Ep 017: How to Teach Gratitude

"Sir, have you marked our tests yet?"

"Miss, when are we doing a practical?"

Sound familiar?

In this episode, Pritesh & Neena explore how schools can explicitly teach pupils to become more grateful. Can we really transform a pupil's mindset from one of potential entitlement to one of gratitude? And what practical strategies can teachers use to make gratitude a habit that becomes part of their pupils' character?

We discuss why a simple 'thank you' from pupils at the end of a lesson can be surprisingly powerful, how to help pupils recognise the enormous amount of effort that goes into their education, and why writing heartfelt thank-you postcards to teachers might just be one of the loveliest things a school can do.

We also explore how gratitude can become part of a class's shared identity, the connection between gratitude and belonging, and how to ensure expressions of gratitude are genuine rather than just another box-ticking exercise.

Along the way, Neena subjects Pritesh to a highly sophisticated psychological evaluation involving word association. The results are deeply concerning. We also discover that Pritesh has a rather limited vocabulary when it comes to describing things he likes.

With Christmas approaching, this episode might just help you bring a little extra magic to your school.

And if you're enjoying Operation Education, we'd be incredibly grateful if you could leave us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. See? We're practising what we preach!

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Hosts: Pritesh Raichura and Neena Sharma

Operation Education is a Bunsen Blue production.