Gratitude

This week’s article summary is about gratitude and how to foster it in your classroom, particularly through student journaling.

While this article is especially appropriate with Thanksgiving next week, it’s important for us to help our students be appreciative on a daily basis for the little things.

I wish all of you a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving Break. I am very thankful to be a part of the Trinity community and for all you do for our kids!

Joe

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Would you like to improve the culture in your classroom and your life?

Try gratitude.

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.

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 start every day by writing five gratitudes. I show the students an example or let them see this 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."

Gratitude seems to work like a muscle, and the physical action of writing a gratitude list helps develop "gratitude muscles." A recent study published in School Psychology Review, showed that those who are the least grateful seem to gain the most from making this effort. That is 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.

Another gratitude activities to try in your 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.
Recent research supports the idea that gratitude improves the lives of students and adults. It illustrates how:

Keeping a gratitude journal on a daily basis helps students achieve the following:

• Higher grades
• Higher goals
• More satisfaction with relationships, life, and school
• Less materialism
• More willingness to give back.

For adults, keeping a gratitude journal enables people to:

• Be more optimistic
• Experience more social satisfaction
• Exercise more often
• Have less envy and depression
• Have fewer physical complaints
• 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.