East Grand Rapids — When Hadley Idema was younger, before she started attending Lakeside Elementary, she struggled to make friends. Her parents would do their best to encourage her to stay true to herself and not to be daunted.
“My parents, every day, they would tell me, ‘Go, stand out, be yourself,’” Hadley said.
She tried to live by those uplifting words, and eventually, around the time her family moved to East Grand Rapids, her parents’ message paid off. Now a many-friended soon-to-be sixth-grader, Hadley found her tribe at Lakeside. It’s no surprise, then, that she wanted to pass along her parents’ message to the school’s future students.
Seated in the grass at John Collins Park on the second-to-last day of school with her fellow fifth-graders, Hadley scrawled the words “Stand out!” on the flat side of a small stone with a pink paint pen. Around her, her friends jotted down similar messages on stones of their own.
The stones are headed to Lakeside’s Kindness Rock Garden. The garden is inspired by the global Kindness Rocks Project, a movement that encourages people to decorate stones with encouraging messages and colorful designs, and leave them in a public place where they might bring a smile to the face of a stranger.
‘I know how it feels to be treated with kindness, and it feels really good to make others feel good too.’
— fifth-grader Ruby McCracken
Fifth-grade teacher Kristen Lecours is leading the project, and said it’s a perfect fit for the elementary school, whose motto is “Lakeside Elementary: Where Kindness Counts.”
Messages of Support
At John Collins Park, Lecours supervised as scores of students cheerily decorated their rocks for the garden. Each student painted about four rocks, and each rock contained an uplifting saying, a colorful design, a #kindnessrocks hashtag and the year.
Fifth-grader Fleur Willams decorated one of her rocks with the words “Wild and free.”
“(It’s) to show people that you can do whatever you want. Like, you have the freedom to do whatever you need to do,” Fleur said.
Ryder Sullivan’s a big hockey fan, so naturally he had to include a famous Wayne Gretzky quote on one of his rocks: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
“I guess it motivates people to keep going and try stuff that’s hard,” Ryder said.
One of Emery Cahill’s rocks included the message, “Great things take time.”
“This one I love, because I’m a gymnast,” Emery explained, “and getting new skills, it takes a long time and it’s hard, and sometimes I get a little frustrated and my coach reminds me that great things take time.”
She said she loves to decorate rocks even when she’s not in school.
“Every summer I go to my grandma’s condo in Glen Arbor, and we collect rocks and we paint them and we leave them out on the beach,” Emery said. “I really enjoy making rocks because if I’m, like, angry at my sibling, I can paint rocks and it makes me feel better.”
Making the rocks is a great release, she said, and for those who find them, the supportive messages mean a lot.
While writing messages like “Focus on the good,” “Be you-nique,” and “Look ahead” on her collection of rocks, Remi Fulton noted that the Kindness Rock Garden has been a mood-lifter for her.
“Sometimes, if I’m having a bad day, I’ll go up to the Kindness Rock Garden, and I’ll find some that apply to me,” she said. “Like, ‘It’s OK to have bad days,’ and stuff like that. And it’ll just make my day and make me feel better.”
Norah Tesseris, Ruby McCracken and Alaina Marcionetti agreed. They said their own days have been brightened by the rocks, and they hope the ones they leave behind have a similar effect on future students.
“I just want to make sure that everybody feels appreciated,” said Norah. “I hope that I can leave something awesome at Lakeside.”
“I know how it feels to be treated with kindness and it feels really good to make others feel good too,” said Ruby.
“I think it’s just a great way to show kindness,” Alaina said of the Kindness Rock Garden, noting that her own spirits have been boosted by seeing the messages on the stones.
“I’ve seen ‘Be yourself’ and stuff like that, and that’s really lifted up my day,” she said. “It’s just made my day feel way better. … And I hope that other students feel better or happier when they see my rocks.”
They’ll Never Forget the Motto
Lecours said she helped students plan their designs in class ahead of the trip to the park. After putting the designs on their actual rocks, the rocks were coated with a sealant and placed in the rock garden in front of the school.
The rocks can be either enjoyed at the school or taken home by the kids who discover them.
Lecours hopes to keep the garden going for years to come, so “all those kids can come back and find that comfort” at Lakeside.
“Like, if I’m ever feeling lost, I can always come back,” she said. “Even if school’s not open … I can go to the Kindness Rock Garden that I know I contributed to, and I can find comfort.”
Lecours said the project helps drive home the importance of the school’s motto and its meaning — “that kindness will always win.”
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