After a spring and summer of learning about mindset and positive psychology, I decided to compile a list of positive quotes and videos to share with students this school year. Even though I knew this would take a few minutes out of an already packed class schedule, I hoped somehow intentionally creating the space for self-reflection and some deeper thought would somehow help my students.

Straight away on week one I dove in with a clip on famous failures. After watching the video I asked students to write a short reflection or any thoughts they had on the video. After jotting down ideas, students shared in small groups, and then finally I called on a few students to share out with the class. This first video stirred up more emotion than I anticipated! Discussion quickly went from “face-value” reflection to a much deeper message. Somehow in each hour the idea that these students had failed or been called a failure really conjured up some feeling. As I did my best to guide the discussion, I saw many heads nod in agreeance as we started to discuss how sometimes recovering from failure is the key thing needed for success.

With the first week going better than planned I continued on with my weekly quote and video. Each week I have been incredibly impressed with the content of discussion taking place after the video. What has also been interesting, but not a revelation, is overhearing some phenomenal discussion in groups, but then some of the more profound voices staying quite during the class share time. In relation to the school year it is still early and I am hopeful this activity helps some of these profound, yet quiet, voices feel a sense of comfort to be vulnerable and let their thoughts be heard.

The topic for this past week was again positive thinking, and specifically the Law of Attraction. For the third week in a row I have been impressed with the content of the discussion. I wish I had hanging microphones in my room and I could secretly record what these students are saying. I truly think there are future leaders in my classroom! I am pretty confident we had a student piece together his own motivational quote. After he spoke the class kind of did the corner of their eye look back at me like, “Did he really just say that?” One student shouted out that he took it from Google, but I haven’t found it yet if he did. For sake of anonymity I will just leave this here with some initials, maybe not even real initials 😉 Peace.

“See the dream. Work for the dream. Live in the dream.” -I.T.