9 Easy Ways Teachers Can Increase Happiness in the Classroom
Oh summer holidays! For teachers it is time to regroup, take a deserved break and prepare for their new school year starting the end of August or beginning of September. With the hope that kids will come back to the classroom and hybrid education on the back burner, how can we implement easy ways to increase happiness in the classroom? How can we nurture the emotions of our students, increase their mental health to maintain a healthier state, and increase happiness when kids are in school?
If you have been following 365give, you know we have the research that shows giving increases happiness in school kids and anyone that participates in a daily giving habit. But how do I, as a teacher implement giving into my classroom to build a positive, healthy and happy experience with my students without compromising my learning requirements. How do I, as the teacher, hit my educational targets and increase my students happiness?
Teaching our students to give can easily be implemented to our educational targets while enhancing the educational experience. Social-emotional learning has been integrated into our classrooms, and giving is no exception. Teaching our students to give is part of a social-emotional curriculum. Seriously, it is. You just need to adopt it into your class to see the effects!
Integrating Giving Into Your Curriculum
Giving can benefit plants, animals and people. This makes it easier to integrate giving into science, environmental courses, art classes, literature/reading, and yes, math! We have put together a few example itineraries under each school and classroom membership so you can see how to fit giving into your daily teaching. If you are starting your school day with mindfulness, great. You can mix this up with a 5 minute give where students write a sentence of gratitude, give each other a hug to start the day (we can do this now if you have low COVID rates in your class or school) or use Monday mornings as your give planning day, teaching children how to plan an easy but effective give for each day of the week. If you are wanting to build a happier classroom, giving is an easy way to introduce a happiness habit that can easily be done in your class for a few minutes a day. The benefits outweigh the planning it takes to get your students happy!
Easy Ways Teachers Can Increase Happiness With These Planet Gives
Use these planet gives in your classroom and mix them up with y our science curriculum:
- Designate a recycling area for your students so they can contribute to the health of the planet
- Grow plants on your window sill to teach our kids how to grow basics for their kitchen (potted herbs are great) or care for plants on an ongoing basis.
- Encourage zero waste lunches in your classroom. If you are a school that provides lunch for your students, make it zero waste! No plastic, no disposable cutlery, have your students bring a fork, plate and cup to school that they wash each day.
Easy Ways Teachers Can Increase Happiness With These Animal Gives
Use these animal gives in your art classes, writing, reading or home economics:
- Make thank you cards for animal shelter employees and volunteers.
- Tape a short book reading that can be played to animals in the local shelter.
- make no-bake animal cookies or crackers in the classroom that can be sent to a local animal shelter. Here are five recipes to choose from.
Easy Ways Teachers Can Increase Happiness With These People Gives
- Start the day off with your students saying one nice thing about another student.
- Have each student right a note of gratitude to someone they know
- Create cards for seniors in a local long term facility or retirement home and send them off so they can be distributed to resident
Giving is Easy When You Make It Part of Your School Year
Like any of the social-emotional learning programs, it just takes a commitment from you, the teacher, to implement the plan. When giving becomes front and center it is easy to coordinate and implement into your class and school. Hint: when other teachers see a change in your classroom and your students, they will be knocking on your door to find out how you accomplished this! Don’t be surprised if your principal asks as well!
With our help, you will have a bevy of giving ideas to pull from. All you need is to sign up for a free 365give membership and your door to giving is open! Sign up even if you not sure just to see how easy giving is in the classroom on a daily basis! What you will find is that once your students get a hang of giving, they will want to start adding their giving ideas to the weekly giving schedule. And we encourage you to let them take that leadership role! Their giving will become a happiness habit when they are included in the planning process.
Get your free membership today and use this summer to plan how giving will be included in your classroom to make your students happier!