WE Virtual Learning Classroom - The power of gratitude

WE Virtual Learning Center is a website that offers resources and programs to support teachers and empower young students to become their strongest selves. There are modules, courses, campaigns, lesson packages and supporting resources, as well as virtual workshops, and a video library. This website's goal is to help teachers stay organized and to lift up their students, while also focusing on students well-being and goals. 

As I was exploring the WE Virtual Learning Center, I came across the WE Teachers Courses which provides a multitude of resources for teachers depending on their focus. For example, there are two resources and courses on the science of power and gratitude, promoting that gratitude is a key ingredient for mental health and well-being. The website shares how teachers can implement gratitude into their personal lives, to be able to implement it into their classrooms. If this is a resource a teacher is interested in, there is a 31 page document to dive deeper into why gratitude is important, how it enhances verbal and written expression, along with a variety of ways to incorporate it in your life and classroom.

Each resource is also provided with a course that shares videos, questions, and quizzes to help you really understand the meaning and course content. I decided to take the course on Say it Now: Why Gratitude is a Key Ingredient for Well-being and Promoting SEL and was introduced to the Say it Now workshop video. After watching the video, they provide seven questions reflecting back on what was discussed.If a question is answered incorrectly, they provide learners the opportunity to try again. Once the question is answered correctly, the course explains why it is correct. After completing the course, you can continue to read the resource page and begin to implement this in your life and classroom!

Harbringers of positive, communal change

Following the conclusion of this semester, the Spring 2025 semester, I will officially be closer to entering the classroom as an educator than I was leaving the classroom the last time as a student(K-12). With that in mind, it is important to begin formulating how exactly one will go about leading their classroom! Those formulations should be things that future educators are excited about, things that will immediately bring value to the classroom. 

I did some digging around the WE.org site, and eventually came across the service-learning student toolkit. This toolkit revolves around, well, service learning! As I read through this toolkit, I saw that the examples of success stories working with a service-learning oriented approach were younger students. I will be a high school teacher, so ages 15-18. My thinking process leads me to believe that service learning is better suited for that age group. These students are entering either college or the workforce, part-time or full time, and the skills that can be gained from this learning style can greatly aid in the endeavors, both future or current, for high school students. Skills like those listed below are very important to have whether or not a student goes to college or the workforce. 

Should I be able to find ways to engage my students into a service-learning environment, I can set them up to cultivate vital traits that will greatly benefit their futures. As an educator, I see it as my role to inspire and provide as much support to my students. That would include examples like this, providing opportunities for my students to grow. 

Potentially incorporating a toolkit like this also excites me, as high school age students have one thing at their disposal that other level students don't... cars! If working through these lessons inspires them, they can go out on their own and continue doing good in the world. That is exciting to me because that is what I aim to do as a teacher: I aim to inspire and promote good, and through lessons like this, that is very much possible. 

Through lesson guiding, or through individual efforts, my students can go out into the world and bring about a positive impact. Just the idea of that is exciting, and the potential lesson planning like the service-learning student toolkit brings is enough for it to be incredibly valuable to any classroom. If incorporated properly, students can become harbingers of positivity, and that would make me, as an educator, so incredibly proud of them and what we have been able to do!