Students at Saint Joseph High School in Trumbull are sending letters to residents in Connecticut nursing homes as an act of kindness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

St. Joseph High School teacher Colleen Piatak assigned her students the task to "Send a Smile."

One of Piatak's students, Teagan Cavaliere, incorporated different pictures and clip art with fonts on her flyers, some of just hundreds mailed to nursing facilities in Trumbull, Startford, and Milford.

One rec director of the facilities that received the letters responded to Piatak and her students by saying, "Thank you so much, you don't know how much this means to our residents."

Piatak teaches business and technology so she says the assignment fit right in to what her students have been learning, and it's a kind gesture during a difficult time.

She says she recruited her daughter, who is also a teacher at St. Jospeh High School, to participate in the project with her class.

The gesture is reflective of the school's motto "Privilige and Responsibility."

"It only takes something simple like this to make a difference in someone's day," Cavalieree says.