Educate for Kindness: Life Vest Inside’s Kindness Curriculum In response to growing demands to provide more real-life experiences for children during the school day that are based on improving critical thinking, and increasing awareness and use of life-skills, Life Vest Inside has designed a Kindness Curriculum! Lydia Criss Mays, Life Vest Inside’s Director of Education, has designed the curriculum to intentionally align with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Bloom’s Taxonomy to elicit higher order thinking skills. The curriculum, currently including Units of Study from Kindergarten through Fifth grade, is unique in that it functions as a seamless curriculum to complement and enhance instruction for teachers, unlike “push-in” curricula requiring teachers to “make time” within a school day to accommodate additional learning objectives not reflected in the CCSS. Each Unit, designed by experts in the field of education, includes six lessons. Each Unit builds upon the prior, so by the end of Fifth grade, students will have received almost forty lessons directly aligned with the CCSS that additionally enhance their understanding of, and ability to, think critically about ways to generate more kindness on an individual and global level. Life Vest Inside will begin distribution of our LVI Kindness Curriculum to educational stakeholders across the United States and Canada beginning December 1st. During this time, we’re asking educational stakeholders to read the curriculum and provide feedback that will strengthen the Units. If interested in reviewing the curriculum, please fill out this questionnaire so we may better contact you. Using feedback from educational stakeholders, LVI will make the necessary adjustments and distribute the curriculum for implementation in the form of Pilot Lessons. Lessons will be piloted from January 7th-25th, 2013. If you are interested in piloting lessons, please fill out this questionnaire so we may better contact you. This data will be used to help LVI continue making necessary adjustments to help best meet the strengths, interests, and needs of students. Findings from both the lesson review and piloting process will be presented on the TED 2013 stage and the schools to pioneer the curriculum will be mentioned and thanked for their participation!


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