Elementary Education Program

Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Social Action Plan

Name: Morgan Diiorio, Toria Bennett, Sayonna Adams

Grade: Kindergarten

The social issue that occurs in schools and in the community that we are covering is

bullying. We want to communicate that bullying is an issue and that we need to prevent it by

showing kindness to everyone. This issue is problematic because the victims of bullying often

suffer from low self-esteem, reduced academic performance and, in extreme cases, commit

suicide or violent acts of retribution. There are different types of bullying that happens around us

such as: physical, verbal, psychological, and cyberbullying. Physical bullying occurs when

bullies hurt their targets physically. This might be shoving, tripping, punching, or hitting. Any

form of touching that a person does not want can be bullying and possible sexual assault. Verbal

bullying is taunting or teasing someone. Psychological bullying is gossiping about or excluding

people to make them feel bad about themselves. Cyberbullying occurs when bullies use the

internet and social media and say things that they might not say in person. This can include

sending mean text messages, posting insults about someone or making rude comments on their

pictures on social media. Cyberbullies also might post personal information, pictures, or videos

designed to hurt or embarrass someone else.

 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

In our classrooms and schools, kindness is one of the most important characteristics that

is promoted within the student body, as well as the adults who enter the school. The

implementation of showing kindness is crucial in battling bullying. Bullying is an issue that is

prevalent in too many schools and it spills into the lives of students outside of school, so it is

important to encourage students to spread kindness. By reinforcing showing kindness no matter

someone’s differences, the students will experience how good it feels to be kind to someone else

and how it feels to receive kindness.

In response to battling bullying, our action plan is to spread kindness through interacting

with people in the military through letters. The first step of our action plan includes teaching our

lesson on showing kindness to and making connections with people all over the world based

upon similarities and differences. As our first step, we will introduce the concept of being able to

be both different and similar to our classrooms through the book Same, Same but Different by

Jenny Sue Kostecki. We will use this book to show children that people are unique individuals,

yet at the same time we are the same and deserve kindness. Our next step is to introduce the

importance and characteristics of the military using the book H is for Honor by Devin Scillian.

We will utilize a few excerpts from this book to demonstrate to students that our military lives in

a similar fashion as the citizens in the United States, even if it doesn’t look the same on the

outside. The third step that will take place in our action plan is to have our students write letters

to the men and women in our military. In order to ensure that our students know what a letter is

and how to write one, especially directed towards military personnel, we will show them a page

from the book Love, Lizzie by Lisa Tucker McElroy and read a few key lines to provide an

example of what they could include in their own letters. We will discuss that some of the aspects

to be included in our letters will be: positivity, thankful/grateful, showing individuality, and
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

kindness. We will primarily focus on our students drawing a picture that we, the teachers, will

transcribe what they want to say. A fourth step in our action plan will be to invite people from

the military to come in to the class or school. A fifth step is bringing students from our class into

other classrooms to help share the how we can show kindness by writing letters to the military or

other heroes (such as firefighters and ambulance drivers) and discuss how the letters can help us

find out more about other people. A sixth step is receiving letters back from the soldiers and

discussing how what people in the military are thankful for is similar and different from what

they are thankful for. Another step would be continuing the communication by discussing as a

class what topics we could write to the soldiers or other heroes about to find out other similarities

and differences. In Week 1, we will plan and engage with collaborators and constituents. In week

2, we will teach our lessons on showing kindness to and making connections with people all over

the world based upon similarities and differences. (This is where students will write their first set

of letters to soldiers.) In Week 3, we will send out our box of letters to the address where soldiers

will receive them. In Week 4 or 5, we will have someone from the military come in to talk to,

answer questions from, and read to students in the class and/or school. In Week 5 or 6, our

classes will help other classes engage in writing meaningful and kind letters to people in the

military or other heroes. Around Week 7 or 8, we hopefully will have received a couple of

responses from some of the soldiers the classes wrote to. We will share the responses with our

classes and discuss the differences and similarities among what the soldiers are thankful for and

what the students are thankful for. In Weeks 9 and on, we will discuss as a class meaningful

topics that we can illustrate to find out more about people from our military or other heroes.

Hopefully, open up communication between them and send a couple letters back and forth.
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

On this assignment, we are collaborating with each other, Sayonna Adams, Toria

Bennett, and Morgan Diiorio. Our mentor teachers, Mrs. Tara Roy and Mrs. Board. We will have

a couple constituents for our action plan: the school principals in order to ensure proper school

policies are followed and engage the school; Caitlin Martinez, a friend of ours that received a

letter from an elementary student when deployed and gave us a personal look into the life of

someone in the military to share with our students; people from the military to come and speak to

the class or school and raise empathy and engagement; students’ parent that is deployed and

receiving the cards to give to his teammates and form a connection between students and

soldiers. The individuals that may resist social change are the families. Families that may not

comprehend or support the military. Families that may have lost a family member that was

serving and now have bad feelings towards military related topics. These families may ask that

we do not discuss the military or have their children interact with troops. If families prefer that

we do not have their child interact with the military, we are able to change the lesson and action

plan steps to encompass exploring differences and similarities between elementary students and

other heroes, such as firefighters and ambulance drivers, and students will write letters to these

other heroes.

We are lucky to have a more direct contact to people in the military within one of our

classrooms. Usually to write to deployed soldiers, we would need to send our letters through a

third party organization, but we are able to send a care package of cards directly to a students’

parent who is deployed and will disperse them.

 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

One of the desired outcomes of our project includes spreading kindness. By talking to a

personal friend who served in the Army about sending cards to soldiers, we have learned just

how much it means to a soldier to receive a card from an elementary school child. A simple

acknowledgement can go a long way to someone in a difficult situation. Hopefully students will

take what they learn just from our lessons about just talking to someone and showing kindness

and extending that to people throughout their communities. For example, if a child sees a sad

child at the park they will go up and talk to them or share a toy to play with or a child helps an

elderly neighbor clean up their yard. Spreading kindness can be contagious and should be

promoted. Society needs more kindness all around because we live in a state of hatred and

violence getting more attention than they deserve and few acts of kindness having light shone on

them.
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

Another outcome is connecting one another to each other. Writing letters is a great way to

connect people all over the world, even if they haven’t met in person. Through letters people are

able to find similarities and explore what makes them different and celebrate their diversity. In

an age of technology, writing letters is more personal than just a message on social media.

Writing letters also reduces the risk of any sort of bullying to occur. Letters are also a good way

to promote patience in someone because they have to wait for a response, instead of seeing a

green check mark next to a message. Connecting people is beneficial for social change because it

promotes acceptance of others, especially when we are so different and celebrate our differences.

The results when we implemented our social action plan were great! Each student had

knowledge and shared the ideas of how we all have similarities and differences. We let the

students communicate with their peers about how they are similar and different from each other.

They used words such as: different eye color, hair color, skin color or being a boy/girl, having

the same eye color. After the lesson, they were able to identify differences in games they play,

clothes they were wearing, and more. The students were clear in knowing what soldiers do for

our country. When the students were introduced to the activity of writing letters to the soldiers,

they were so excited! They each wrote of the letter of what they were thankful for and thanked
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

them for keeping our country safe. In the letters, each one of the students showed their

appreciation by the drawings that were illustrated.

The future steps that we would change to the social action plan is allowing them to be

more personal with their letters. Instead of just setting the guideline of writing something that

you are thankful for. Allow the students to pick what they want to write the soldiers. Also, the

students really did not know other ways they were different. Maybe we could show a video of

how other kids say they are different from their peers, so they can understand being similar or

different does not always have to deal with the physical aspect of yourself.

The future steps that we would add to this social action plan is getting different heros to

come to the classroom to tell the students about what they do and how all their jobs are similar

and different in many ways. We would bring heros of all genders, not the stereotype genders, of
 Elementary Education Program
Department of Teacher Education & Learning Sciences

different careers. We will also allow the students to collaborate their ideas to other students in

the school so that everybody is involved with why we show similarities and differences.