This 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.

(Ulmer, right, with her late sister Katie, who she described as 'everybody's best friend.' (Submitted by Kristina Ulmer)

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.

(Members of Ulmer's 2024 class hold up their $20 bills from that year's Kindness Challenge. (Submitted by Kristina Ulmer)

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.

Ref: This teacher gives each of her students $20 to spend on an act of kindness (cbc)