Why These Kindergartners Start Every Day With A Simple Handshake

KEENE, TX — Every morning, the kindergarten students at a north Texas elementary school greet one another with a handshake and, sometimes, a hug. Ashley Taylor, an 18-year veteran of the teaching profession, assigns a different student every day to serve as the official “greeter” at her Keene Elementary School classroom door.

When she began encouraging her “littles,” as she calls them, to greet one another each morning, Taylor was responding to the horrible way she saw society in general relating to one another. But after a social media post of a video showing kindness in action in her kindergarten class caught the world’s attention, she thinks she’s on to something that could become a movement.

Taylor, 41, who is finishing her first year at Keene Elementary School, posted the video on her personal Facebook page not long after 10 people were killed in a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. That her video showed the antithesis of that horrific act may have been part of its appeal to America’s aching heart, but whatever the reason, Taylor is pleased that “one simple act of kindness is going this big.”

After seeing her video, teachers around the country have tagged one another in Facebook shares and nudged their colleagues to give the simple exercise a try. Teachers are hungry for strategies and solutions in an era of school shootings — so far in 2018, there have been 23 incidents in which at least one person was killed or injured, or an average of more than one a week — and rampant bullying, Taylor said.

Who knows, she wonders, if school shooters or bullied kids had felt like someone was on their side, would things have worked out differently? Both heartbreaking scenarios have multiple causes, but what if learning kindness, like reading and arithmetic, at a young age could stem both?

Taylor posted the video to show her family what she’s doing in her classroom, but now that it has been widely viewed and shared, she points to it as an example of what one person can do to change what is a negative culture for too many littles and not-so-littles.

“I work in a little school district with 1,100 kids total in the whole district,” Taylor said. “I really think that what I am doing can be a movement; this can be something good.

“It’s amazing how many kids are going to be touched by this,” she said. “I really think this may be the difference I might be able to make.”

EROSION OF MANNERS AND RESPECT

Taylor doesn’t remember the exact circumstances a decade or so ago that caused her to encourage kids to be nicer to one another, but it was “behavior by society as a whole, outside the classroom.”

She saw an erosion in manners, respect and civility, and a failure by some to take responsibility for their actions.

“I want to make sure the kids I have contact with get a year’s worth of exposure to that, and maybe they’ll be better in the end for it,” she explained.

It seems to be working.

“I notice a big difference,” Taylor said. “We talk about how we’re a family, and we’re together a majority of the time. We talk about how important it is to listen to each other, and how we should treat each other.

“The morning greeting is just another form of respect. And I notice how, compared to some other classes, my kids seem to interact with their peers — I hate to say better — but with good, old-fashioned manners and eye contact.”

Nothing is forced. If Taylor's littles don’t want to shake hands, they don’t have to. A smile is good enough for Taylor. But in all the years the morning greeting has been part of the school day in her classes, no one has ever pushed back, she said. The hugs were entirely the kids’ idea.

Taylor establishes the routine at the beginning of the school year, greeting each student with a handshake and a kind word to set the tone for the behavior that is expected in the classroom. Then, she hands off the role of greeter to a different student. Before long, the children are jockeying for the position of greeting or nominating one of their classmates they think might need a little extra attention or a boost in confidence.

“Monday through Thursday, they choose the greeter, and there’s never any arguing,” Taylor said. “I’m not part of it for the most part.”

What people don’t realize is the backstory of the young boy who was the greeter the day the video was recorded, Taylor said.

“He was non-verbal when he came to me, didn’t want anyone touching him and didn’t want to be around anyone,” she said. “Now, he’s the one begging to be part of it.”

Seeing that “giant growth and his growing comfort” is a reminder of the powerful effect a simple show of kindness can have on children, she said.

CAN KINDNESS CHANGE THE CULTURE?

Keene is a cultural melting pot. Whites and Hispanics are about evenly divided, at 37 percent and 34 percent of the population, respectively, according to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, and about a third of them also speak a non-English language. Residents come from all parts of the world — Mexico, Germany and the Philippines, for the most part, but also from the Marshall Islands, Belize and Western Africa.

Racial and ethnic differences can and often do make kids the targets of bullies. In many cases, children parrot prejudices they hear from adults in a time of sharp political rhetoric, said Nicholas Carlisle, the founder of NoBully.org, one of the nation’s most respected anti-bullying organizations.

He pointed to a Southern Poverty Law Center “Teaching Tolerance” report in late 2016 that showed “concerning levels” of bullying targeting Muslims, Latinos and blacks. Many of the 10,000 kindergarten through grade 12 educators who participated in the online survey for the report expected it to take years for discourse to return to pre-2016 election levels.

Carlisle and other anti-bullying experts say part of the solution is for adults to set better examples.

Taylor is doing her part.

“We have so many races, and yet we have no issues with race,” Taylor said. “Even in that video, [the greeter] looked right past their color, their religion. If we can teach kids that young, maybe they won’t grow up to be what society is now, and there won’t be any bullying.”

No school is immune to bullying or to school shootings, Taylor said.

“I’ve not seen it at Keene, thankfully, because I know it’s out there,” she added. “I wish I had a magic solution. I know teachers are frustrated by this.”

If Taylor has learned anything in the days since her video caught fire, it’s that no gesture is too small.

“Really, I think just how it has taken off, it doesn’t have to be something big to make a change,” she said. “This is something so little and so simple, and it’s going to affect so many people. I want to make a change, I want to make a difference. I’m just one itty, bitty teacher in this big world — how am I going to make a difference in school shootings? I don’t need to skip over the little things; those little things can be important.”

THE MENACE OF BULLIES: PATCH SERIES

Throughout 2018, Patch is taking a look at the roles society plays in a child’s unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes that we might offer solutions that save lives.

Do you have a story to tell? Email us at [email protected].

EARLIER IN THIS SERIES

• Bullied To Death: When Kids Kill With Words
• Teen Tells Bullies In Video: ‘Every Day I Wear Your Words’
• Teen’s ‘I Wear Your Words’ Video Inspires Nashville Songwriters
• Bullying Addressed After Shocking Video Of Attack Surfaces
• Poetry Project Helps Bullied Kids Open Tortured Minds
• Bullies, Targets The Same In Surprising Number Of Cases

Photos and video courtesy of Ashley Taylor