The Power of Affirmations

Last week I had a student tell me they were a genius and then laughed it off with a grumble of just kidding. When they called themselves a genius they were so sure of themselves and proud of the math task they had just completed. Then embarrassment set in and they took it back. We then had a talk about how they were very valid in calling themselves a genius and what affirmations are.

I realized that this is something I know about but don’t really use a lot in my classroom and want to change that. The amazing thing is, is that affirmations are backed by research and have proven to work! The cool thing is that teachers are now starting to focus on these social/emotional tools to close the academic gap by, “Having minority middle school students write a series of self-affirmation exercises focusing on core values improved the odds that the students would pursue college tracks in school,” (Martinovich, 2017).

An interesting point that Martinovich made is that the stress of being treated differently do to intellectual needs could drain students so much instead of that energy being used on learning.

That’s why I decided to make some awesome daily affirmation posters that can fit in any classroom setting and be a great beginning tool to teach affirmations. There is an example below of one of them and the rest can be found on Teachers Pay Teachers.

I hope this gave you some insight of the power of affirmations and how you could start to use them in your classroom.

Until next time,

Happy Learning :)