Receiving and accepting praise is great, but how amazing would it be not to need it from anyone other than yourself? I want to model better self-love with my students, so I’m giving them opportunities to reflect on achievements of all sizes and opportunities to take pride in their work before receiving feedback.
Here are six ways to encourage more self-love in your classroom:
- Share a goal for how they can be nicer to themselves. If you’re going to have this up on display, make sure you give students a heads up about it ahead of time. I think it is a great visual reminder for them to love themselves!
2. Write about a proud moment before submitting work. Great for ELA writing, assessments, and projects of all kinds! Know what your students like best about their work before providing feedback!
Printing on sticky notes has to be one of the best teacher hacks to surface and I’ve seen so many amazing ways teachers are using sticky notes to provide feedback to their students! If you want to try asking your students to write what they’re proud of first, grab the FREEBIE below!
3. Jot a specific strategy they incorporated and ask readers to pay attention to it. In ELA, they may have worked hard to incorporate figurative language and want the reader to take notice. On a math assignment, they may want to point out that they checked all their answers by using the inverse operation or that they took a risk to utilize a specific place value strategy that can be challenging for them.
4. Provide students with time to reflect and write about accomplishments as a weekly or monthly ritual. Being in middle school can be tough, but learning to focus on one’s gains can have a really positive impact!
5. Have a student that is feeling down about something? Ask them to remember an achievement they are proud of.
**Note: This is not appropriate for every situation. We definitely need to teach students strategies for coping with issues besides just trying to “cheer them up.” However at certain moments, a little mindset shift is just what they may need to help them reset.
6. Start a self-love journal! You can have them place their sticky notes in here, or provide your students with different writing prompts to reflect on in this journal. Just having the time and space to reflect on and write affirmations can help our students gain a little more confidence! Click here for these Self-Love Journal Covers.
Note: This may not be something you start with your entire class and this Self-Love Challenge from Making a Statement in SPED is a great place to start, but perhaps this is something that you try with just one student that could really benefit from this.
When you take time to practice self-love with your students, you’re teaching them how to seek more affirmations from within, rather than from an outside source. If you’re interested in the FREE printable Self-Love Sticky Notes pictured throughout, click the button below!
What are some ways you spread self-love in your classroom?
