A School-wide Kindness Campaign: A Makerspace Journey in Authentic Learning

Your emotions are like a shelf that holds up the “items” of your thinking. That idea is paraphrased from Mary Helen Immordino-Yang’s recent research in neuroscience, summarized in the text, Emotions, Learning, and the Brain (2016), and it reminds us how much emotions matter for deeper learning.

We put this research into action at St. Mary School in Lancaster, Ohio, on September 18, 2025. Nearly 40 teachers and staff gathered for a makerspace challenge we called “Kind Heart Junkbots.” Using recycled and reused odds and ends, each team explored the school’s most important graduate disposition, kindness, by interpreting and creating criteria for a “kind heart” and building sculpture-like robots to express their ideas. The junkbots, now on display in the hallways, spark conversations with questions and prompts that invite students, staff, and family to think about kindness and have discussions about having a kind heart.

It was a joyful and active way to connect science, creativity, civic discourse, and authentic learning. And, really, who doesn’t love a junkbot? For more inspiration with junkbots and playful learning, check out the UKs Institute of Imagination.

To generate this fun, emotionally- and intellectually-engaging activity, we used Partnerships’ authentic learning model (the point of the professional learning, btw, but it’s just not that fun to directly teach an instructional model, when you can just do it and then talk about it).

The model has six parts; they are:

• Driving question: How could we, a team of St. Mary staff, collaborate, create, and be curious in a makerspace activity to promote kindness around the school with “kind heart junkbots?”
  

• Investigate: The Partnerships’ authentic learning model kickstarts emotional engagement with an entry event. We used Steve Hartman’s Kindness 101 series on CBS to spark purpose around St. Mary’s top graduate disposition: kindness and a discussion. After watching the clip, teams dove into the big question: “Is kindness the same as having a kind heart?” A juicy, contestable question, which is perfect for all you dialogic teaching fans out there. (Need a dose of hope? Look up the Kindness 101 story of the 9-year-old who ran a “compliment stand.”) 
  

• Research and Planning: Once the spark was lit, we got curious. Each staff member had 15 minutes to explore kindness with a personalized inquiry.  Some used traditional research with our “Kindness Hub” of resources, others phoned a friend, some texted their family members, and a few even crowdsourced answers on social media. Every voice brought new insight to the idea of building a kind heart. Teams then pulled their discoveries together into a set of criteria of the essential traits their kind heart junkbot had to show.
  

• Implementation and Action: Makerspace magic happens in the doing, building, creating, and bringing ideas to life. This is where voices for change emerge: empowering, motivating, validating. And yes, the kind heart junkbots went on parade! Teams proudly shared their creations in a gallery walk.

• Reflection: As John Dewey (the G.O.A.T, really) reminded us, we don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on it. Our final prompt, adapted from Project Zero’s “Seek to See,” is about our relationship to the whole of humanity. I asked: How does this process help others shine and feel they’re in the spotlight? The answers were moving. Stories of love, care, and community filled the room.

• Celebration: We snapped photos of the junkbots and sent them to the family and friends who’d helped in our research phase. Positive, memorable, and a reminder that learning is at its best when it’s emotionally-engaging, shared, and creative.