Gratitude is a Choice We Make Every Day
by Tatum Schultz, Third Grade STEM Teacher, Rocketship United Academy
Every language in the world has a way of saying “thank you.” Gratitude is an inherent quality that resides deep within each one of us. It is triggered by different events and crosses the boundaries of race, age, and gender. Gratitude comes from the heart. It is an acknowledgment of the positive things that we feel in our soul. When we give gratitude, we give a gift freely and unearned.
Every Rocketship school had five core values. Four are shared across our network, and they are respect, persistence, empathy, and responsibility. Rocketeers recites these shared values in their Rocketeer creed each day and lives them out at school and in their community. The fifth core value of each school is chosen by parents and teachers as the value that best illustrates that school’s unique character and vision. Fifth core values range from service to bravery to curiosity to ganas.
Our core values fit within our mission to prepare our students to thrive in school and beyond by equipping them with critical character skills. Many of our students come from high-poverty communities. Research shows that children living in these communities experience more “toxic stress” than children living in middle or upper class neighborhoods. Toxic stress makes it difficult for children to manage their emotions, resolve conflicts, and respond to provocations. That is why we create a consistent, predictable, and positive school experience that helps our students develop the social-emotional skills they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond. Our instructional programs include social emotional learning curricula taught roughly three times a week in morning community meetings. We utilized carefully-selected curricula differentiated for lower and upper grade students. In our younger grades, we use the Kimochis curriculum which is centered on five characters with unique temperaments and personalities, designed to give students depersonalized opportunities to practice the skills to recognize their emotions, demonstrate care for others, establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and handle challenging situations. The characters act as a safe third party that students can relate to as they consider their own strengths and development areas. Students in upper grades use RULER tools to track their behaviors, feelings, and progress in a mood journal.
In the beginning of February, we decided to roll out our fifth core value, gratitude. Our school picked this value because we thought it was a characteristic that would make our students stronger as well as build strong relationships with their peers and teachers. When we introduced gratitude, it was just word, but now it is a feeling that will touch your soul when you walk through the front doors of a Rocketship school.
Gratitude Grams were an idea that our Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) team launched to further our social-emotional teaching and let our students express themselves. We thought it would give our children a vehicle to show their thanks and appreciation; to give appreciation and kindness to others. Every day, for seven days, students were given a half sheet of colored paper with a different student’s name on it. Their responsibility was to watch gratitude spread. They had to write one sentence thanking that student for something they had done or they could capture appreciation for them as a peer. At the end of seven days, the students would receive their own name and could read what seven other students appreciated about them. And just like that, gratitude grew through the halls of Rocketship United Academy.
Gratitude is not just a feeling deep inside, it is choice that we make every day at Rocketship. It is an attitude we adopt and one we freely give to the children we meet each day. The habits of kindness never grow old or tiresome, they are renewed each day with a smile and open heart. To give gratitude freely is the energizing spirit that is harnessed each day in the classrooms of Rocketship.
Tatum is a third grade STEM teacher at Rocketship United Academy in Nashville. This is her first year at Rocketship, she previously taught third grade for two years in Wisconsin. She is originally from Wisconsin and was raised by her father who is a principal and her mother who is a superintendent. Tatum believes that all students have the ability to learn, grow, and make their dreams come true!
Published on February 27, 2017
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