Sunapee elementary Kindness Club earns state recognition for student-led efforts

Sunapee Central Elementary School’s Kindness Club has earned state recognition for turning small student-led gestures into a schoolwide routine that reaches classrooms, hallways and younger pupils in Sunapee.

The New Hampshire Department of Education featured the group in its Class Acts program, which highlights students, educators and school groups that enhance academic experiences and inspire others across the state. At Sunapee Central, the club meets every Thursday and grew out of an August professional development day, with the school guidance counselor and a special education teacher helping facilitate the work.

Amanda Hughlock, the district’s director of student services, said the club’s purpose is to spread kindness and awareness among peers and staff. Principal Meagan Reed said the group helps students start each day thinking about others, and many of the ideas come from the children themselves. That student direction has shaped projects that are easy for other schools to copy: greeting classmates, reading to younger children and making kind bookmarks.

The club’s completed work already reaches beyond a single advisory period. Students created a dance tied to the school’s behavior expectations, wrote notes for teachers and custodians, and painted and read with younger students through Big Brothers Big Sisters. They also launched a “Caught Being Kind” recognition effort using bright index cards and displayed kindness-themed artwork around the school so students can see what kindness looks like in daily life.

Fifth-grader Madeline Cobb said she wants to do nice things “to make people feel happy and brighten their day.” Fourth-grader Annabelle VanDenBerg said she wants to “teach people how to be kind.” Those comments reflect a broader approach already embedded in the Sunapee School District, where weekly whole-class lessons focus on friendships, empathy, kindness, self-regulation, coping skills and conflict resolution.

Sunapee Central Elementary, at 22 School Street in Sunapee, serves grades K-5 and has about 178 students, a roughly 10:1 student-teacher ratio and 18 equivalent full-time teachers, along with one full-time school counselor. The district has one elementary school, one middle school and one high school, and the Kindness Club now gives that social-emotional work a visible student voice that other schools could adapt with little more than time, trust and a place for children to lead.