Kindness Card program flourishes at Rifle Middle School

Seventh grader Rihanna Donato’s “Kindness Cards” have shown students and staff at Rifle Middle School that a little bit of kindness can go a long way.

After starting as a project in student council, the program has flourished into a weekly, school-wide show of gratitude for classmates, teachers and others at RMS.

“We always open the student council up at the beginning so that it can be whatever the members want it to be,” says student council sponsor Kori Valencia. She says that she thought the idea was interesting and unique from the beginning.

Rihanna says that the council had talked a lot about the need to spread kindness and positivity throughout school. “We had talked about putting posters up and everything, but then I had this idea for the kindness boxes,” says Donato.

“I thought back to elementary school at Graham Mesa when we could buy cards that were sent to people anonymously,” says Donato. “And then I thought that would be a good way to spread kindness. But instead of paying for it, we could just place kindness boxes around school with cards for people to fill out and be delivered.”

Valencia says whatever the members bring to the table is what the council can promote and be. She says that Donato came up with the idea and implemented it by herself. “She even created these templates that we use just in case people have a hard time coming up with something to say,” says Valencia. “And I want to tell you that these boxes are almost always full by the end of the week.”

“The cards can be filled out with your name and cub time, but they can be anonymous too,” says Donato. “You can write whatever you want or use the template, and then we pass them out at cub times.” Valencia says she reads through them before they get delivered, and that 99% of the cards have been positive comments between students.

“It's an impressive little implementation to our school day that we hope to take advantage of next year as well,” says Valencia. “I definitely see a lot of joy in a student’s eye when they receive these tangible notes. It’s interesting to see in the digital world.”