Cultivating Gratitude

Where I live in Southern Ontario, autumn comes with startling beauty every year. There’s the invigorating crispness of the cooler air. There’s the almost-impossibly blue skies, framed by the riotous reds and yellows of the trees. There’s the delightful crunch of leaves underfoot. There’s the sound of geese honking their way south for the winter.

And for me, this time of year always makes me reflect on themes of gratitude. I’m sure it’s due largely to the fact that Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October, so the changing of the seasons and the holiday that (at least theoretically) celebrates thankfulness coincide nicely. Another huge contributing factor to my gut-reaction sensations of gratitude at this time of year is the way I had so many teachers who encouraged us to practice gratitude while I was growing up.

This is something that teachers really ought to be doing all year, but what better time to intentionally focus on habits of gratitude than around Thanksgiving (whether you celebrate in October or November)?

In North American culture, students are increasingly growing up in a world where entitlement and selfishness reign supreme. A culture of incredible privilege is a blessing, but it is also rife with aspects of the Curse—greed, apathy, and ingratitude. These sinful attitudes are in direct opposition to the abundant life that Jesus offers.

In her book Choosing Gratitude, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth writes, “The consequences of an ungrateful spirit are not as readily seen as, say, those of a contagious disease. But they are no less deadly. Western civilization has fallen prey to an epidemic of ingratitude. Like a poisonous vapor, this subtle sin is polluting our lives, our homes, our churches, and our culture.” The way to combat this sinister soul-killer is through intentional gratitude. She goes on to say, “Gratitude is a lifestyle. A hard-fought, grace-infused, biblical lifestyle.”

But how do we cultivate that lifestyle in ourselves and our students? The first step is simply by becoming aware of how much we have to be grateful for. When we never pause to recognize the abundant gifts around us, we likely won’t view them as gifts. And we certainly won’t be drawn in worship to the Giver behind the gifts.

In our privileged lives, we so often take goodness for granted. Recognizing that we have been given so much should change our hearts, and make them bow in gratitude to our abundant Giver.

There are so many ways that you can do this with your students. Here are just a few practical ideas.

Raising Awareness

Sometimes the first step to being grateful is realizing the width and depth and breadth of what we have to be grateful for. One wonderful, child-friendly way of raising awareness of our privilege is Gary Miller’s books Life in a Global Village or This Side of the Global Wall. These books use world statistics in easy-to-grasp ways to reveal the poverty and need that the majority of the world faces.

Sometimes, the first step to cultivating gratitude is simply realizing how much we have to be grateful for.

Group Contributions

Another powerful way to mediate on how much we have to be grateful for is by having your students work together to create a long list of items they’re thankful for. There is something visceral and powerful about seeing dozens or even hundreds of words in one place and knowing that each of them represents a good gift from the Father.

You could work together to try to reach a certain number, or have a visual way of displaying each item. Students could write each item they think of on a strip of colorful paper, then the papers could be linked together to make a paper chain that gets draped around the classroom. Or, students could write items on colorful sticky notes, and the sticky notes could cover a wall, chalkboard, or bulletin board. Another variation is to put a large sheet of butcher paper on the wall and let them write all over it with markers.

The method of presentation is up to you; the important thing is giving your students a visual way to display their blessings.  

Individual Contributions

Instead of a group project, you could also give your students a way in which to create their own personal collection of blessings. Maybe each student could decorate the outside of a glass jar, then fill the jar with strips of paper listing the things they’re thankful for. Maybe you could give each student a small pie pumpkin or gourd and let them write their items with Sharpie. Another option would be to give each student a small notebook and have them write several items in it each day. All of these activities would be most powerful if done daily for a length of time.

If students do an individual reflection like this, I think it would be beneficial to have them do some self-assessment afterwards. Have them reflect on how this activity impacted them. Did it make them go through their days with a different mindset? Was it difficult or easy to keep thinking of new things? How did it make their hearts feel?

Activities

Another way to have students reflect on their blessings is through activities that focus on gratitude.

For instance, you could send students outside on a scavenger hunt. Their prompts of things to find/record could be something like the following: something that makes you smile, something you like to play with, something that smells good, something that shows God’s creativity, etc.

Another activity to encourage creative thankfulness would be to have students see if they can come up with a word they are thankful for that starts with every letter of the alphabet. Students could then compare what they thought of with other’s lists.

An option for older students (though this could work for any grade level) is to write thank you notes. When my husband taught high school, he did something he called “Thank You Notevember.” On each morning for the month of November, he gave students a notecard and a prompt of who they should write a note of thanks to. Some examples of recipients included a teacher, a friend, a parent, someone who probably wouldn’t typically get a thank you note, a pastor, a mentor/hero, the person beside you, etc. Of course, students should then also make sure they actually deliver the thank you notes to the recipients.

Prayer

Prayers of thanks are another beautiful practice of gratitude that can be implemented in the classroom. Again, this could be done on an individual level or group level. A vivid memory for me from my years in the classroom is the time when I had students write all the things they could think of that they were grateful for on a piece of paper. I gave them several minutes to do so, then had them circle five that they especially liked.

We then bowed our heads and went around the room, and students listed the things they had chosen. I told them they could simply start their prayer with, “God, thank you for . . .” and then list their five things. It was a tender and powerful time that brought me to tears, hearing their precious voices listing their blessings, one after the other.

However you choose to help your students cultivate gratitude, know that you are participating in a beautiful and powerful work. Intentionally reminding ourselves to be grateful helps us to recognize that the gifts we have been given are so much deeper and fuller than we often stop to realize.

And we remind ourselves of what we so easily forget: God’s goodness is all around us. We can reach out and touch it, taste it, see it. And in those reminders, we allow ourselves to be shaped into more thankful and generous people.