Students chain-link themselves to spread kindness

This year students from several Idaho Falls schools took up a challenge to see how much kindness they could spread.

It started in February and culminated in a chain-linking ceremony Thursday with thousands of brightly colored paper chain links stretching all around the Skyline High School track field.

“When you see everybody with the chains you can see how much people have really tried,” Fox Hollow Elementary student Lexi Hibbert. “It just shows that one act of kindness can lead to another and start a chain reaction.”

Each of the more than 10,000 links making up the chain represents an act of kindness from one student to another.

But things aren’t always kind in the schoolyard.

“I’ve seen people making fun of them. I’ve seen some kids crying ’cause someone’s being mean to them,” said Elizabeth La Pier, who attends Ethel Boyes Elementary.

“It starts out as friendly teasing and then it gets serious and just bullying. People want to take their own lives just because of the bullies,” said Hibbert.

Bullying is one of the reasons students said this exercise in kindness was so important.