What is The Gratitude Workshop?
It's the culmination of a 12 week journey our 12th grade students embarked upon, beginning on their first day of their senior year. It's every skill they've practiced and grown since Kindergarten. It's real. It's raw. And it's teaching us all how to open our hearts, dare to be vulnerable, and make a difference one expression of gratitude at a time.
The Gratitude Workshop is a new kind of final exam. No cramming. No multiple choice. Just simple, genuine authenticity our students will use to change the world.
It's the culmination of a 12 week journey our 12th grade students embarked upon, beginning on their first day of their senior year. It's every skill they've practiced and grown since Kindergarten. It's real. It's raw. And it's teaching us all how to open our hearts, dare to be vulnerable, and make a difference one expression of gratitude at a time.
The Gratitude Workshop is a new kind of final exam. No cramming. No multiple choice. Just simple, genuine authenticity our students will use to change the world.
The Beginning: Our Journey to Gratitude
It was a risk and we knew it.
We, Corrie Myers and Sarah Hunter, wanted so badly to make every day of our senior year curriculum meaningful and relevant to our group of almost-adults. But when we came down to the last week of the trimester, finals week, we discovered that we had thoroughly assessed them on every skill we sought out to teach them… there was nothing a traditional final exam could achieve.
So we knew we had to give back to them the way they gave to each question and lesson we had prepared for them.
Here’s where we started: Senior year of high school is hard. Students are in the middle of making big life decisions while they are teetering between adulthood and childhood, not quite sure which leg to stand on. The decisions are mountainous, growing bigger and more challenging as college admissions expectations and costs increase.
We spent the twelve week trimester studying the journey archetype. We studied Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, heard from guest speakers about their unique journeys, and conducted individual interviews with our own guides. And then our students studied their own journey and began to look at what life will look like post-high school. Along the way, we also studied Brené Brown’s TED Talk on the Power of Vulnerability. Combining a component of each of these texts and experiences, we put together a three-day workshop that ultimately became The Gratitude Workshop. We started our Gratitude Workshop by reading about the Five Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude and the 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About. Students began to identify the people/places/things that they are grateful for on sticky notes that they ultimately put together on our classroom walls in an artistic representation of the benefits of gratitude. It ended up looking like this:
After our reading and activity, we asked our students to write a letter of gratitude to three people: a peer, a teacher (K-12) or staff member, and a family member. And then, on the day of their final, we watched a video from SoulPancake called An Experiment in Gratitude. This is where their inward journey became outward-focused.
But it was a risk. We couldn’t test this experiment out, we just had to go for it. In order for The Gratitude Workshop to be successful, we had to trust that our students understood the value in what we were asking them to do. We had to trust that they would take this risk right alongside us.
We knew we had amazing students at Sage Creek High School, but what we witnessed in our three day gratitude workshop shattered our greatest expectations.
Our seniors bravely allowed themselves to be vulnerable, calling the three most influential people in their life on camera. We hope you'll watch and see the magic that we experienced in our classrooms. Gratitude is best when shared. Join us. #spreadgratitude #TheGratitudeWorkshop
We, Corrie Myers and Sarah Hunter, wanted so badly to make every day of our senior year curriculum meaningful and relevant to our group of almost-adults. But when we came down to the last week of the trimester, finals week, we discovered that we had thoroughly assessed them on every skill we sought out to teach them… there was nothing a traditional final exam could achieve.
So we knew we had to give back to them the way they gave to each question and lesson we had prepared for them.
Here’s where we started: Senior year of high school is hard. Students are in the middle of making big life decisions while they are teetering between adulthood and childhood, not quite sure which leg to stand on. The decisions are mountainous, growing bigger and more challenging as college admissions expectations and costs increase.
We spent the twelve week trimester studying the journey archetype. We studied Paulo Coehlo’s The Alchemist, heard from guest speakers about their unique journeys, and conducted individual interviews with our own guides. And then our students studied their own journey and began to look at what life will look like post-high school. Along the way, we also studied Brené Brown’s TED Talk on the Power of Vulnerability. Combining a component of each of these texts and experiences, we put together a three-day workshop that ultimately became The Gratitude Workshop. We started our Gratitude Workshop by reading about the Five Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude and the 31 Benefits of Gratitude You Didn’t Know About. Students began to identify the people/places/things that they are grateful for on sticky notes that they ultimately put together on our classroom walls in an artistic representation of the benefits of gratitude. It ended up looking like this:
After our reading and activity, we asked our students to write a letter of gratitude to three people: a peer, a teacher (K-12) or staff member, and a family member. And then, on the day of their final, we watched a video from SoulPancake called An Experiment in Gratitude. This is where their inward journey became outward-focused.
But it was a risk. We couldn’t test this experiment out, we just had to go for it. In order for The Gratitude Workshop to be successful, we had to trust that our students understood the value in what we were asking them to do. We had to trust that they would take this risk right alongside us.
We knew we had amazing students at Sage Creek High School, but what we witnessed in our three day gratitude workshop shattered our greatest expectations.
Our seniors bravely allowed themselves to be vulnerable, calling the three most influential people in their life on camera. We hope you'll watch and see the magic that we experienced in our classrooms. Gratitude is best when shared. Join us. #spreadgratitude #TheGratitudeWorkshop