Growing with Gratitude

CHAPTER 5Make it fun

In August of 2014, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Dr Deborah Green and Dr Deborah Price (who wrote the foreword for this book) of the University of South Australia. Deborah Price is currently Research Degree Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Inclusive Education and Wellbeing (as well as wearing many other hats). She's led a number of significant projects and, since 2017, has been president of the Australian Curriculum Studies Association (ACSA).

We conducted a small research project with a group of students at Immanuel Primary School, where I was teaching at the time, in Adelaide. The project involved year 1–6 students. For six weeks they were required to participate in some daily and weekly activities at home. The daily activities included writing down three things they were grateful for and spending two minutes writing about the best part of their day. The weekly activities included doing a planned act of kindness and something around home in the way of service (in addition to the usual chores and not receiving any extra pocket money).

At the end of the six weeks each student completed a survey and was interviewed. One of the questions the students responded to was, ‘Were there any activities you didn't like?’

What was very interesting and turned out to be extremely profound was that 100 per cent of the students reported they didn't like writing three things they were grateful for each day. One student reported, ‘I just found it a bit hard ...