12. The End of One Journey and the Beginning of Another.

I share this picture of myself with my best friend Trevor, climbing Dunn’s falls in Jamaica, because it represents my how my gratitude has been affirmed, changed and practiced.

Before starting this course I considered myself to be a grateful person. I loved the life that I had developed for myself and the people that shared it. I was grateful for my job, my lifestyle and my friends. The picture shows me enjoying an aspect of my lifestyle with my best friend. The fact that I was a teacher with a good income and plenty of holidays, meant that I could travel extensively and take plenty of photographs which I shared on face book.

Having almost finished the gratitude course, I can now see how much I needed to learn. Probably the biggest realisation was the notion of gratitude ‘for’ and gratitude ‘to’. I had plenty of gratitude ‘for’ but little gratitude ‘to’. When reading the paragraph above, that discusses my notion of gratitude, the word my and I appear continually, and I now realise that my notion of gratitude was self- centred. While I am sharing the waterfall experience, the joy on my face is from what ‘I’ am feeling.

Reading Gratitude in Education and sharing my learning with the varied and interesting people in the book club, has made me realise that the true notion of gratitude is extremely relational and I have developed a great appreciation of Kerry Howell’s life work. I can understand that if we as teachers can teach our children to be grateful, the ripple effect will be profound. Not only will our students have a greater engagement with their work but there will be fewer emotional issues because our children will be happy. (I am not sure that the psychologists will be supportive.) This happiness, through the practicing of gratitude, will then be forwarded to the next generation of children by their parents and so the ripples will extend outwards like the ripples created by the water flowing from the falls into the ocean.

I learned that in order to be able to teach gratitude, I needed to embody it and so the gratitude practice began. I started by remembering to thank everyone who did anything for me at work, at home and in my everyday life. In order to make the thank you sincere, I would make eye contact and sometimes add “I am really grateful that …” It took work and I frequently forgot in the beginning. Reading the research into gratitude practice of Froh, Emmons, Boehm and Lyubomirsky, I decided to begin a gratitude journal. In order to make myself maintain it, I chose to publish the journal on-line on my face book page and encourage my friends to add their gratitude posts. Three weeks into the exercise, many people have added their gratitude comments and there are a couple of regular contributors. Many of my friends are changing their face-book posts from just pictures of themselves, like the one in this post, to pictures with gratitude comments such as 'I am really grateful that I could share this experience of climbing Dunn's Falls in Jamaica with my best friend Trevor.'

Cruising the Caribbean and visiting Jamaica was on my extensive ‘bucket list’. This semester I have added another item to that list. I want to use my role as Year 12 Coordinator to introduce gratitude to Immanuel College. I have set the wheels in motion by making it the Year 12 pastoral care focus this year but I will need support in its implementation. When climbing the Dunn’s Falls in Jamaica, groups of tourists require a guide. I will be the guide for the implementation of gratitude. To climb the falls, the tourists, link hands in a chain in order to support each other. A community of practice will be offered to link the Year 12 Tutors in their understanding of gratitude so that they can support each other in their practice. Some of the tourists find parts of the climb difficult and they require encouragement from the group. It will be important to remember that everyone involved in the Immanuel gratitude journey will be at different stages and some may require support and encouragement. On reaching the top of the falls, everyone feels a great sense of achievement and gratitude towards the members of the group for making the experience so rewarding.

A heartfelt thank you goes to Kerry and fellow course participants for making this gratitude journey so rewarding. I have been searching for something to enhance what I do for a long time and I have found it. I feel a sense of excitement at embarking on a new and personally challenging journey as I introduce gratitude to the Immanuel community. The joy that is expressed on my face in the photograph mirrors the joy that I feel inside.

Kind Regards

Lynda.