November is Gratitude Month at Anacapa School!
Gratitude is such a powerful concept that this month at Anacapa School we will be focusing on teaching and practicing gratitude with our students. By teaching students to practice gratitude before Thanksgiving, we are equipping them with valuable life skills that extend far beyond the holiday season. Whether through journaling, art, volunteering, or simple conversations, these activities can help students of all ages embrace a mindset of thankfulness, creating a positive ripple effect in their lives and the lives of others. The earlier children learn the power of gratitude, the more resilient, compassionate, and happy they will become.
We started this month off right with a gratitude meditation led by Elyse during our Monday morning assembly. We followed this with a quick write with the students listing some of the things they are grateful for. Each day this month we will be working to bring activities, discussions and examples of how we can speak and show gratitude.
In order to develop a little deeper understanding of gratitude, below is a quick guide that we can all use to be more proactive in being thankful for all the wonderful things we have already, embracing and counting the blessings we wake up with every day.
There are four essential components of the gratitude experience and they are:
Notice, Think, Feel and Do. These are all ways we can express gratitude as well.
To realize all the benefits of experiencing gratitude we will prompt our students with statements like below:
Notice the things in your life that you can be grateful for...
Think deeply about why you have been given this thing you value...
Reflect on how you feel about the gift you have been given.
What can you do to express appreciation?
The first three prompts are really about reflecting to experience gratitude but the last prompt is a call to action to express gratitude.
The process of noticing, thinking, feeling, and doing can take as little as a few minutes, or it can be savored over longer periods of time. Ultimately, we want our students to experience and express gratitude as a character value, improving well-being and nurturing relationships on and off campus! Below are some further examples of goals and means for both experiencing and expressing gratitude.
Goal: Notice the Good
Means: We want to empower students to notice the good in their lives and in their learning community. We also want to consider ways to offer support for those who want or need it.
Goal: Capture What You Think and How You Feel
Means: We want to make sure we are capturing the experience, and even when we are short on time, we can give the option to draw, write on paper, use a word processor, record a voice memo, or take a photo. This allows that moment to come back as a reference in time driving an even higher level of appreciation.
Goal: Do Something to Express Your Gratitude
Means: A student might choose to continue with “capture what you think and how you feel” from above by gifting their drawing, video, etc. to someone who has impacted them. They may also have something completely different in mind like a small gift, poem or act of kindness but either way, we can encourage our students to go the extra mile when they express their gratitude to others
With gratitude, learning at school is significantly more efficient when we are in a state of positive emotion rather than a state of negative emotion, and offering gratitude to yourself and others is a daily goal we should all be striving for! Let's all do our best to have more conversations at home and elsewhere to build up our amazing kids!
