School for School Counselors Podcast

How to Make Your School Feel Less Toxic (No Admin Approval Needed)

• School for School Counselors • Episode 136

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Can small acts of kindness truly transform a school environment? Or is that just wishful thinking?

As we dive into Random Acts of Kindness Week, I’m sharing my firsthand experiences as a school counselor navigating workplace challenges—and how I discovered that the simplest gestures can have the biggest impact on school culture.

Imagine a school where stress doesn’t rule the day, burnout isn’t lurking around every corner, and job satisfaction actually exists—all because kindness became a deliberate daily habit.

In this episode, we’ll break down the science behind kindness- how it can actually reduce stress, boost resilience, and create ripple effects across an entire campus- for adults AND students.

If you’re looking for a practical, zero-cost strategy to not only shift your school’s atmosphere but also protect your own mental health, this episode is for you.


Grab daily Kindness Week challenges here.


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Speaker 1:

Do you ever feel like school is one giant stress ball of negativity? I bet you do. We have so many challenges, so many stressors, especially at this time of year, but there is one ridiculously simple thing that could turn it all around, and you can do it starting this week. I want to talk about it in this week's episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. Hey, if this is your first time tuning in, thanks so much for joining me. I'm Steph Johnson, a full-time school counselor, just like you, on a mission to make school counseling more sustainable and more enjoyable. I want you to look forward to walking through the doors of that school building every morning, to look forward to seeing your students' faces, saying hello to your colleagues and even smelling the fish sticks in the air. I want you to love it all, and I'm here to do my best to help you get there.

Speaker 1:

Like I said y'all, school can feel heavy. Just this last week on my campus, we were inundated with illness, as I know many of you were as well. We had an office staff of seven reduced to two people. I was one of them, and those were a couple of crazy days. We had staff emergencies in the midst of all the illness we had goings on with students. It was just a lot. And some days are like that crisis after crisis. Some days seem to be moment to moment nonstop intervention and pretty soon you look up, it's dismissal and your lunch is still sitting in the microwave. When the stress starts to pile up, it is so easy to begin feeling defeated, to believe that nothing's ever going to change, nothing's getting better and no one on your campus notices what you're doing. Well, my friend, this week is Random Acts of Kindness Week, and I know what you're thinking. As soon as the words hit your ears, you probably thought fantastic stuff, one more school-wide initiative that I have to plan or that people are going to roll their eyes at. But before you completely dismiss it, I want to talk about why kindness isn't just about feeling good, and how kindness can actually be a research-backed strategy for shifting your school climate, protecting your mental health and making your school counseling job feel more fulfilling. And the best part about all of that is that it takes almost no effort at all.

Speaker 1:

Y'all, kindness works. It's not just a fluff, it's chemical. When you give kindness or when you receive it, your brain releases oxytocin. That's that bonding hormone that causes us to feel connected, and it also releases dopamine, that feel-good hormone that we're always searching for. When these hormones are released, it lowers cortisol, which you know is our stress hormone, and that's going to help reduce anxiety and also reduce depression. And it's why something as simple as a compliment in passing in the hallway can instantly shift your mood. And it's also why small positive interactions in your school building matter.

Speaker 1:

Positive interactions in your school building matter. It's like when you're having a really bad day or a super busy, overwhelming day and you're flying down the hallway and along the way, somebody randomly compliments you. It changes your mood almost instantly, doesn't it? I know it does mine. So imagine what happens when this is happening consistently in the school setting, not only for the grown-ups, but for the kids too. Studies show that when people witness an act of kindness, they are significantly more likely to pay it forward. So when our kids are watching us model kindness in the hallways, in the front office, they're going to seek to emulate that, because they're watching and learning and absorbing the things that we do every second. We also know that schools that have more positive interactions see fewer behavioral issues and higher emotional resilience among their students. That's what we're all aiming for, isn't it? And this concept also works in reverse A toxic school culture can spread like wildfire if negativity is the dominant energy man.

Speaker 1:

Ask me how I know that. I once worked on one of the most toxic school campuses that I think has ever existed on the planet, and it was draining, it was demoralizing, and I found that negativity seeping into every aspect of my life, so that it wasn't only affecting me when I was at work, but I was carrying that home, I was carrying it to my family and to my children, and it just was not a good place to be. You may be working in an environment like that right now and you know exactly what I mean when I'm talking about how toxicity spreads. So let's focus on the kindness aspect, even if we are in a dysfunctional school environment. Let's focus on how can we bring even a little smidge of kindness into our worlds. One thing that we don't often talk about with regard to kindness is how it can buffer burnout for school counselors, because we spent all day helping to solve other people's problems. But when we engage in these small positive interactions of kindness, it counteracts our stress, and engaging in pro-social behavior, like helping others, like. Distributing kindness is directly linked to lower burnout rates and also increased job satisfaction. So, my friend, kindness isn't just something nice to do. It's not something that we do on Random Acts of Kindness Week, that's trendy and then we forget about it the rest of the time. What we really need to be doing is looking at kindness as a strategy to up-level our school climate, to improve our mental health and to sustain us professionally. Now I've talked quite a bit about how kindness can affect the grown-ups, and I've talked a little bit about how kindness can affect us as a whole on a school campus.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk specifically about how our acts of kindness can help our students. First, acts of kindness increase sense of belonging. We know we have kids walking through the doors every morning at our schools who do not hear positive words at home. Their entire home experience is filled with shouting, accusations or burns. So when they walk through the doors and they encounter a kind word or a small act even if they act like it does not affect them at all we know it can have a huge impact on their self-esteem and also convince them to engage more in their schoolwork. Research also tells us that kindness can boost peer connection and reduce loneliness, boost peer connection and reduce loneliness. Especially when we're talking about marginalized students, this is super important. We want all of our students to feel connected and like they belong and kindness is a mighty tool to get us in that corner. Kindness also helps improve classroom behavior because kids who feel seen and who feel valued are less likely to act out. And those students who are watching us be kind to our co-workers and colleagues on campus. When they begin to regularly engage in those kinds of kindness acts, they develop stronger emotional regulation skills. So they're not going to be as impulsive, we're not going to have as many disciplinary incidents with them because they're learning how to regulate themselves. And third, kindness just creates a more positive school climate overall. Third, kindness just creates a more positive school climate overall.

Speaker 1:

If negativity is the dominant energy in your building, the kids are going to mirror that. But if we can engage in small positive interactions, we can use those to shift the emotional tone of the entire school the emotional tone of the entire school and on the grown-up side of things. I mentioned this briefly before. But kindness can be a burnout hat for school counselors. You know you can't control the decisions that your administrators make. You can't control the mandates that come down from your district office, you can't even control when the fire drills are going to happen. But you can control everything. Small moments of kindness and on tough days, if you can walk away knowing that you made a small positive impact on someone else at your school, it can offset the stress of the entire rest of your day. Even better, it reconnects you to your why? Because we know school counseling is about people, it's not about paperwork, and when we perform acts of kindness we are bringing those people back into focus.

Speaker 1:

I will tell you I had a student on my campus once who was really difficult to work with. He was one of the kids that the teachers wanted to send to the office on a daily basis. He was loud, he was defiant to his teachers, he was constantly talking back, refusing to complete work and his teachers were exhausted. To complete work, and his teachers were exhausted. All the kids in his class avoided him like the plague and most of the time he seemed to be seeking negative attention. This kiddo genuinely thought no one liked him because he didn't have really any friends in class. He didn't have any positive relationships with adults at his school and so he had no motivation to change anything. It was like it was easier to be bad than to be ignored, right? And so we started working on an undercover kindness challenge.

Speaker 1:

We started working on an undercover kindness challenge. I gave him a small kindness challenge every day that he had to complete. It was just finding someone in the school to give a compliment to, didn't matter who it was, didn't matter what the compliment was about, but he had to give one genuine compliment every day. We worked on it for a week. We talked about what changes were happening. He really didn't notice anything different, but we kept going and after a while, after a few weeks, he noticed people started acting differently toward him. People started acting differently toward him. His teacher said you know, he still has trouble focusing, but he's not yelling and accusing people all the time anymore.

Speaker 1:

It was pretty cool to watch this kiddo's self-perception start to shift and starting to feel like he was building some connections with his classmates, that he could ask for help and not get laughed at. That he didn't have to lash out to get attention. He didn't become a model student. I wish I could say that. That would make me sound amazing. Right, he didn't become a model student. He still struggled with academics, but he started to see himself as a part of his classroom community and as part of our school community, and for me, that was a win. And it all came out of one small act of kindness every day. Small act of kindness every day. Day two and Park 2019 explored the relationship between students' perception of school kindness and their academic engagement, and they found that when students perceived higher levels of kindness in their school, they reported greater engagement in academics.

Speaker 1:

So as we're rolling into Random Acts of Kindness Week, let's keep this in perspective. Some folks have planned big awareness weeks and I think that's wonderful, but a lot of us didn't have the bandwidth for that this year, did we? Education is a mess right now. There are so many unknowns and uncertainties. We're coming off of National School Counseling Week, which often gives us all a lot of mixed emotions, and so some of us just didn't have the capacity to do anything big for Random Acts of Kindness Week, and I get it because I'm one of those people. That's why I'm using the word we. But we can still utilize this week to not only our benefit, but to the benefit of our schools and our students.

Speaker 1:

Schools are stressful places. Some days you feel like you are just dancing inside of a dumpster fire, right, but kindness gives us small moments in our days that matter. Remember that a kind word that you give to a student might be the only encouragement they hear all day, that a simple thank you that you offer to a teacher in the hallway could be the one thing that convinces them not to walk out the door and never come back, or even y'all. A quick note to yourself Reminding you that you accomplished something great. That day might be what helps you push through some of the burnout you're feeling. And the best part about all of this is that you don't need permission, you don't need funding, you don't need a meeting with your administrator to start changing the energy in your school. You just have to decide that kindness is going to be part of your daily game plan. Now I know, I know you are kind each and every day. I get it. But when you demonstrate kindness with more intentionality rather than just as the moments present themselves, you are intentionally walking through the doors with the goal of spreading kindness.

Speaker 1:

The game changes a little bit, and I want to help you do that this week. Every day, during Random Acts of Kindness Week, I'm going to post a quick, simple kindness challenge on our Facebook page. These are going to be things that you can do immediately, with no prep, that will actually make a difference for other people at your school. So, as we wrap up this episode, make sure that you've gone to our School for School Counselors Facebook page. Make sure that you hit, follow and join in on all the kindness fun this week. Stay consistent with it, set a phone alarm so you don't forget to check it out every day, and let's just see what happens this week, because sometimes the little things you do are actually the things that change everything. I'll be back soon with another episode of the School for School Counselors podcast. In the meantime, keep practicing those random acts of kindness and I'll see you again very soon. Take care.

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Steph Johnson

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