On October 18,  2024, Castleton Elementary School 6th grade students and teachers were featured on the national CBS Mornings show in a Kindness 101 segment with journalist Steve Hartman and his children, Meryl and Emmett!

See pictures from Steve, Meryl and Emmett’s visit to CES on Google here and watch the Kindness 101 segment below. CES is featured starting around the 4-minute mark.

Some background on how this all came to be. CES 6th Grade Teacher, Allison Streeter, has been a fan of Steve’s work for years and decided to incorporate his Kindness 101 video stories into her class work. While looking for Kindness 101 videos online to show in class, she saw a CBS Facebook post asking teachers to respond if they used/planned to use any of the videos in school and if their class would want to be featured in a story. Mrs. Streeter responded over the summer and a CBS producer reached out to let her know they would get back to her after the school year started.

Once 6th graders were back in school, they watched 1-2 of Steve’s Kindness 101 videos per day and wrote journal entries responding to them. Our students loved watching the motivational videos and responding to them daily in class.

A week before Steve, Meryl and Emmett ultimately visited CES on September 23, CBS reached out to let us know our 6th graders had been chosen for part of the segment! The students were kept in the dark about the visit right up until the moment Steve, Meryl and Emmett walked into the room, so they were surprised, to say the least! Scroll down to see a video of the 6th graders getting surprised by the three of them!

Many thanks to Steve and his children for visiting with our 6th graders – they still can’t believe it happened!