With the sugar highs of Halloween beginning to recede, the race to the end of 2024 has begun! Pressures to prepare for upcoming gift-giving holidays and end-of-year celebrations are inescapable. But between now and then, here in the US, there is an often-overlooked opportunity to hit the pause button: Thanksgiving.
In classrooms across the country, recognizing the Thanksgiving holiday is often relegated to fall hand-crafts in the few days before a fall break. Where that is true, we are missing a natural opportunity to promote authentic gratitude in the children in our community.
The Power of Gratitude
Volumes have been written about the power of having an “attitude of gratitude” – probably so much that the phrase has become a bit of a platitude. But consider this: according to UCLA Health, practicing gratitude for 15 minutes a day, five days a week, can enhance mental wellness and physical well-being in as little as 6 weeks. What impact might that have on the normalization of our children and our classrooms?
Habitually taking time for gratitude can:
- Enhance mental wellness
- Reduce depression and lessen anxiety
- Promote higher self-esteem.
- Enhance satisfaction with life.
- Create a heightened awareness of your own emotions, values, and strengths and a better understanding of others’ (empathy).
- Support strong social relationships.
- In aggregate, this can promote a lasting change in perspective.
- Positively affect physical health.
- Support heart health by reducing blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing.
- Relieve stress
- Promote activity in the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).
- Increase resilience, both physical and emotional.
Why Do We Need to Develop Gratitude?
Why don’t we naturally feel gratitude throughout our days? One reason is the way our brains are wired. The brain’s Prime Directive is to promote safety and efficiency. Because of this, we naturally pay most attention to things that are changing, constantly assessing them for possible risk. As a result, the brain has an estimated 80% negativity bias! Do you find that hard to believe? Consider how much harder it is to think of the many things that are going well in the classroom than the few things that are not yet optimized! If we want to focus on the positive, on things that rejuvenate us, and on things that exceed our expectations, we must do so mindfully and intentionally. It does not happen automatically.
But 15 minutes per day? In an already overcrowded school day? Like many other worthwhile practices, this is an investment that will pay dividends for the rest of the year. The good news is that, after the initial learning period, it can be wrapped into other practices in the school day!
The First Isolated Difficulty: Teach A Centering Practice
A good centering practice, if you don’t have something in place already, is the 4-7-8 breathing technique. It is quick to teach and even quicker to execute (once the inevitable silliness works itself out).
- Sit comfortably with the tip of the tongue behind the top front teeth.
- Breathe in quietly through the nose for 4 seconds
- Hold the breath for a count of 7 seconds
- Exhale forcefully through the mouth, pursing the lips, and making a “whoosh” sound for 8 seconds, completely emptying the lungs of air
- Repeat the cycle up to 4 times
Hint: to help children focus more on their breathing and less on the specific count for each breath pattern, agree on a signal (a tap of the bell, perhaps?) to signify moving from one pattern to the next. Initially, this will be the job of the guide, but in time, it can become a child’s job.
Bonus: have children close their eyes so that they are not distracted by others.
Super Bonus: this calming technique can be used anywhere, any time. It can be a powerful way to start when helping children resolve a conflict or when the class enters the classroom with a lot of excess energy.
The Second Isolated Difficulty: Access Gratitude
It is simple enough to ask children what they are grateful for. Children will respond quickly and enthusiastically with the kind of answers that they think you are looking for – usually family, friends, pets, and food. A great start, but we want to stretch their gratitude muscle so that they can find gratitude in many parts of their everyday life.
How do we get them to dig deeper? Consider dedicating your journaling topics for the rest of November primarily to aspects of gratitude. (If you are new to this blog series and need to understand 1001 reasons to spend time journaling with children, please refer to almost any of the blogs from this year!)
Set the stage for this activity by exploring the meaning of gratitude – it is more than just being happy for what we receive. True gratitude encourages us to reciprocate: to express or show our appreciation or to return a kindness.
Consider a typical response, “I am grateful for my friends.” Great start. What is it about having their friendship makes a difference? What brings out feelings of wanting to express or show appreciation for their friendship?
Challenge the children to express their gratitude using one of these three formats:
- I am grateful for my friends when…
- I am grateful for my friends who…
- I am grateful for my friends because…
And finish up the reflection by completing this thought:
- Their friendship makes me want to… (respond by saying or doing something).
Giving an example can help children form their own ideas. “I am grateful for my friends when they to ask if I can help them. I want to tell them how that makes me feel good. And it makes me want to sometimes ask my friends to help me, so they can feel as good as I do.”
BONUS: if children have a chance to share their reflections with one another, it also teaches children how to be a better friend!
Exercising the Gratitude Muscle
For a week or two,each day, choose a different focus. Encourage children to write down as many statements as they can think of that are true for that focus. For the friend example (above), they might be able to write one pair of statements about school friends, another about sports friends, another about neighborhood friends, etc. Here are just a few possibilities:
- Family (including furry and scaly family members)
- Any one of the fundamental needs: food, clothing, housing, etc.
- Things/people that make me laugh/bring me joy. (Maybe one thing and one people?)
- Special personality traits and/or abilities that I value in myself (whether other people value it or not)
- Things/people that make me feel capable, needed, or valued
- Things/people that make me feel anchored and safe.
- Things/people that I take for granted.
Classroom Leadership Tip: while it is quite valuable to have children share their gratitude for friends with the community, it is not beneficial to continue that practice with every prompt. It takes a long time for everyone to have an opportunity to share, and it is unlikely to yield the same benefit. Instead, consider asking everyone at the end of the week to look back on all of their reflections and choose one pair of statements to share with the group. This allows each child to choose something that they are comfortable sharing.
Putting it All Together
Once these two isolated difficulties are well in hand, we can combine them and wrap them into your classroom days. For some, the best time to integrate the practice is the end of the day. For others, it is at the end of morning meeting, setting the stage for positive interactions when children are dismissed to choose a work. Some may find that this is a beautiful settling activity when returning from recess.
Begin the 4-7-8 breathing. After 4 (+/-) cycles, ask if anyone has a gratitude that they would like to share, using the 2-sentence format established earlier. Give priority to children who have not shared recently.
Reflection for Adults:
Our days are full. Our children’s days are full. If I believe that fostering gratitude is valuable for my children and for the normalization of my classroom, how will I make time for lessons and activities like these in the next two weeks? How will I observe resulting changes in children’s interactions?
How is my own gratitude quotient? Would I benefit from the same activities that I am designing for my children?
Reflection for Children:
There are many reflections for children (and adults) built into this discussion. If you want more, choose one of the quotes below and ask the children to discuss or journal their reactions.
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.”
– Brene Brown
“When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.”
– Anthony Robbins
Image credit: Michael De Groot from Pixabay