It’s a life lesson.
An elementary school teacher has gone viral on social media after sharing her “30 seconds or less” rule on kindness.
Fourth grade educator Natalie Ringold posted a video to Instagram explaining the rule to her young students, with many adult viewers praising her for preaching values to her pupils.
“Students being rude? Try this!” she suggested in the caption.
“If somebody can’t change something about themselves in 30 seconds or less, then you shouldn’t be mentioning it to them,” Ringold is seen telling her students.
She went on to provide examples to her young pupils of of things they can change in half a minute — such as tying a shoelace or removing a piece of lint on their shirt.
“But if you comment on someone’s hair color or hair texture or hairstyle or body — they can’t change that in 30 seconds or less,” the educator said.
Ringold went on to squeeze out a tube of toothpaste onto the table and then tried to put the sticky goop back into the container without success to help her students visualize how “messy” not following the “30 seconds or less” rule can be.
“You can’t totally take those words back. You can’t totally fix it,” she warned.
The lesson was used to teach the students kindness and understand that their words “have power” and “matter.”
Ringold encouraged her pupils to walk out of the room spreading kindness and love to the people around them to “truly make a difference” in the world.
“We are responsible for our words and actions. We need to spread kindness and love,” she implored in the caption of the post. “We choose what to put out into the world. Our words and actions have power and an impact on others. Once our words and actions are out in the world, we cannot erase them or fully take them back,” the teacher wrote in the caption.”
“We can choose to fill other people’s ‘buckets’ or do the opposite,” she continued. “Apologizing is an important part of making things right after we make a mistake.”
She admitted that there are exceptions to the rule but explained that she taught this lesson on the last day of school in hopes her students would remember the lesson for the rest of their lives.
Thanks to her post on social media, Ringold’s lesson also resonated with many beyond her classroom.
“I wish adults would watch this and learn,” a person commented.
“It is refreshing that someone is teaching these things right from the childhood… We as adults should have such classes because I guess we all are forgetting humanity and kindness…,” another said.
“Such a valuable lesson,” someone responded.
“People may not remember what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel,” another person noted.
