For most people, a kind gesture doesn’t simply help one person—it helps many. At least that’s the top-line finding from a new survey from Gallup and Values-in-Action Foundation, which shows that people who observe kind acts more frequently—including when they are recipients of kind acts—are more comfortable initiating kind acts themselves.
That matters in a school like mine. While there is no campus where students never fight, parents never lose their patience or educators never make mistakes, we’ve chosen to orient our culture around kindness at Palmer Elementary School in Chicago.
I know what it feels like when a school doesn’t feel kind.
When I was a student, I loved reading—always had my nose in a book—but I struggled in school. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was carrying more from home than most people could see; mong other things, a father who struggled with the long shadows cast by his service in the Vietnam War. School never quite felt like a place that was built for someone like me.
That experience shaped everything about how I lead. I believe, deeply and without reservation, that school should be a place where children feel happy, experience joy and have the emotional support they need to succeed—not just academically, but as human beings.
Academics matter. But they are not the single indicator of whether a school is a good place, or whether a child is thriving.
Asking different questions
At Palmer, we ask different questions: what does it mean to help a child become a good person? What does it mean to make a child feel safe, honored, and genuinely supported every single day they walk through our doors?
Building the answer to that question has been the work of years. And that work continues—always under construction, never finished.
We employ social workers and counselors, a school psychologist and nurses. We offer music therapy and art therapy.
We’ve built restorative practices into our daily school operations, so that when something goes wrong—and it often does—the process no longer ends with a child sent to the office and a door closing behind them. It ends with repair.
We’ve also chosen to make Palmer a place that nourishes students beyond the classroom. We are one of only 11 schools in Chicago Public Schools with a fully composting cafeteria. We have a chicken coop, three outdoor classrooms, hydroponic gardens, a greenhouse, and outdoor gardens where students grow vegetables and ornamentals.
These are not extras. They are part of how we teach children to care—for living things, for each other, for their community.
And when we see an additional need, we fill it—no questions asked. That’s how we came to use a bullying prevention program that provides LGBTQ and gender-inclusive professional development and lesson plans.
Where culture shifts
Nothing about centering kindness is complicated on its own. The hard part is ensuring it guides all our efforts, every day, with 750 people who are all still learning themselves.
The change at Palmer did not come overnight. It came from collaboration and hard work—messy, unfinished, and ongoing. The effort itself is where culture shifts, and where kindness begins to grow.
That work isn’t only for students. A kind school also requires adults who feel safe enough to say when they are out of their depth, trusting that leadership will offer support instead of shame.
When I give tours to families considering Palmer, I am honest with them. I tell them we are not perfect.
What I can tell them is that this is a school where their child will be known, where adults will notice when something is wrong, and where the goal is not just academic achievement but the formation of a whole person.
That matters more than most of us say out loud. Children cannot learn in buildings where they feel unsafe, unseen, or unworthy.
Chronic stress closes the mind to new information. Fear is incompatible with learning. When we invest in kindness—real, structural, daily kindness—we are not softening school. We are making it work.
Kindness, by its very nature, is about making mistakes and meeting them with empathy rather than judgment. It is about building the conditions under which children—and the adults who serve them—can try again. That is not a nice-to-have. It is the foundation on which everything else depends.
Perfect places don’t exist
Every few months, a group of families, educators, and school leaders visit Palmer Elementary, hoping to see a model school—one that puts student well-being front-and-center and balances strong academics with a rich arts program.
I tell them the same thing every time: perfect places don’t exist. If you are waiting for a blueprint that eliminates mess, you will never start—and you won’t find it here.
But what you can build—what we have built—is a kind school. Not a school where everyone is always nice, but one where imperfect people have the systems, the relationships, and the shared commitment to recover when things go wrong.
Inevitably, the question during every school tour—spoken or not—is the same one I had when I became principal 13 years ago: Where do we start?
The answer is simpler than you think. Start where you are. Make choices in the direction of the kind of school you want to be. And keep going.
