Encouragement…everyone agrees we need it.
Over the last 18 plus months of publishing Positive News For You, I have come across a number of stories related to children in school. You can always find the stories of children bullying one another, being mean to one another, or disassociating with others. I look for the ones that talk about goodness and kindness. (Just this morning, I posted a story about children who heard about the “new kid” being bullied in his previous school and went and bought him new Nike sneakers as a gift.) {{more}}
The last year I have put up a number of stories related to children, as well as their teachers in school who have spent the time to use Post-it notes of encouragement on lockers, desks, and even bananas. (That’s right bananas. One of the dietitians in the kitchen took the time to write positive and encouraging messages to children on the bananas that they picked up for their lunch times.)
It wasn’t all that long ago I posted the story about every girl in school receiving roses for Valentine’s from a group of boys. But I have to admit the Post-it Note one has always been intriguing to me. Someone has to devote a lot of energy to the writing out the messages, that are then placed on these Post-it notes, distributed to desks, bathrooms, or even the lockers. What usually happens is the messages are created, they’re distributed, so that when the children come into the school what they find on their lockers are colorful notes of encouragement. These notes they say things for instance like “you are a rock star”, or “you’re awesome”, etc..
I’ve never really seen a story that indicates what the children actually felt upon the reception of these things or their. All too often we just see the side of distribution. What I’m really interested in is how much these notes impact the children.
I think if we knew this we would probably invest more time into the process itself. If we understood what it does to a child who’s had a bad morning a positive news for you what I want to begin doing is trying to find out more about this as well as encourage others so there’s three pieces to this process if you have done one of these, would you consider doing a video with some of the children that receive these and let them be candid in their response. If you’ve not done one of these, would you let me know whether or not you’ve even heard of this as a teacher or an administrator and if you would like to do one I would like to get behind this and letting people know not just how you put it together but with the end game was. Over the last few weeks I watched it a principal who read stories on her Facebook live to children. I’ve watched teachers who have made super investments in their children. In the midst of all the negative stories we see, I know that the majority of teachers are really great people. I know that from my own personal life, growing up with a mom who spent 31 years as an educator. The majority of people are good and we need to promote that. We need to get behind the positive things that occur in school not saying don’t deal with the negative but that shouldn’t be the forethought out of our mind so would you indulge me on this trip forward and help me to get children off to the right start.
