This teacher gives each of her students $20 to spend on an act of kindness

As It Happens6:32This teacher gives each of her students $20 to spend on an act of kindness

Kristina Ulmer says people have the wrong idea about teenagers. 

For seven years now, the Pennsylvania Grade 9 English teacher has been running a "$20 Kindness Challenge" with her class, giving each student $20 US from a pool of donations, and asking them to do something kind with it.

And every year, she says, the teens in her class bring her to tears with their creativity, empathy and generosity. 

"A lot of people stereotype that age, and they say they're self-centred or, you know, they don't see outside of themselves. And I just don't see that," Ulmer, a teacher at Hatboro-Horsham High School in Horsham, Penn., told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

"Part of the reason why I love doing this project is because it allows others to see what I see every day."

Inspired by her late sister

The project goes back to 2014, when Ulmer's sister, Katie, died in a car crash at the age of 29.

She'd been working as a waitress at the time. In the wreckage of her vehicle, police found her purse with about $100 in cash, tips from that morning's breakfast shift. 

Ulmer says her sister had no savings, and this pile of loose bills was all the money she'd left behind. 

"I knew it had to do something worthwhile with it," Ulmer said. 

Katie, she says, was special. At her funeral, person after person stood up and described her as their best friend. 

"She really, really was everybody's best friend. She just took care of everybody," Ulmer said. "From the time we were little, [she] was always concerned with people who are struggling or people who seem to be less fortunate than we were."

Ulmer says her sister wanted to do something with her life that would make a difference, but it took her some time to figure out what. Ultimately, she decided to become an emergency medical technician, or EMT.  She'd completed her training shortly before she died.

"She was going to work on an ambulance and, unfortunately, she passed away when she was looking for a job," Ulmer said.

It also took Ulmer a few years to figure out what to do with her sister's money. Then, one day, it dawned on her.

"I had this really amazing group of students in front of me, and we were reading a dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451. And in the world of the novel, everyone's obsessed with their screens. They walk around with ear buds in all day long. They lack empathy toward each other. Everyone's anxious," she said.

"Yeah, sounds very familiar."

She realized there was a lesson to be learned about the importance of caring about other people. So she converted the tips into crisp $20 bills, topped it off with some of her own money, and gave her students one bill each. 

Their assignment? Do something kind with the money, and make a video about it.

"I want them to make connections to the people around them…. I wanted them to notice that, you know, people around them could possibly be struggling," she said.

"I like that they can see the true meaning in doing acts of kindness, and understand the impact that something like a small act of kindness could do."

'Anyone can make a difference'

The project was a huge success, and she's kept it going each year using money donated to a fund set up by the school.

The kids, she says, have chosen to do all kinds of things with the money. Some have made care packages for military members. Others baked cookies for first responders, or bought food for a local food bank. 

Her favourite projects, she says, are ones where students tap into their own specific skills. One student, she said, crocheted little hats for premature babies in neonatal care. Another sewed fun and colourful pillowcases for kids in the hospital.

Sydney Cassel, 16, told the Washington Post that she's done the $20 Kindness Challenge five times, even though she's no longer in Ulmer's class. 

The first year, she bought holiday cards and wrote personalized messages in them for residents of a veterans' home. In the years since, she and a classmate have teamed up to make cookies for teachers.

"The first time I participated in the challenge, I didn't think it would be possible to make a difference with $20, but I learned that's really not true," Sydney said. "You don't have to have millions — anyone can make a difference."

Each year, Ulmer stitches together the students' videos into one big presentation. And each year, she says, it makes her cry. 

It has also helped her grieve her sister. 

"I discovered that as I started to do this project … that a piece of me that was missing from my sister kind of started filling in a little bit," she said.

"I kind of felt like she was still here because the things that the students are doing are things that she would have been doing."