“Don’t give up!” “Follow your dreams!” “You’ll climb mountains!”  They’re common words of encouragement, yes, but when they were written on sticky notes and placed on every single locker in the school, students took notice.

The sticky notes mission was part of the “Pay It Forward” project in Mrs. Yakich’s and Mrs. Omasits’ English classes.  The two English teachers found inspiration for the idea in the movie Pay It Forward, which was released in 2000. The movie is centered around a teacher who tasks his class with coming up with ideas that can change the world around them.

“You do something big for someone who can’t do it for themselves, and when you do that, you tell them to pay it forward to three people,” Mrs. Omasits explained. By the end of the film, one seventh grader is able to start a movement that will eventually span the whole country.

“Hopefully, we can start a movement here at NASH,” said Mrs. Omasits. “I started watching the movie five years ago with my students, and I had them do something small to pay it forward.”

Some students bought coffee for another person, and some simply helped others pick up their books if they dropped them. It truly was just doing something that was small, Omasits explained, yet it had all the power to change somebody’s day for the better.

After the first group of students responded very well to the new idea, Omasits got inspired to transform the idea into a larger project where students had to work together to come up with ways to share kindness and positively impact the days of even more people. Students created bracelets with inspirational sayings, left donuts with notes for the staff at NA, and attached sticky notes with reassuring messages on student lockers.

The response was overwhelmingly positive. “We always get emails from teachers, Dr. Kreider, and people out in the community,” Omasits said. “We got an email from the people at the Food Bank saying how much they appreciated the work that was done.”

For Yakich, the project was especially gratifying because of the meaningful impact it had on her students.  “The project is about more than just kids getting a grade,” she said.

The goal of the project extends beyond spreading kindness to others.  Yakich wishes for her students to learn “how to take part in something larger than themselves with others.” In the end, she said, “We all want our students to be successful, and part of education is learning daily life skills.” To pay it forward doesn’t simply benefit people who receive the acts of kindness — as Yakich explained, it also gets “students thinking about others and what they could easily do to help those in their community or classes.”

Through their efforts, students have come to the same realization. “You don’t realize how much people appreciate even the little things in life,” said Lauren Harris, one of Yakich’s students.

If the participating students took away one lesson from the Pay It Forward project, it was to never overlook the power of a few simple words of encouragement.