Eshwar Murali

In her Homeroom, math teacher Cheryl Zimmerman shows her class a video explaining Nice November. All teachers were encouraged to show the video in their AcLab Homerooms.

After being approached by Principal Karen Calcaterra last year, social studies teacher Jodie Lee was responsible for finding a way to encourage kids and staff to be kind and show gratitude. Led by her, Nice November is a month-long celebration filled with activities and videos that aim to encourage a sense of kindness and appreciation. This will be the second year of Nice November.

“Nice November is a kind of school wide competition within our homerooms to see who can complete the most kind activities, acts of gratitude and hand out the most kindness cards. Then those will be tallied into the competition and the winning Homeroom and department will be provided lunch,” Lee said.

Teachers will be handing out Kindness Cards to students setting positive examples such as helping a classmate or picking up trash. The weekly video along with the activities will take place during Homeroom and will only take a few minutes.

“Our first activity that we’re doing is students are going to be writing thank you cards to their elementary school or middle school teachers. They’re going to choose one teacher and then we’re going to deliver those cards to the schools in our quadrant,” Lee said. “The second activity is for Letters of Love. Students are going to be creating cards of encouragement for kids who are in the hospital fighting a life-threatening illness, then Letters of Love will distribute the letters across the country.”

Another part of the month is staff dress up.

“One of the things that we did was dress up for days for the staff, [Nov. 1] was Comfy and Kind, so they wore comfy clothing like large sweatshirts. These dress up days will happen each B Day in November, and act as a sort of thank you to our staff for their hard work throughout the semester,” Lee said.