On March 31, 2005, Freedom Elementary School held its first Kindness Week to highlight the Six Pillars of Character. The school launched the week by beginning a kindness chain made of slips of papers on each of which students wrote an act of kindness they had performed.

Before long, say school personnel, students were being kind to each other in the classroom and on the playground, and the kindness chain grew and grew. The children also brought in kindness slips from their good deeds at home.

At the Kindness Assembly, students celebrated with music and balloons, which the kindergartners released. Each balloon had message inside urging the person who found it to perform an act of kindness.

The school also counted the total number of kind deeds. In just two and a half days Freedom Elementary not only met its goal of 1,000 acts of kindness, but exceeded it by 1,212 -- for a total of 2,212.