In this task, you are given a list of integers and an integer k. You need to find the kth smallest element in the input list and return that.

Example Input: [239, 110, 47, 43, 56, 185, 243, 72, 159, 130, 274, 122, 230, 148, 280, 296, 116, 11, 179, 294], k=1
Example Output: 11

Example Input: [43, 55, 172, 198, 81, 270, 159, 285, 28, 15, 130, 245, 37, 134, 174, 39, 146, 94, 158, 82], k=2
Example Output: 28

Example Input: [217, 170, 223, 94, 230, 104, 218, 42, 118, 265, 82, 281, 149, 71, 273, 51, 196, 72, 138, 247], k=2
Example Output:
51