Mrs. Kim Baker and her middle school students at the Floyd County Education Center placed 2nd at the Coosa Valley Fair with their "Random Acts of Kindness" display. Mrs. Baker and her students constructed the display booth to showcase the groups work to promote "Random Acts of Kindness" at the school and in the community. This project was a culmination activity of a project-based service learning project for their language arts and social studies classes.

The middle school students at FCEC participated in “Pay it Forward” as a class theme for the past nine weeks. The middle school students started by reading the book Pay it Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde. The book is about a middle school student working on a social studies project to “change the world.” "The main character, Trevor, comes up with the Pay it Forward project where a person does a random act of kindness for three people," Mrs. Baker explained. "Each of those three people is asked to then do random acts of kindness for three more people." The theory of the project in the book was to see how the acts of kindness grow exponentially.

The fair display featured a 3-D model of how it would look to "pay it forward." Baker added, "We also placed information about the random acts the students participated in during Random Acts of Kindness Week.” The student's display also included the question, “How will YOU make a difference?” The display featured examples of random acts of kindness to show people how they can also make a difference in the community.

Activities at FCEC during the "Random Acts of Kindness" week of August 20-24 included:

Monday - Panera Bread donated food items and middle school students made cards for the faculty/staff. FCEC also sent some of the donated food to the Floyd County Schools principal’s meeting held Tuesday with a thank you card for the principal's service to our community schools.

Tuesday – Jandy’s Frozen Yogurt brought their mobile unit to FCEC to serve a special treat to all students at FCEC free of charge.

Wednesday – Governor Nathan Deal, in conjunction with 11Alive news, declared August 22nd as Georgia Random Acts of Kindness Day. On this day, middle school students from FCEC went to Action Ministries in Rome and worked at the food bank. The students helped to prepare packages for needy families. When the group returned to the school from helping at Action Ministries, Papa John’s Pizzas that had been donated by the company were a treat for the entire school.

Thursday – Students were encouraged to write down the random acts of kindness they had participated in during the week and post them on a banner in the hallways.

The middle school students were also rewarded for their fair win. The second place award included a $200.00 prize. The funds will be used to enhance the service learning and educational programs at FCEC.

Click here to read additional press releases on RN-T.com.