Pennies in a Jar

A friend and colleague, Christopher K. , recently shared with me that everything we do has the potential to put pennies in someone’s jar.? The metaphor being that all the little things that we do when we are interacting with others, is making small, but significant contributions that add up.??How we speak, how we address others, how we write and correspond, our body language, how we listen, how we care, and all the little ways that we communicate with others.

The Power of Relationships

The benefits of getting students to feel connected to school are numerous: Better relationships, more engaged, increased pride in themselves & their school, increased effort, better school & classroom culture, better attendance, happier students & more.

In education, most of us have heard of the saying, “Relationships before Rigor.”? What this means of course, is that before students can engage in challenging work and before they can take chances in their learning, they need to feel safe and connected to their teacher.??

Stephen Covey, uses the analogy of everyone having an emotional bank account. Covey explains that, “By proactively doing things that build trust in a relationship, one makes ‘deposits.’? Conversely, by reactively doing things that decrease trust, one makes ‘withdrawals.’??

Aligned to this concept of making deposits, Ridvan Foxhall, Occupational Therapist and Educator states,

“One of the key foundations of a strong relationship is trust. In order to build trust, one must continually make deposits of honesty, kindness, unconditional love, patience, all of those essential virtues that strengthen any relationship. In doing so, we build large reserves in the emotional bank account.”

As educators, we need to continually make deposits into our students emotional bank accounts. Just as King shared about Pennies in a Jar, the more little things that we do that connect us to our students, the more our students will trust us, feel safe trying and making mistakes and work to their potential.?

Connection & Empathy?

When students genuinely know that we care about them and that their educators have their best interests at heart, students will be more apt to want to please & take chances in their learning. Think about yourself, what type of conditions do you work best in? How do you like to be treated? Where are you most productive?

“Empathy,” writes?Forbes?magazine?in September 2021 about a study by Catalyst, “is the most important leadership skill”, and it has important implications. Employees of more empathetic leaders tend to be significantly more innovative, more committed to their company, and a lot more committed to their company when their circumstances are respected and valued.?

What is true in the world of work and the types of leaders that we work for, is the exact same, if not more so, for our students and the educators that they are working under.

We all want our schools to be places of innovation.? We all want our students to engage in challenging projects, solve real-world problems, contribute to their school, their community and the world…but this will not happen unless we are constantly showing and modeling respect, valuing our students, and demonstrating empathy to our students. It all starts with making deposits of connection and empathy! One penny in the jar. ?

BrainPOP and Empathy

BrainPOP, helps develop student connection and empathy by explicitly teaching social and emotional skills and by providing videos and learning activities on a wide-range of topics and people (whom students can see themselves in and relate to). Many of these topics naturally lend themselves to developing social-emotional skills that aligns with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, & Emotional Learning (CASEL) framework. These topics, combined with educators who are modeling empathy and, figuratively, consistently putting pennies in their students jars allows educators to foster a positive classroom and school culture that allows our students to, as BrainPOP's mission states, "Empower kids to shape the world around them and within them."

As we embark on the 23-24? school year, let's be sure to fill our students jars, one penny at a time, with love, support and empathy, and what they will do will surely astound us.