Our students have much to be thankful for. What’s nice is that they are thankful, and make no secret of it. Here are just of few of the ways our students express their gratitude.

Gratitude Journals
Our grade 3s are keeping gratitude journals. Messages of gratitude also cover their walls. They recently all prepared lunches for a local Out of the Cold program, and included heartfelt messages that will warm hearts as much as the lunches will fill bellies. I stopped by their class the other day to pick up the lunches and had the pleasure of hearing them share what they had just written in their journals. One was grateful for the fact his mother spent her time registering him for lacrosse. Another was grateful that his father coached his hockey team. A third was grateful for his guinea pig’s delight when he came home from school every day.

100 Reasons Why We Love KCS
One of our SK teachers recently created a 100-days-of-school mural, composed of 100 hearts completed by our JK, SK and grade 1 students, as well as some teachers and administrators. In each heart we wrote a message of what we love about KCS. The messages include:

“I love using numbers and counters.”
“I like going to the library.”
“We get to play chess.”
“The teachers are very funny.”

Compliment Friday
Each end of week assembly includes Compliment Friday where students are invited to share a public thank you in front of the whole school. Last week’s assembly included compliments to teachers for their support during exams, a guest teacher for jumping in when their teacher was away, friends and classmates for generally being awesome.

Class Meetings
Class meetings at KCS start with an around-the-room sharing of compliments or expressions of thanks. Last week I had an unexpected opportunity to join a class meeting dedicated to a student facing an exceptional personal challenge. Each of the other 41 grade 6 students gave a compliment to their classmate. This student was praised for being resilient, being brave, being funny, having a positive attitude and being a great friend.

One of our KCS Habits is Make the World Better. One way to do so is to express gratitude. Our students’ obvious gratitude makes our little part of the world much better. For that, I’m grateful.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics
You can follow Andrea on Twitter @afanjoy.