Today I’m super excited to be linking up with Enchanted Elementary to share this week’s “One Little Thing”.

This week Laura’s “One Little Thing” was Kindness.

I’d first like to start off by saying that I don’t have a mean class…I remember a class when I first began teaching that would definitely slide right into this category, but that’s a story for another blog post on another day! But getting back to this year’s class…

Occasionally, like in any classroom, they do have to be reminded at times to be kind to each other, which my co-teaching partner and I do…cause that’s why they pay us the big bucks…lol. Seriously though all jokes aside, we believe in building a respectful and friendly culture in our classroom which supports each other and focuses on the positive…we’re very much into the Growth Mindset concepts taught by Carol Dweck.

 

The school I currently teach at went through an administrative change a few years ago with the retirement of the previous principle. I remember my husband and I attending the welcome back meeting as we had children at the school and was super excited when the new principal began her presentation by introducing the FISH Philosophy.

 

I had heard about the Fish Philosophy through a fellow teacher and then again at a teacher development conference I had attended and was really excited to see how the new Principle would implement this philosophy.

Fast forward three years and I now find myself teaching grade 6 at this school and am able to witness first hand exactly how far the school has come after incorporating the Fish Philosophy into its culture.

So at the beginning of this year, we hit the ground running and did a lot of work incorporating the FISH Philosophy into our lesson planning.

For those of you who are not familiar with the FISH Philosophy…

“The FISH! Philosophy is a fresh and powerful training solution. It helps you create a culture where people choose to bring their best to work.”

http://www.fishphilosophy.com/

The four practices that the entire Fish Philosophy is based on…(taken directly from their website)…are:

• Choose Your Attitude

• Be There

• Play

• Make Their Day

 

 

 

 

ALTHOUGH kindness can be found in all four ideologies of the FISH philosophy, we really focused and emphasised kindness during our work in the “Make their day component”.

SOOO how did we implement it?

Well, when we worked on this, we decided that we would get our students to write little positive messages on post-it notes (what do you think of our super awesome star shaped post-it notes?) and then got them to stick their “posi-notes” on our flip chart under our title “Make their day”.

The following day, my co-teacher and I read some of these “posi-notes” and commented on how wonderful it feels to have someone make our day.

We also discussed how it made them feel to make someone’s day. My partner and I often revisit these concepts with our students as a means of positive reinforcement.

When a group of people work closely together day in and day out and those people are mostly 12 year olds… They can sometimes forget to be kind to each other… As both adults and educators, we’re there to remind them how and why they need to choose kindness.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Fish Philosophy or growth mindset and whether you use any of these ideologies in your classroom. Please feel free to leave a comment below…