The Seventh-Grade Talent for Kindness

My daughter's seventh-grade class had a "kindness week" in February. The assignment was simple: do one kind thing every day and write about it.

She took it more seriously than any assignment she's ever had. On Monday, she shoveled our elderly neighbor's walk before school. On Tuesday, she left a note in a library book. On Wednesday, she sat with a new girl at lunch who'd been eating alone. On Thursday, she baked cookies for the school custodians. On Friday, she wrote a thank-you card to her bus driver, who reads it, she says, "every single morning now."

The new girl from Wednesday is now her best friend. They're inseparable.

Her teacher wrote on her report: "She understood the assignment." I think she understood more than that. She still does something kind every day, months later, without being told.