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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
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
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
prevalent in too many schools and it spills into the lives of students outside of school, so it is
someone’s differences, the students will experience how good it feels to be kind to someone else
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’
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
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.