Teaching Students to Pay It Forward

The TeachThought February Blog Challenge centers on the themes of kindness and caring. This week's post: 


How can we teach students to pay kindness forward - to give expecting nothing in return?

I feel that this can be challenging--many people (adults and children alike) are motivated to do something knowing that they will get something in return. I believe that practice in performing acts of kindness (random or not) strengthens our ability to do them more often. We also need to realize that there are two different examples of "receiving nothing in return". One is a simple, but heartfelt "thank you" with no gift or reward for completing the act. The other is a random act where the recipient will never know who completed the act. Both are important.

Adults and educators need to model larger and smaller acts of kindness over and over again and students need to be aware of all parts of a act of kindness--they need to walked through the entire process and witness the intrinsic result for the person that initiated the kindness. Here is an example: I may bake cookies over the weekend and give some to a colleague of mine on Monday. I would tell my students (not so that I get complimented but to model) "I had extra cookies and I'm going to give them to Mrs. H. I hope it will make her day!" My hope that she is pleased with my act of kindness is an opportunity for my students to know that I'm intrinsically motivated by giving her cookies and wanting her to enjoy them. 

I also need to encourage students to perform their own acts of kindness. The gratitude journaling we completed at the start of every class period in November ended up motivating many of my students to perform acts of kindness themselves. As they wrote about what they were grateful for many students told the people they were grateful for how much they meant to them. (Writing this post has made me realize that we should reinstate this journaling again! I will begin on Monday.)

As educators, our plates are always full of requirements but we are never too busy for exercises that strengthen the emotional development of our students. #reflectiveteacher

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Name That Executive Role!

Image
Students today learned about the many roles of the head of the Executive Branch, the President of the United States. I found several images of former Presidents in these roles--can you guess which is which? Post your answers below or email them to me. Choices: Commander-In-Chief Chief Executive Political Party Head Chief Diplomat 1.  President Eisenhower 2. President George HW Bush (on the right side of the picture) 3. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  4. President Reagan meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (this one's a bit of a giveaway!)
Read more

Historical Perspective and Peel the Fruit Thinking Routine

Image
Practicing historical perspective is an essential social studies skill. Historical perspective is being able to step into a historic situation and examine the motivations, biases, and beliefs of a person or group of people. Students have to revert to the beliefs of a group of people even if those beliefs completely contradict the views we have today. They must weigh decisions based on the situation of the time, not necessarily how situations are viewed today. The C3 Framework for Social Studies states that "Historical understanding requires recognizing this multiplicity of points of view in the past, which makes it important to seek out a range of sources on any historical question rather than simply use those that are easiest to find. It also requires recognizing that perspectives change over time, so that historical understanding requires developing a sense of empathy with people in the past whose perspectives might be very different from those of today." http://www.so...
Read more

Industrial Revolution Haiku

Students have been learning about the Industrial Revolution in the mid1800s and how it changed life in New England. Today students processed their learning by creating haiku poems on the subject. They were challenged to think about and evaluate this topic within the structure of a haiku, a 3 line poem with 17 total syllables--5 in the 1st and 3rd lines and 7 in the second line. The poems have been impressive and some will be posted here soon.
Read more