Heideveld Primary spreads kindness

Heideveld Primary School is popping kindness one kernel pop at a time.

The school heeded to the Western Cape Education Department’s call for schools to get involved with its positive behaviour campaign.

Part of the brief was to initiate activities at the schools, and to come up with a warcry, dance or song that promotes kindness and to post videos of it on social media.

When computer teacher Abigail Medell heard about it, she jumped at the opportunity.

“A month ago the department launched a campaign to focus on spreading positivity. Before this, as staff members, we were already busy with another positive campaign, called You’ve been mugged. That initiative created an even greater camaraderie among us. We are the children’s examples, and we thought about how we could get the whole school involved. Together with the prefects, we decided on a theme, called Popping with Kindness. We’ve been working tirelessly to come up with our activities. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), we came up with a song and our warcry. Popcorn kernels are known for their expansion when they pop, and we want to spread this kindness message beyond the school gates and into the community. We are popping with positive behaviour and kindness,” Ms Medell said.

On Tuesday May 13, they hosted a special assembly where their 1 800 pupils all received a packet of home-made popcorn, and all the pupils sang along to their song and partook in the warcry.

The school has 41 prefects. Among them is Indiphile Ntengo, Grade 7, who said since the campaign started at their school, things have changed for the positive.

“The fights among learners stopped. Bullying also came down a lot. We keep on sharing the positive and spreading it throughout the school,” she said.