Secret Kindness Agents ─ How Small Acts of Kindness Really Can Change the World

Moved by the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, Ferial Pearson wondered if a simple act of kindness could change a life. She thought of the school where she taught and the students she guided every day and wondered, what would happen if we started secretly carrying out small acts of kindness in school? Could a modest act of compassion really change the course of a life? She posed the question to her students. They didn’t have the answers but they were willing to find out. And so they became the Secret Kindness Agents. They not only changed the lives of those they met, they changed their own. Their hope, their hearts, and their hunger for happiness will inspire you to change your small corner of the world, in your own way, for the better. Let them show you how they did it, and how you can do the same.

Ferial Pearson, a native of Nairobi, Kenya, is a national award-winning high school teacher and college instructor. For her dedicated work in education and human rights, she has earned the National Education Association’s Virginia Uribe Award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights in 2012, and the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network’s Educator of the Year Respect Award in 2011. She is an Instructor and Instructional Coach in the Teacher Education Department at the University of Nebraska Omaha.