mgs: The Good Morning Experiement

Welcome to the blog this week! I wanted to share an experiment that I did with Good Morning!

I have bus duty every morning and then hall duty after that. I spend much of my morning wishing students a good morning and to have a good day. I am sad to report that many times I don't even get eye contact back from them.

My Experiment:

So, I took the opportunity this week, along with Mrs. Blaney, to model how to respond to someone saying "Good Morning" with the first and 2nd graders in the gym before school. It only took a few minutes. It was fun and the kids enjoyed it.

After, I headed back out to the hall to monitor.

When the bell rang something AMAZING happened!!!!!! As the students exited the gym, they walked by with smiles and even said good morning to me! There were hugs and an instant change in their moods. Mrs. Melton was down the hall and I could hear them greeting her too!

Then, it happened again the next day!

So what did I learn? Taking just a small amount of time to reinforce manners can make a HUGE difference in how our students start the day and how they respond to the world around them.

The time I took wasn't even instructional time!

I know on top of all of the curriculum we have to teach it is hard to think about adding one more thing to our plates but I really do believe that taking a small part of our morning meeting and modeling how our students respond when someone says "good morning" or "have a good day" can have a huge impact on our school culture.

The New York Post has a good article about The Magic Words Every Parent Needs to Teach. I really liked the paragraph about how teaching children to say hello or to respond to a hello is not for the adult but to teach the children that other people have feelings and needs too.

Children need to learn that there is a big world out there with lots of people. That adults are not here to do ONLY for them. That they can do for themselves and for others too!

I encourage you to take just a moment and point out this simple idea and do some modeling with your students.

Here is a video to get you started!