Ben's Bells : Project sparks new grade-school program

The 14th random distribution of Ben's Bells comes as hundreds of students also learn the power of empathy and compassion, as a project started by grieving parents to encourage people to be kind to one another has expanded into 10 elementary schools.

In addition to its random distributions, weekly "bellings," dozens of presentations and bell-making sessions every year, the Ben's Bells project has launched a pilot program in area elementary schools to help educators teach their young pupils the importance of kindness.

Teachers receive curriculum suggestions and some materials and are using the program in everything from history lessons to social service projects, and some campuses are even staging their own monthly bellings, in which students nominate one another for compassionate acts.

It's all part of the project's Kind Kids program — and teachers say their students are learning some important lessons.

"It's an amazing, amazing, amazing program," said Meg Wallace, the visual arts educator at Ironwood Elementary, in the Marana Unified School District.

Coyote Trail Elementary School also has embraced the program this year, she said. In addition to classroom lessons, schools have started a "token program" in which students hand out beads from the Ben's Bells folks to people who they spot being kind, Wallace said.

"The kids hold onto them for 24 hours and then they have to pass them on to someone else who's being kind," she said.

Students also are staging bellings for one another, she said, mirrored after the larger program's weekly honors for people in the community to nominate one another for kindness and compassion. Recipients are presented with their honors in assemblies before the whole school on Fridays. They get a special spot on the bulletin board and a "Be Kind" necklace, too, Wallace said.

"I really feel like this has changed the culture of the school," she said. "It's a tough concept, to really genuinely feel for someone, enough that it motivates you to want to do something, and this is a great avenue for teaching that."

Ben Maré Packard died of croup just before his third birthday, in March 2002. His parents, Jeannette Maré-Packard, and Dean Packard, began their project a year later, to honor his memory and to help others.

Six hundred bells will go up around Tucson today, hung by dedicated friends, relatives and others. The day is the start of the spring distribution, which also will see 600 bells released in Washington, D.C., in May, and another 300 split up and sent to Portland, Detroit, Yuma and elsewhere. Altogether, the spring distribution will mean close to 13,000 bells will have been given away here and across the nation since the project began.

"It's strange to look back over the last seven years and see how much progress we've made while at the same time feeling how real the grief still is in our chests," Maré-Packard said.

"Knowing that the pain we still feel is shared by so many other people who are dealing with hard things, the distribution symbolizes mutual support and connection and that's very helpful to us this time of year."

Kind Kids began developing last year, after some teachers began staging their own lessons based on the Ben's Bells project and as Maré-Packard looked for further ways to reach kids.

She got together a committee, including University of Arizona professors, art teachers and parents, and developed curriculum.

Maré-Packard expects the program to spread to 30 schools by next fall. "Teachers say it's making a real difference, one they can actually feel on their campuses," she said.

Megan Stefanek, who teaches gifted classes in the Sunnyside Unified School District, agrees. She leads the program at Drexel and Craycroft elementaries — it's also at Liberty, Los Amigos and Summit View elementaries.

Students talk about random acts of kindness and document acts they witness on cardboard flowers they hang around the school. They made resolutions on kindness for the new year, she said, and also regularly make beads for Ben's Bells.

"It's giving them lessons on how much a smile can really mean," she said.

Fiona O'Brien learned first-hand about the Ben's Bells project last year, when colleagues nominated the special-education teacher at Wilson K-8 School, in the Amphi district, for a weekly belling. After they surprised her at school, a student suggested the school should have its own bellings. They made a bell of their own, dubbing it the "Wilson Wonderbell" and told Maré-Packard about it. That's when they got involved in helping plan Kind Kids.

Now the school has monthly bellings, as well as cardboard "kindness trees" outside classroom doors to recognize good deeds. The monthly recipients get their names on flowers in a "kindness garden" painted on the school's ground floor. The morning video announcements always mention kindness projects and even the book fair included books on kindness.

"It's so important at a young age to put value on how we treat people," O'Brien said. "This program has had a really positive effect."

The Project

The Ben's Bells Project began in March 2003, one year after Ben Maré Packard died of croup, just before his third birthday. His family hopes the project reminds people to be kind, to help ease one another's pain.

The latest phase of the project began in September 2005, weekly "bellings" for those among us who make our community a better, kinder place to live.

If you know people who deserve a Ben's Bell, go to www.bens bells.org/Nominate. html to nominate them. To learn more about the project, and find out how you can make bells, go to www.bensbells.org or call 628-2829.