ROCK SPRINGS –– Eastside Elementary School is a certified kindness school following a rock painting project it initiated recently. A teacher at the school hopes to get other schools within the district to join in promoting kindness.

Students from the elementary school were on hand to hear Mayor Max Mickelson issue a Kindness Week proclamation during the Rock Springs City Council’s Tuesday evening. 

Eastside Elementary was named a certified kindness school by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. The certification was next step from the school’s Kindness Rock Garden that was dedicated in November. Tracey Burton, a fifth-grade teacher at the school, said she was looking for ways to bring the school into a network of other likeminded schools and discovered the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. The foundation has certified 115 schools as kindness schools around the world, most of which are in the United States. 

The school had each student make a kindness rock by painting a rock and writing an encouraging message on it to qualify for the certification. Burton said the school distributed more than 500 rocks throughout Rock Springs and has challenged other schools within Sweetwater County School District No. 1 to become certified kindness schools as well. She hopes to get enough schools involved in Rock Springs to challenge Green River. 

“We’re kind of seeing what steps we can take next,” Burton said.