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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Gratitude

I ran across this article yesterday:



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. :)


4 comments:

  1. OMG! Did you see my post today? I swear we are totally on the same wavelength!

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  2. I've had thoughts of feeling unappreciated in a certain situation I'm dealing with just in the last 24 hours. On another note though, I'm big on thank you notes too with parents and my class. We thank the music teacher after the music program and the PE teacher after field day and parents after field trips, etc.
    ❀ Tammy
    Forever in First

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    Replies
    1. That's thoughtful Tammy! You know we appreciate you! :)

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