Community, kindness and respect: These are three pillars of character being reinforced to elementary students throughout the Port Washington School District. Students at every elementary school participated in an assembly conducted by Richard Specht, founder of the ReesSpecht Life Foundation, which was created in memory of his son Rees (Richard Edwin-Ehmer Specht), who lost his life at a young age.
Through his program, Specht distributes colorful ReesSpecht business-style “pay it forward” cards that challenge people to perform acts of kindness whenever an opportunity presents itself. He also gave children symbolic packets of seeds as a reminder to plant seeds of kindness in daily life.
Specht came up with the idea for the pay-it-forward cards after his son died. He and his family wanted to pay back the kindness of their friends, family and even complete strangers. “No one would let us pay them back, so we decided we were going to pay it forward,” Specht said. 0
The cards became their way of paying back those acts of kindness. “We initially ordered 5,000, thinking it would be more than a lifetime supply,” Specht said. “As of today, we have distributed over 250,000 [all over the world].”
Specht, a former science teacher, was on the “front lines,” as he put it, of the battles that face students
every day, including bullying. “It always struck me as odd, that as a school, and a society, we put our focus on bullying and a ‘cure’ for it without thinking about ways to prevent it,” he said. “Kindness is that prevention.”
Studies by neuroscientist Patty O’Grady have proven that teaching children kindness actually alters their brains and increases overall compassion. “Children, and adults too, learn compassion and kindness by example and experiencing it firsthand,” Specht said. “By going to schools and sharing our story, it is my hope to plant the seeds of kindness in [the children’s] brains that will hopefully continue to grow as they do.”
Specht wrote a children’s book, A Little Rees Specht Cultivates Kindness, to teach the power of kindness and challenge readers to go out and perform acts of kindness. “At the back of the book there are two pages of ‘seeds of kindness cards’ that encourage them to do something nice and pass that seed on to someone else,” Specht said. “Our children are the key to a kinder future.”
Counselors at every Port Washington elementary school have planned follow-up activities that nurture Specht’s message and promote positive character throughout the year. To learn more, visit www.reesspechtlife.com.
