“Gratitude is the opposite of entitlement... of which there is a lot of these days.” — Andrew Lawson, 2021

<aside> 👉 Use first thing in the morning.

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The practice of gratitude is another common mindfulness practice. It is the simple practice of writing down three things you are grateful for at the start of the day. It is that easy. The three things don’t have to be grandiose. They can be small things, like “I am grateful that my car started this morning,” or “I am grateful that my friend saved me a seat on the bus.” You don’t have to share what you’re grateful for, either. It’s something between you and the paper on which you wrote it down. The challenge is to think of something new every day, as a common practice is never to repeat the same things twice. The first week will get the big stuff out of the way, “I am grateful for my family, my friends, my house, my dog, food,” and so on to the point where you will have to work to think of things to be grateful for. This is where the magic happens, as the practice of gratitude can change the way we express gratitude in our daily lives and also helps to train our brains to “see the good” (Brown & Wong, 2017).

To incorporate gratitude into your classroom, help your students start a gratitude journal and ask them to write three things they are grateful for every morning as they come into class. For younger grades, this is also an excellent way to get some extra writing practice. You might choose to start a journal, too. One teacher I spoke to who uses this strategy every morning said that students generally respond well to the gratitude journal and put a lot of thought into it. Like all strategies in this toolkit, students (and staff!) will only get as much out of it as they put in—the buy-in is so important (A. Lawson, personal communication, 2021).