Sept. 7, 2026
The Kindness of Feeling Seen
When I was in third grade, I was the quiet kid. I had transferred schools, didn’t have many friends, and at a time in my life when I often felt misunderstood and unseen, I did my best to make myself almost invisible at school.
But one teacher noticed me.
In this episode of KindCast, I’m sharing one of my own childhood stories about a teacher named Miss Moreland and a seemingly small thing she did that I’ve remembered for decades.
To her, she may have simply been doing her job. To me, it was an act of kindness that made me feel seen, capable, and believed in at a time when I really needed it.
It’s a reminder that we don’t always know the impact we’re having on another person—and sometimes kindness is as simple as seeing something in someone that they may not yet know how to see or advocate for themselves.
NO act of kindness is too small to share if it left an imprint in your heart! Share your story today!
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Welcome to Kindcast.
I'm your host, Chaz Smith.
And before we get into today's story, I actually want to share something that's been on my mind.
I really hope you'll stick with me here at Kindcast.
Keep tuning in, keep sending me your stories and give this little experiment that we are creating some time.
0:28
Because here's the thing, I actually understand that kindness can feel almost boring to an overstimulated mind.
Think about what we're used to consuming all day long.
Drama, suspense, bad news, shocking headlines, true crime and social media scrolling.
0:49
Something is constantly trying to grab our attention and give us that next quick hit.
And then there's kind cast.
Someone did something nice for something.
That's it.
No cliffhanger.
Nobody gets murdered.
1:04
There's not some crazy plot twist.
But call me bias, but I actually think that's part of the point.
Because what if, instead of constantly feeding our minds with more things that put us on high alert, we intentionally start feeding them with more good?
1:27
There is something that feels good in our bodies when we experience kindness, witness it, or even hear about it.
But for me, there's something even bigger happening here.
We are practicing where we put our attention because we get to choose the lens through which we look at the world.
1:46
And if we spend enough time looking for everything that's wrong with people, we're going to find plenty of evidence that people suck.
But what happens if we start looking for the good?
What happens if every week we're checking in and reminding ourselves to notice the person who held the door for us, the stranger who paid for someone's dinner, the kids who gave their prize away, or the person who just simply made somebody feel seen?
2:13
Maybe we start noticing more of it.
Maybe we start expecting more of it, and maybe we even start creating more of it for ourselves.
And then slowly, maybe the world starts to look a little different, not because the world suddenly changed, but because we changed what we were looking for.
2:29
That is really what I hope Kind Cast can become.
Not just a few minutes of feel good stories every week, but a little practice and noticing the good.
So stick with me, keep listening, keep looking, and keep sending me the stories that you find and let's see what happens together.
2:51
So today I'm going to share a story and this is actually a time when I was on the receiving end of kindness.
And it goes way back, all the way back to 3rd grade.
And my teacher, Miss Moreland, at the time, we had different reading groups that we were placed in based on different levels of skill.
3:14
And I had transferred schools in the second grade, and I got put into one of the groups.
And I'm not sure what it was even based on, but I was a really shy kid.
I didn't have many friends at my new school.
And quite frankly, life just felt hard.
Even at home, I often felt misunderstood.
3:32
Sometimes I felt like my parents didn't really see me, not, like, really see me for me, like the effort that it actually took for me or the passion that I felt.
It just felt like they didn't have the same interest in the things that I was interested in.
And because I was a quiet kid at school, I didn't really volunteer to read out loud.
3:53
I didn't really speak up for myself.
And I just, to be really honest, kind of made myself invisible.
But my God, I love to read.
And I was kind of obsessed with learning.
And it wasn't long in 3rd grade before Miss Moreland one afternoon pulled me aside and she told me that she felt that I had been misplaced in my reading group and that I actually belonged in a more advanced reading group.
4:21
And wow, I remember the feeling all the way back to that exact day in 3rd grade.
I felt bliss.
I felt so overjoyed because I knew I was capable of being in a more advanced group.
4:38
I just didn't know how to advocate for myself.
I was shy, didn't volunteer, didn't put myself out there, and I honestly, I think it would have been really easy for someone to just overlook me, but Miss Moreland didn't.
She saw me, and what she did for me that day goes so far beyond seeing my reading ability and moving me into what would eventually become a track that led me into AP English classes.
5:03
She saw me, and maybe to her she just saw an ability I had, but for me at that point in my life, it was everything.
It felt like she saw my passion, my effort, and my ability.
5:22
And most important, she believed in me.
It felt amazing to have someone believe in me like that.
It was truly one of the highlights of my childhood school experience, and I never forgot about her, and I never will.
And there are a few things that I really love about this story.
5:41
One of them is something we've talked about here before, which is that sometimes the person bestowing the kindness might never know what they did, and that's OK.
To Miss Moreland, she was probably just doing her job.
She probably had no idea how big of an imprint that moment would leave on me.
6:01
And someone could hear this and say, yeah, well, was that really an act of kindness?
Wasn't she just doing her job?
And I would say absolutely, it was kindness because someone else could have had the same exact job and not noticed me.
And really, it wasn't about the literal action of moving me into a different reading group.
6:20
It was her ability to see me, to see something in me at the exact time in my life when I otherwise didn't feel very seen.
Maybe that moment was far more meaningful to me than she ever intended it to be.
6:36
But I think that's the part of what makes kindness so incredible.
We don't always know the impact that we're going to have on somebody.
Sometimes, like I've said over and over, kindness is just making another person's I'll seen.
And we can all be that person for someone else.
6:52
We can all be that person for ourselves.
So maybe this week, ask yourself, what can I see in me that maybe I used to ignore or dismiss or discredit and then look outward too?
What is one small thing I can do this week to help someone else feel truly seen?
7:13
Maybe you might tell someone what you notice in them.
Maybe you acknowledge an effort that could easily go unnoticed, or encourage someone who doesn't quite know how to advocate for themselves yet.
Maybe you acknowledge a skill, a talent, a gift that somebody else displays.
7:33
You never know, you just might become somebody else's Miss Moreland and they might remember it for the rest of their life.
And so that's your little kind cast challenge for the week.
Go make somebody feel seen.
And as always, keep your eyes open for all the good happening around you.
7:55
Cheers.