Puppy raisers from K9s for Warriors — the nation’s largest provider of service dogs for American veterans based in Ponte Vedra — visited PVPV/Rawlings Elementary School's fifth-grade classes on Tuesday, Nov. 27 to kick off "10 Small Steps of Kindness, One Giant Leap for K9s."
Through the initiative, students at the school in kindergarten through fifth grade will be challenged to complete 10 acts of kindness between the end of November and Dec. 20. First, students will be given a "kindness card" to document their good work. After completing 10 acts of kindness, students will get a chance to write about their favorite one on the back of their kindness card to reflect on the nice things they did.
Parents whose kids complete the challenge will make a $10 donation ($1 per act of kindness) to K9s For Warriors. Kindness cards featuring the achieved ten acts of kindness (and the summary on the back) will be collected no later than Dec. 20.
If 100 percent of the students in kindergarten through fifth grade take part in the challenge, the money earned by the students will allow PVPV/Rawlings to sponsor a service dog that will be trained and later offered to a military veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and/or military sexual trauma (MST). Additionally, students will be able to vote on the name of the dog, and PVPV/Rawlings will be honored when the chosen dog graduates with a warrior.
Catherine Van Housen, the principal at PVPV/Rawlings, said she appreciated that fifth-grade teacher Shelley Bettler collaborated with K9s to facilitate her service learning project.
"We like that it's a local group," she said. "We like that we're supporting a local effort to make lives better for veterans and really for everyone that gets to be around these dogs."
The principal then underlined the importance of helping children develop into good people.
"We want them to be learners, we want them to be curious, our mission is to help develop lifelong learners who are interested in the world," she said. "But our mission is also to create a culture of caring and a sense of community."
Van Housen said she was happy to see children taking pride in being kind to others, just as much as they enjoy winning contests and achieving academic success.
"We have a lot of students who are really high achievers and they can take pride in winning essay contests or robotics club contests or things like that," she said. "But how wonderful to see them take pride in being kind, wonderful children."
