In October, students and staff participated in the Dare to Care program with Dwayne Peace. Sitting in a circle, with 35 students and two adults, and sharing our stories was a heart opening experience to understand where we had all come from and where we were all going. Each person in the circle had to answer:
After sharing my story, I had the opportunity to listen to each of the student’s stories and what I took away from their participation was each student has a story and as a learner, how he/she views their reality is based on their worldview.
As the months have passed, we have completed many tasks to follow up with our Dare to Care involvement. My latest task with the Grade 9 students was to create and maintain a “Jar of Happiness” for twenty-one days based on a pre-assessment happiness survey we completed in class. The students were intrigued by the concept of keeping a jar and yet hesitant about what they could write each day to recognize what made them happy. Some students took their jars home, some kept them in their lockers, and some kept them on my desk. As a teacher, I participated in the activity with them; they could see my jar and would ask how was I recording my daily “happiness” moments.
As the months have passed, we have completed many tasks to follow up with our Dare to Care involvement. My latest task with the Grade 9 students was to create and maintain a “Jar of Happiness” for twenty-one days based on a pre-assessment happiness survey we completed in class. The students were intrigued by the concept of keeping a jar and yet hesitant about what they could write each day to recognize what made them happy. Some students took their jars home, some kept them in their lockers, and some kept them on my desk. As a teacher, I participated in the activity with them; they could see my jar and would ask how was I recording my daily “happiness” moments.
During the task, the students did journal entries to check in with answering
and it was interesting to read that some of them were starting to recognize it was the “little things” in their day that brought a smile to their face. Some examples of happy moments students were grateful for were being with family and friends; helping students in the classroom; appreciating their own health; and recognizing their individual accomplishments. I shared with them this Kurt Vonnegut’s quote:
“Appreciate the little things. When you look back on them, you’ll realize they were the big things.
This task aligned with students having a voice and choice in how they kept their jars and how they were going to present their learnings to me from visuals, written responses, or engaging in a one-on-one conversation about their twenty-one days. Coincidently, Day 17 (student’s first day of spring break), was International Day of Happiness, and I was able to send them an email to share information about this day and links that they could follow up on with how the global community was celebrating. To wrap up this task, the students had the opportunity to create their own children’s book based on what brought them happiness and share it with our Community Centre Kindergarten class.
My take away from this Jar of Happiness task was the significance of keeping the momentum and follow through of a powerful sharing experience and continuing to get students to be reflectors of their learning and feelings in their daily life moments.
Jasprite Atwal (@jasprite) teaches Grade 9, is passionate about engaging students in self-reflection and promoting a ‘Me to We’ attitude in the learning community.
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