As teachers and educators, there are many parts to our jobs. Following the curriculum, differentiating for all of our students, and taking care of their social and emotional needs leaves little time for other things. However, the one thing I have found to be the most important in the long list of our job requirements is creating opportunities for our students to feel like winners. Every student is a winner, it is our job to help them feel like one! 

I did not always have this mindset and felt that I had to get through the curriculum before I could do anything else. I pretty quickly learned that if we took time to build confidence in our students, we could get through the same amount of curriculum in much less time. I think the most important part of school is creating positive memories and growing socially. The academic progress is a by-product of happy and confident students. 

Over the last several years, I have done this in a few different ways. Some were planned and intentional, and some happened in the spur of the moment. You can do this in a small group, whole classroom or whole school!

Every student is a winner, it is our job to help them feel like one! 

In my classroom, we started each Friday morning celebrating the week. During this time I had one student who wanted to be a stand-up comedian when he grew up. Although he was a funny kid, he would constantly tell jokes during the day or lesson. Sometimes to the point where his classmates would become frustrated with him for his disruptions. How could I take this opportunity to increase learning but still help this student feel like a winner? Every Friday morning I provided him 2 minutes to tell his jokes while the entire class listened. He was provided a chance to be the center of attention, and when I hyped up his performance, the class was much more likely to laugh than when he just yelled out during class. Regardless of whether his set was a total failure or if he was hilarious that day, at the end, the class clapped for him. We grew his confidence, improved his public speaking skills, and for those few minutes every Friday, he felt like a winner!

As a principal, I am able to create winners at a school-wide level frequently. We do it by announcing students of the week, giving positive reinforcement, and on a larger scale have whole school competitions.

A few weeks ago, we had an assembly that the whole school attended. When we have these, we make sure we include ALL of our classes, including our self-contained special education classes. The students in these classes don’t have many opportunities to feel like winners. Even worse, some schools do not include the students from these classrooms, but they must build their confidence also. Typically, they require significant support, and school is just harder for them. On this day, however, a student from that classroom was chosen to participate in the assembly game. I was a little nervous about how they would do. Could they follow the directions of the game? Would his teammates help him and accept him appropriately? The only way to find out was to give him a chance!

The game was simple, it was a down-and-back scooter race with 4 kids on each team. At the end of the race, this student’s team had won! His arms shot in the air high above his head. The crowd of 450 clapped and cheered, and for possibly the first time in his life, he felt like a winner! Of course, this student is already a winner. He battles every day to be the best that he can be and we tell him how proud we are of him frequently, but that is much different than 450 people clapping and cheering for you!

We create these opportunities for our students frequently. Whether it is a school-wide competition of Gaga Ball, Rock, Paper, Scissors, or celebrating our students of the week, we make it a priority to make our students recognize that they are winners! With all of these silly events happening, we do lose a lot of instructional time, but we are also growing more than almost every school in southern Indiana. Which to me shows that academics can only come after we celebrate ALL of our students and provide them with the chance to feel like a champion!

Challenge

This week, find a way to celebrate your students and make them feel like winners. Find the strengths that your students have and celebrate them!

Leave your stories below to help other educators better celebrate their students!