Gratitude diary

Last week during our seminar, together with Sophie and Marcy I have worked out the ways of implementing the philosophy of gratitude, highly significant in Chinese culture. We have decided to put it into practice on two levels: individual and social. We also explored the different perspectives of gratitude implementation: as an emotion children feel in response to a gift or benefit, as an act when they perform their thankfulness and as an attitude and act to demonstrate their thankfulness. Just like love, trust and respect it is a way on how children react to other people, for who they are, for what they do. The philosophy was first practiced by Kant and Aristotle, for whom the entrance point were experience by interacting with the world. Together with two Chinese Dalton consultants Sophie and Marcy we designed a special “gratitude diary” for group work and individual work. Everyday children have the opportunity to reflect on positive aspects of their lives. The benefits of our activities are enormous for wellbeing of the children, these are: the philosophy of gratitude encourages positive attitude; promote meaningful cooperation and personalized language use, encourages emotional self-regulation, creativity and critical thinking. Practicing gratitude has been an important point in program training in International Dalton Schools in China. The gratitude diary will be published in the first upcoming magazine of Dalton International in Shanghai.