities. All staff helped out and loved seeing the students engaged in FUN!!!

Thank you for your continuing support,

Julie Sinclair

Principal