The Pandemic The World Needs Now: Kindness

*For the people I'll talk about in this article, I'll be using they/them/theirs in order to keep their identity private and also honoring their preferred gender pronouns, just in case.

As an American living in Spain, a pandemic was the last thing I thought I'd ever witness. To give you a backstory, I moved to Spain in 2019 months after I graduated from college, to work as an English Language Assistant in a primary and secondary school. I left the fast-paced and angry state that is New Jersey and settled in a small village in Galicia. The love and the welcoming hands that have been extended out to me have been like nothing I'd ever experienced before. My students have been chatty, loud, but most importantly, kind.

My main fear of going back to a classroom after quarantine was that my students were going to be under distress and that I would immediately lose their attention during a lesson. However, that was not the case at all. You see, the beautiful thing about children is that even in the midst of a scary and unpredictable situation, they still love life and dwell on the things that make them happy. They're not always shaken by the news or the grown-up world. They're in their own world, dancing through it. That was the case with one of my primary school students, let's call them "F."

In the school I am in, there was a teacher that got positive test results for COVID-19. The teacher and their entire class had to go home for two weeks. Except for F. F tested positive for COVID-19 months before and the health authorities said it was fine for them to be in a class because they had developed antibodies to the virus. My coordinator and I had to go to F's class even though they were the only student.

One day, we were drawing gingerbread men for the Christmas season. F is a sweet and obedient student. Everything they see, they do which can be a double-edged sword. I was drawing a gingerbread man and F wanted to make "a nice gingerbread man like the teacher is drawing." Although we have to wear masks, I could see the frustration in F's eyes because their drawing wasn't "perfect" like they said.

"Ugh, teacher, this isn't turning out like yours. I'll never be able to make one."

"F, it takes practice. It doesn't have to be perfect, just do your best."

F kept erasing and tracing until they dropped their pencil and I could see the tears slowly forming in their eyes. In that moment, it wasn't about drawing a simple gingerbread man, it was something that needed to be addressed to a child. Children are sponges, they absorb everything around them. Due to that, I felt it was absolutely necessary for them to absorb positivity and light. I can remember the words that rushed out of my mouth like it was yesterday. I said to them:

"F, it's okay if your drawing is not like mine. I wasn't always good, but I got better with practice. Nothing has to be perfect. Could you imagine if we didn't do anything simply because our thing wasn't perfect? Then nothing in this world would be done! So do your best, and it doesn't matter if you have to keep erasing, you will get better. Practice makes perfect."

There was a long trail of silence. They didn't respond. When it was time for me to leave, F didn't say anything, they just gave me this and their eyes squinted as their mask covered their smile:

I thanked F and I praised their authentic drawing. My heart was full.

In the midst of the COVID-19 chaos and F's chaos about not being able to draw perfectly, was that I realized that it's in the little acts of kindness that can make the moment and the world a better place. People have their own way of responding to positivity. It may not always be in words, but in can manifest in kind gestures. My words probably didn't make sense 100% of the way, but it definitely made F and I gain something.

F got words of wisdom that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives. I got an adorable, authentic gingerbread man.