Developing an attitude of gratitude toward the people, things
and events in your life is a life-affirming and effective way to
strengthen your emotional resilience and increase happiness.
Maintaining a gratitude
journal makes it easy to get in the habit of focusing on the
positives in your life, while also reaping the benefits of personal
reflection.
Keeping a gratitude journal
Distribute a Gratitude Journal to each student. You can use the
printed
version or the
OneNote version of the Gratitude
Journal from the HeadStrong
resource.
To get an indication of how grateful students are already, check
out the gratitude test on the
Authentic
Happiness website. Students will have to register for the site
but this is free. Ask students to record their Gratitude test
scores in the Journal. You might want to get students to re-sit
this test once they've kept their gratitude journal for a couple of
weeks, and see whether keeping a journal has had an impact on their
level of gratitude.
Making it a habit
Why not start by making time in your lessons each week for
students (and yourself) to write in your gratitude journal. Gauge
what works best for you and your class in terms of regularity and
timing. The main thing is to keep it enjoyable and fresh and to not
turn it into a chore.
Encourage students to also include entries
when they are at home - it could be a "fun" homework activity that
they complete by writing about three to five things or people
you're grateful for before they go to bed, or first thing in the
morning, or on the way to school.
Other options for expressing
gratitude?
If the journal approach doesn't work so well for your
students, there are other ways of practicing gratitude, such
as:
- putting aside time to reflect upon the things and people they
are grateful for
- acknowledging an ungrateful thought "school is boring" and
finding a grateful one to substitute it with eg "I enjoy school
overall - I have new challenges and have good friends there"
- talk with a friend on a regular basis about the things they're
thankful for
- express their gratitude through art, digital media or
music
- express their gratitude to someone face to face
- write a letter of gratitude to someone, and either send it or
don't! Studies have shown a substantial boost in happiness either
way, although the largest boost has been shown when you actually
hand deliver your letter of gratitude (Seligman et al, 2005).