Gratitude was our classroom’s superpower

Gratitude was the simplest but most effective tool that I implemented in my classroom. When you are healing yourself, you are healing your students.

So, you’ve probably heard of the power of gratitude. It’s everywhere. However, most adults are just beginning to see the shifts that gratitude can have on their daily lives. We see that doing gratitude in your morning or evening routine can be life changing. As an educator, I thought, “Why aren’t we focusing on bringing this to children at young ages?” This could have a powerful effect on their lives and the future of our world if we implement this now.

Implementing gratitude

So, I tried not to get too fancy. I know how much you can spend on school supplies as a teacher. I’ve been there. I wanted this classroom routine to feel simple and doable. I looked on Amazon and found some cheap mini notebooks for my students. Each student chose the color of their notebook which felt very personal. We talked about gratitude and I showed them my own gratitude journal. I told them how gratitude helped me to feel lucky for each day that I woke up. I also explained how it helped me on days where I was feeling tough emotions such as exhaustion, stress, frustration, or anger. The rules were pretty simple: decorate your gratitude journal and write at least one thing you are grateful for in the journal each day. They could even draw a picture. I played around with trying to make this practice more intensive by trying to get my third and fourth graders to use complete sentences by saying “I am grateful for…” but that wasn’t really the focus. We did lots of other writing pieces. The goal was to start the morning or afternoon positively each day so that we could learn even more in the rest of our day.

Even my students who were tired and having a tough morning could find just one thing they were grateful for. Sometimes it was sunshine, pizza, ice cream, friends, family, school, or their teachers. That always warmed my heart. My students knew that I was going to look at their gratitude journals so sometimes they would write: “I am grateful for you” and I would write back, “I am grateful for you too!” Relationships are truly at the heart of this work.

Why it works

According to this article, gratitude is more than just a positive emotion that helps us to feel good. Brain research tells us that it can also have a positive effect on our bodies, minds, and brains! Another article digs into the science of gratitude, as it states that gratitude activates many parts of the brain including the ones associated with rewards and motivation! What an astounding revelation for educators who are always looking for positive behavior interventions!

Build the habit

But doing it once a month or even once a week isn’t enough. The key is to build a habit. My students were humans, and just like us as adults, we get up and some days we just don’t want to meditate or move or do that healthy habit that we know will make us feel good. Yet, even on the days where they felt icky, my students could write one word or phrase in their gratitude journal. Just one. And slowly, I could see a little bit of that weight of whatever they were carrying that day being lifted. We had developed a powerful habit.

Gratitude became the cornerstone of our entrance routine. I always needed a mindful moment to transition into my next lesson or group of students after lunch or being in a staff meeting, so starting out with our gratitude journals was the perfect way to refocus. I would play soft calm instrumental music and students knew to take our their gratitude journals. I would take out my journal as well and then I would meet with students individually to “check-in” with them and talk to them about what they were grateful for. Usually it would lead to them sharing more about their evening the night before or what they had coming up that weekend. I was learning so much about them in just that bite-sized five minutes. After that, students would move into other academic practice activities or finish up previous work before we paused for our “circle up” time and our meditation together as a class.

Gratitude is healing

Our gratitude journals became a quick but effective part of our routine. Using a predictable and consistent structure is a trauma-informed practice that can help students to feel safe because they know what to expect. My students knew how every class would start. I had students from all sorts of backgrounds and this practice was valuable for every one of them. It was helpful for me too. As adults, we don’t always realize that we have our own traumas we are healing from as well.

Being an educator isn’t easy. There is a lot to balance every single day and that weight is hard to just let go of after work. And being an educator who is healing from your own trauma also isn’t easy. But I found that in healing my own self, I was healing my students. I was showing up as the best version of myself each day even through the stress, the sadness, and the rollercoaster of emotions. Gratitude allowed me to feel incredibly blessed to get to do this work with my students each day. They knew that I loved every moment with them even when it was hard. Consequently, they reciprocated. There was no fancy behavior system; it was just safety, openness, and immense gratitude.

I will forever love my students for the way they helped me to love myself. Everyday, we were grateful for each other and getting another day to learn and grow together. And that is a superpower.