Kindness week is celebrated worldwide the week of February 13th, and Hawk Wings, Woodland’s kindness club, knew they wanted to celebrate too.
Hawk Wings has never had a problem spreading joy; Kindness Week was no different. During Kindness Week, their main goal was to get the community involved as much as possible, by participating in random acts of kindness.
One day Hawk Wings made hearts, one day they made cards, but they knew they needed one bigger event to get their message across. Lucky for them, a Yale Public Safety officer reached out to Kurt Ogren, Woodland Principal.
Rich Simmons, YPS officer, was very enthusiastic when reaching out to Ogren. He told Ogren about Heidi, YPS service dog, and what she does. This led Ogren to think of Hawk Wings. Anna Muharem, Hawk Wings advisor, was contacted and immediately loved the idea. She knew this was the perfect thing to end Kindness Week.
This is when Hawk Wings welcomed Yale’s Public Safety Service Dog, Heidi, to Woodland.
“It was just a really good chance to bring people together who don’t normally come together,” said Muharem.
Since Heidi is a comfort animal, she loves to visit restaurants, hospitals and takes any opportunity she gets to go visit people, and put smiles on their faces.
“I just love the idea of engaging different kids. You know there are some people who are just involved with everything to do with the school, it’s just of their nature,” said Muharem. “But there are some kids that have to be drawn out in a way to participate and I really saw that with Heidi, everyone just flocked with her.”
Although Heidi was only four, she was very well trained and made everyone feel safe. The attention she got from the students and faculty was greater than expected, and hopefully Heidi will come back soon.
