Key Club is hosting a Kindness Week April 22-26.
“Kindness Week is a tradition that our Key Club hosts every year around spring time, – we try to make one very grand week where we’re promoting kindness throughout the school, we do posters, spirit weeks, sometimes we host an event like a food drive, this year [we are] raising money for UNICEF to end youth houselessness,” Lily Thompson (‘24), AHS Key Club Vice President said.
Spirit Week
“Kindness week is essentially – spirit week but replace spirit with kind” Isabella Miles (‘24), AHS Key Club Secretary said.
Monday is Dream of Kindness, wear your pajamas to school.
Tuesday is Color Your World in Kindness: Color Wars! Blue for juniors and seniors and pink for freshman and sophomores.
Yeehaw Wednesday is Cowboy Day.
Thursday is Be Kind to Your Stuffies day, bring your stuffed animals to school.
Friday is Eagle Spirit.
“I love stuffed animals. [That spirit day] has to be my favorite to be honest. It’s just so cute and everybody just wishes they could go back to elementary school where it was okay to bring your stuffed animal [to school]” Miles said.
“I like the spirit days this week – I feel like they [will] have a pretty good response at least the days we’ve done in the past – I personally prefer them a bit more than some asb spirit weeks just because they’re a little bit easier to involve everyone with and I’m excited to see how some of our newer ones will be received like Yeehaw day, dress as a cowboy” Thompson said.
Flower sale
“We are going to be doing a flower sale during all the lunches during kindness week so people can buy a flower during lunch and then give it to a friend just to show that they care about them” Kathleen Azpiri (‘24), AHS Key Club President said.
“We’ll be set up during all the lunches and we’ll be selling a flower for a dollar, we’ll hand it to you and you can give it to any of your friends or just anyone you notice who looks like they might enjoy a flower – and you can also use your donation to vote on which teacher you would like to be pied in the face at our May pep assembly” Thompson said.
“I remember last year, I was in Mrs. Novy’s class and we pied her because a kid in our class on pie day said all the pi numbers, like off of memory. I remember that was super fun and so of course when Kathy brought – up [pieing a teacher], I was like ‘oh my gosh we have to do that’. So I’m really happy that she emailed teachers and that enough were willing to be pied in the face possibly for this” Miles said.
All funds raised will be directed to UNICEF, a humanitarian aid organization that Key Club International works with, to help end youth houselessness.
Advice Posters
Key Club is also putting up posters of advice that senior citizens said they would give to high school students.
“We just hope that people will see that senior citizens just want to connect with high school students and share their advice,” Azpiri said.
They also put plastic cups in the wire of the fence next to the tennis courts. They read ‘Be kind’ with a heart.
Preparation
“We prepare many months in advance, it doesn’t seem like a lot of planning but it really is because you to get approved by a lot of different people so we were actually planning for like the flower sale that we’ll be hosting next week, we started planning for that back in October, I believe. And then we started making posters around February I would say, and then a lot of the posters we use we have stored from previous years that people have worked on” Thompson said.
They advertise mainly using posters, but also the announcements and instagram: ahsflyeaglesfly.
We advertise with “primarily the posters, our club members spend quite a bit of time and meetings working on those and we’re still working on gaining a wider social media presence but as of right now primarily posters is our outreach” Thompson said.
They plan in officer meetings which they hold each week.
“We just kinda sat and looked at eachother and was like okay we need to think of stuff,” Miles said. They reflect on previous years, look at trends, pinterest, what other key clubs are doing, “then try it out this year and if it doesn’t work out this year then we fix it next year.”
Tradition with Purpose
“Kindness week is an event that Arlington Key Club puts on every year just to promote being kind to others in your community” Azpiri said. “just showing that everyone has kindness within them.”
The purpose is “to have people be nice to each other, to be kind. To have fun memories. – these types of week things are to – bring more to the school” Miles said. “It’s like the fourth quarter,- [for] most people it’s hard to just like come to school so if you have more of something to go to, it’s just easier to show up and it’s just nice to be kind to people.”
