Celebration
Before we talk about celebrations, let’s break it down into its morphemes.
Base word – celebrate: to honour
suffix -ion : the act of (adding -ion turns an action to a noun)
celebration : the act of celebrating
By explicitly teaching morphemes in words, you are giving your students a skills to read multisyllabic words, signals parts of speech and builds vocabulary.
Now back to our topic, celebrations. One way to build relationships and sense of belonging in schools is through having celebrations. There are some such as Halloween and Valentine’s Day, although many schools find that they are not representative of their populations. There are cultural celebrations where we can celebrate diversity and multiculturalism. As we head into winter months, there are many celebrations revolving celebrating with lights. Some Festival of Lights celebrations include Winter Solstice, Diwali, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas and Kwanzaa. Schools sometimes have spirit days to build staff and students morale and school pride. Creating a sense of belonging helps students build self esteem because aspect of their identity is being recognized.
I do recognize some schools or groups of students do not celebrate for reasons I respect. I want to share one way we can create a sense of community by celebrating and acknowledging students.
In my classroom, birthdays are celebrated. I post student’s names and birthdates on a poster and I am intentional in acknowledging birthdays either by writing a card or singing Happy Birthday.
I celebrated my birthday at school a few weeks ago. I wore a birthday hat and walked down the halls and students from all grades shouted, “Happy Birthday!” to me. As I was doing supervision in two classrooms, each class sang Happy Birthday to me. The song brings smiles to faces and especially mine. They ask me how old I am and often I say an outrageous number like 101. I joke with them and realize this small connection is what builds a school community. When you share a bit about yourself as a teacher to your students, you make connections. Fostering relationships is incredibly meaningful although as educators we must be mindful of professional boundaries and not share information that is too personal. That being said, celebrating a student by recognizing their birthday might seem like a small gesture but it can make someone’s day.
And when it comes to making someone’s day, one doesn’t need to have a birthday to do something. There are random acts of kindness you can do as a teacher for your colleagues and students. Say a compliment, acknowledge a student’s efforts, notice what they like or dislike. Take the time to make the connections and it would make your ‘work’ day a more positive one.
“Spread kindness around like confetti”
