Monday Motivator #15 2019-20

Gratitude: A Powerful Tool for Your Classroom

By exercising the “gratitude muscle” with a journal, students can harness positive thinking to increase their grades, goals, and quality of life.

By Owen M. Griffith

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/gratitude-powerful-tool-for-classroom-owen-griffith

Would you like to improve the culture in your classroom and your life? Try gratitude. Based on my 10 years of teaching experience, this is the most powerful tool that I know.

Gratitude has empowered me to teach more effectively, appreciate my individual students, grow in my profession, and enjoy life. Utilizing gratitude, I am able to model one of the most important lessons in life, having a positive attitude, especially about the aspects of life that challenge me.

Gratitude Journal

To get started in your classroom with gratitude, I recommend actually writing your own gratitude list for a few weeks and feeling its power. Then you can share your example and start the activity with your students. You might start your gratitude journal with being thankful for being alive, for having food to eat and clothes to wear. If you can think about something related to teaching that you're grateful for, that's even more powerful

My students use a composition book and start every day by writing five gratitudes. If you have computers or iPads, you might have the students start a file to save their daily gratitude journal. By the end of the year, we each have almost 1,000 gratitudes. I show the students an example or let them see the form:

1. Thanks for ___________________________.
2. Thanks for ___________________________.
3. Thanks for ___________________________.

Once a week, we go around the class and share our favorite gratitude. I am always encouraged and pleasantly surprised by what my students share. I get to learn about things going on in their lives that I might not hear about otherwise. This helps build a positive culture in our classroom.

In addition, I suggest that the students should be specific. For example, instead of writing, “Thank you for lunch,” I would write, “Thank you for the tomatoes and lettuce in my salad and for the cool, sweet iced tea with friends,” or “Thank you for the nutritious lunch made by loving hands.”

Exercising the Muscle

Gratitude seems to work like a muscle, and the physical act of writing a gratitude list helps develop gratitude muscles. And Professor Philip Watkins of Eastern Washington University says that those who are the least grateful seem to gain the most from making this effort. That’s good news to those us who may find it hard to start a gratitude list.

Sometimes I really challenge the students by asking if they can be thankful for homework or chores. This challenge enables them to see what is good about homework—that it helps them learn and prepares them for school and life.

In her article “Gratitude Activities for the Classroom,” Vicki Zakrzewski of the Greater Good Science Center lists many more gratitude activities to try in your classroom. This year, a new activity that I started in my classroom is writing down gratitudes on sticky notes and putting them on our classroom door, so that we have a positive reminder every time we enter and leave the room. Students will even take this idea home and post gratitudes on sticky notes around their homes, reminding them to stay grateful.

Visible Change

Recent research by two leaders in the field of gratitude and education, Dr. Robert Emmons and Dr. Jeffrey Froh, supports the idea that gratitude improves the lives of students and adults. They have found several benefits for students and adults.

Keeping a gratitude journal on a daily basis helps students achieve higher grades; higher goals; more satisfaction with relationships, life, and school; less materialism; and more willingness to give back.

Keeping a gratitude journal enables both students and adults to be more optimistic, experience more social satisfaction, exercise more often, have less envy and depression, have fewer physical complaints, and sleep better.

I see these positive changes in my students. One of them saved her allowance and bought gratitude journals for her family. Her mom was in nursing school and very stressed. At the dinner table, they would share their gratitudes for the day and grow as a family. The mom came to me and thanked me for teaching gratitude to her daughter and helping her family. She said it helped her get through nursing school.

Tapping the Potential

Dr. Kerry Howells, a leading researcher into gratitude and education, actually trains teachers to utilize gratitude in the classroom. Watch the following powerful video where she gives examples and evidence of the power of using gratitude in education:

I challenge you to try it yourself and see how it works. My friends who have written a daily gratitude journal for at least two weeks speak positively of the experience. Gratitude has transformed many lives. It is true that our focus can stimulate growth. If I focus on the good and I am grateful, more comes into my life. Conversely, if I complain and focus on the negative, more of that is drawn into my life. For me, the fruit of the focus on gratitude is happiness. Finally, check out Gratefulness.org for extra gratitude resources.

Research

• Jeffrey J. Froh, William J. Sefick, Robert A. Emmons, Counting blessings in early adolescents: An experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being, Journal of School Psychology 46 (2008), pp.213-233 (PDF, 410KB).
• Jeffrey J. Froh, Robert A. Emmons, Noel A. Card, Giacomo Bono, Jennifer A. Wilson, Gratitude and the Reduced Costs of Materialism in Adolescents, Journal of Happiness Studies, Volume 12, No. 2, 2011 (PDF, 356KB).
• Robert Emmons, How Gratitude Can Get You Through Hard Times, Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, May 13, 2013.

Monday Motivator #14 2019-20

ARE YOU A SODA KID OR A WATER KID? {NOTICING OUR REACTIONS}

We have lots of discussions about being proactive and thinking win-win.

One of the ways I like to make these ideas relatable, especially to some kids who struggle with these concepts the most, is to use analogies that they are all familiar with and can easily relate to.

My favorite question to ask these days is not, "Are your being proactive or reactive?" but is instead, "Is this a Soda Kid choice or Water Kid choice?"

Let me help explain by using the Anchor Chart we made in class:

All kids know what happens when you shake a can or bottle of soda: it explodes! All over the floor, your clothes, your hands.... everywhere! It's a mess and takes a long time to clean up.

But what happens when you shake a bottle of water and then open it? Nothing! The water is just water- ready to drink and enjoy (and as one of my thirdsters pointed out, it's much healthier for your body than soda is, too!).

So how does this relate to our class and our personal reactions when life happens, situations are out of our control, or it feels like we're getting shaken and thrown around in all different directions? When your reaction comes out, is it one of soda or water?

Soda choices are made spur-of-the-moment, usually pure reaction, and are often filled with anger. They are messy and it usually takes a while to "clean up" and repair the harm. Water choices, however, are calm and in-control, even despite the hardest shaking. We spoke about how our bodies even feel like soda or water on the inside, especially in the heat of the moment, and talked about some of our Brain Break and cool-down strategies to get our body to water when it feels like exploding soda.

I set up this chart like I usually do when I compare two things, in a T-Chart. This was ready to go when we began our discussion and we brainstormed as a class how one type of person would react versus the other.

It was a very concrete and helpful way for kids to see proactive versus reactive thinking and, now that it's hanging in our classroom, we can refer back to it throughout the weeks ahead and simply notice where their reaction is falling: Soda or Water?

https://www.3rdgradethoughts.com/2015/11/are-you-soda-kid-or-water-kid-noticing.html

Monday Motivator #13 2019-20

November 8, 2019 The Gift of Noticing

AUTHOR

Brenda Power

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https://choiceliteracy.com/article/november-8-2019-the-gift-of-noticing/

I was away from home and realized I needed a photo of my garden for an upcoming blog post. I texted my neighbor who loves photography for help, and within an hour, I had three photographs of my garden in hand.

As I stared at these pictures, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Instead of seeing unruly weeds, flowers that needed dead-heading, or plants crowding out more fragile ones, I saw a beautiful garden—a peaceful place that looks like it receives attention and care. This moment made me realize that I need to spend more time admiring, and less time fixing. My garden isn’t a “to-do” list. I created it so our family could enjoy it together.

I realize this happens at school too. When I walk into someone else’s classroom, I notice the classroom community the teacher and students have created. I see the recent read alouds, the student-created charts, and the student artwork that covers the walls.  As I get ready to teach, the kids tell me how things work.

“Our reading bags are over here.”

“Before we begin reading workshop, we set up our spaces and choose what we want to read.”

“I sit up here so I can see the chart.”

Their directions show how empowered they feel and how proud they are of their classroom community.

When your school “to-do” list feels long, please take a moment to notice what you and your students have created together. Notice how your children listen as you read aloud, the productive buzz during writing workshop, and how excitement builds as students share the books they are reading. These noises and silences tell a beautiful story with moments to cherish.

I’ve been doing the same thing throughout the fall when I’ve arrived home from work. I walk through the garden and notice its beauty—the flowers, the birds, and the way it all works together.  If we take a little time to notice the beauty of what we’ve worked hard to create, perhaps our to-do lists will feel a bit shorter.