One 5th-grader stopped some boys from another class from teasing his friend. “I know what to do to be a good friend and person,” he explained.

Another 5th-grader went out of his way to encourage the 2nd-graders who share gym time with his class. “I am always high-fiving them for trying their best even when they don’t score a goal,” he said.

Those two gestures were among the 29,000 acts of kindness performed by students at PS 209 and P 9 in Whitestone, Queens, during the schools’ Great Kindness Challenge in the last week of January.

The week was the brainchild of Mary Dignam, a guidance counselor at P 9, a District 75 school with 79 severely disabled students, and Farrah Greene, the guidance counselor for the 629 students at PS 209. They initiated the project to develop a true sense of community between the schools and to create a schoolwide culture of acceptance, tolerance and respect.

Working from a checklist of 50 suggested acts of kindness, students learned the importance of a compliment, picking up trash, making a drawing for someone, and saying thank you to the school bus driver, the cafeteria staff and even one another.

“I knew that the Great Kindness Challenge would be the perfect project to foster new, positive relationships and teach students that kindness is strength and bullying is weakness,” Dignam explained.

Children were encouraged to keep track of their good deeds in school, at home and in the community on their personal checklists.

“The checklist became very personal to the students in my class,” paraprofessional Jerri Bruce said. “They were happy to be helping others and surprised to learn that a simple smile can brighten someone’s day.”

In one buildingwide activity, the children traced and decorated their handprints, which were shipped to a California hospital to help patients feel supported during their recovery.

Inclusion teacher Nancy Bishop of P 9 noticed that the older PS 209 students really enjoyed working with the younger P 9 students. “Making the handprints helped them begin to think about ways they can continue to change the world through acts of kindness,” she noted.

To build on the momentum, Dignam and Greene are organizing a club in which students will participate in gardening projects to beautify their school, develop social skills in a Circle of Friends activity and create crafts for local nursing homes and hospitals.

“The Great Kindness Challenge week may be over, but the kind acts of PS 209 and P 9 are still going strong,” Greene proclaimed.