Gratitude

I ran across this article yesterday:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/

I know especially this time of year, we think a lot about things we are grateful for...but I wonder what would happen if we expressed gratitude for other people every day of the year! I love the story in the article about the school where this worked. There are statistics that say something like 75% of people feel unappreciated in their jobs...I think that probably goes double for teachers! I know we all put in so much extra time and effort (not to mention money) planning activities or facilitating for clubs and often it seems to go unnoticed. I came in to my room after dismissing my after school Journalism Club meeting to find this on my from one of the students-she must have written it as they were lining up:

It's nice to be appreciated! :)

I try to model that for my kiddos as well. This year, I posted an example earlier in the year, we started gratitude journals-I love reading their entries. We make things for our support staff on the holidays and I am a big fan of thank-you cards (I blame my mother-that was always a required activity after receiving gifts from relatives!:). I write them to parents who show up for meetings or class presentations-last year 2 of my parents gave me a set of cards as an end-of-the-year-gift-I thought that was very meaningful. They obviously recognized that I would use them!

I know I probably don't say it often enough, but I'm incredibly grateful for you guys in the blogging community! I literally follow hundreds of blogs, but with some people I feel like I collaborate more with you guys than I do my own team at school! I get so much inspiration from the ideas put out there-it has definitely made me a better teacher. :)