Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Social Action Plan
Social Action Plan
During our time at Smith Elementary, we noticed how the school makes a lot of efforts
classroom, Smith Elementary strongly values empowering their students to build positive
relationships and become their best selves. Even with these efforts, we found that there were
some exceptions of classrooms struggling to see the character strengths actually carried out. In
the second grade classrooms that we were placed in, we got to see firsthand that some
students struggle with being bullied and come to school everyday in fear of being made fun of.
This revealed to us the dire need of actually implementing practices encouraged by the school
through our everyday interactions outside of the 15-minute lessons they get every morning.
safe place for children to come learn. Smith Elementary is constantly talking about building a
strong community and that is vital when a lot of students aren’t getting that community at
home. Also, when students are not getting along with one another that creates an added stress
which makes it so much harder for them to focus on learning. The added stress of being bullied
or just the possibility of being bullied is too much for students to handle so we need to do
everything we can do prevent it. However, it is very hard to prevent bullying from ever
Being knowledgeable about the issues of bullying at Smith Elementary can help us be
more intentional with our interactions with students. It can also help us as student teachers be
able to encourage all of the teachers and administration to also be more intentional with their
interactions. We can take specific steps to build the school community through inspiring one
another to simply be kind and the specific ways they can carry these skills out.
To respond to the issue of school wide bullying across grades and ages, we would like to
implement a “Fill Your Bucket” project. We would ask all teachers to incorporate this into their
classroom, but would be flexible in how they want to do so. Our first step would to possibly
host a staff meeting to go over the reasoning and instructions for the project. Our vision for Fill
A Bucket would be for each class to have a space either on the wall or in cubbies for each
student to have a “bucket” or other container for students and peers to place positive notes or
affirmations in. This would be able to be monitored by the teacher, and could require kids to do
1 a week or something similar. Teachers would be responsible for making sure everyone has at
least one note by the end of the week. This project would be introduced to the class as a way to
encourage positivity, friendship, and respect between students. Teachers would send a note
home to parents explaining the project, why we are doing it, and how they can encourage
We would start this at the beginning of the school year to make it a year long process to
refine it and see what works and doesn’t before doing it for another year. We would give
teachers the first month of school to read an introductory book, gather materials, and give
them plenty of time to decorate their buckets and have teachers organize them in the
classroom, as well come up with class rules or expectations for the buckets. Halfway through
the school year towards winter break, we would hold another staff meeting to gauge how this
is working in the classroom and if any teachers have noticed differences in students attitudes or
bullying in the class. We would also use this time to refine anything that would make the
While this would be a school wide collaboration, each grade level can get together to
collaborate on ways to taylor the activity to the age of the kids. We would have to collaborate
with administrators as constituents to gain permission for the project and have their oversight
in executing it. Parents & guardians would also be considered constituents as we would like to
inform them of the purpose behind our project and how they can help from home by
encouraging their children to be good friends to others and notifying teachers if something of
When considering our action plan, we must take into consideration push back and
individuals that may resist social change. We believe that our “Fill the Bucket” activity will be
believe we may have some push back from administrators. We believe they will be in favor of
the idea, but may not be in favor or able to provide the resources to the entire school.
Furthermore, we may get some push back from teachers In implementation. We have noticed
some teachers do not implement the current action plan because of time constraints. We are
worried that some teachers may choose not to implement this because they believe they do
not have time in their day to spend on filling buckets. Our final concern would be from the
parents. We are worried some parents may push back out of fear of “mean notes” placed in
their child’s bucket. They may ask for their child to be taken out of the bucket activity, which
would defeat the purpose of the activity. We would need to purchase most of the materials for
our action plan. We would need to purchase buckets for each student in each classroom. We
can use construction paper and markers to individualize the buckets and use the construction
paper for notes as well. These materials are available to teachers. Our hope for this activity
would be that students would practice showing kindness to themselves and their classmates.
We hope students will gain confidence In themselves through seeing kind notes from other
classmates. In turn we hope that this will motivate students to be kind to others outside of the
Implementation
The first step of our implementation at Smith Elementary School was to bring this idea to
our mentor teachers and discuss if they think that this would be a good thing to implement into
the classroom. Upon our discussion with the second- grade teachers we found that positivity is
something that they are focusing on through their positivity project and that this would be a great
idea to implement into each classroom. After bringing it up to the second-grade team we went
with our teachers to the administration to ensure that they were on board with the idea and that
they would support the idea to encourage all teachers to have this in their classroom. We then
had each teacher send a letter home to the families of the students explaining what we will be
After this, we had each teacher read the book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? by
Carol McCloud. This book will introduce the topic of “filling each other’s bucket” to the students
and show the impact that kindness can have on a person and a community. As we read the
book, students were asked questions like “What are ways we can show kindness to one
another?” and “When someone says kind words to you how does it make you feel?” The
answers that we received were all very uplifting and showed us that the students need kindness
in their lives and proved to us that this activity should unite the community through this show of
Results
As we implemented we saw that the overall morale of the school was increasing greatly.
Students were so excited to check their buckets and see what nice things their peers had to say
about them. We assume that this excitement will continue throughout the year and that students
will continue to be passionate about sharing kindness to each other. Teachers also found that
their students were kinder to each other throughout the day by sharing more willingly and
Next Steps
The next steps for our class would be to continue to find topics that we can relate back
to filling each other’s buckets. Since the school participates in the Positivity Project we think that
this concept of filling buckets will be continued and can be related to the other concepts that
they work on weekly such as respect, kindness, curiosity and bravery among other things. We
also encourage the students to bring the idea of filling buckets back home with them and share
it with their families to bring this idea of random acts of kindness to more people than just the