Rochelle Almonte

We’ve reached the end of our first week of school, woohoo! I remember last year, I came home with a headache and was so stressed out. I guess it was normal since it was my first official year of teaching. This time around, I come home tired, but when I reflect on my day, I’m like “wow, I actually had a really good day with all of my students”. I don’t know if it’s my mentality that changed, or that I’m more organized this year, or that I have my own classroom, or that I have the younger students, or maybe all of the above.

On the other hand, I must admit that all summer, I’ve gotten so many ideas from all of the books that I’ve read on what I could’ve taught older students (junior and senior students). I had so many topics that I wanted to discuss with them, but because I have the younger ones now, I can’t quite teach those themes the way I planned. Even though it’s tougher to teach the higher levels based on my experience, I actually really like the fact that we can discuss life in depth. Nonetheless, I’m still very thankful.

Anyway, back to the topic of this week’s post: Teaching my students about gratitude. Since I started my own gratitude journal and with all of the podcasts I’ve watched and listened to, I thought that this would be a great idea to begin my lessons.

So, I tried it with the groups that I’ve met this week and shockingly, they quite enjoyed it!

What I did was I wrote the word GRATITUDE on the board and then I asked them what it meant. After we defined the term, I asked why it is important to be grateful. If no one gave the exact answer I wanted, I would explain it to them.

Then, I asked them to name me something they were grateful for at that moment. At first, there were a few hands, but as we shared more answers, a lot more students started to participate.

It was just so unreal seeing the smile on their faces, I almost thought it was too good to be true. I’m probably getting my hopes up, but I just want to take in this moment to appreciate this whole week. I think it’s important that we teach students, especially the younger generations to be grateful for what they have instead of focusing and complaining about what they don’t have. We should tell them that they’re lucky to have an opportunity to have an education because that’s not the case in many countries.

Last but not least, I’m grateful for the opportunities I have with these students, and with that, I wish you all a great weekend!

x

Rochelle