Teaching The Global Game Changers

Teaching The Global Game ChangersI am a teacher, and I make it my daily mission to teach kids how they can Ignite Good! I started in September by reading The Global Game Changers to my class.  Afterwards, we talked about helping others, and about how a small act of kindness each day adds up to a better future.  Since, we have created paper dolls of ourselves as superheroes, which fly around the room to remind us of our daily mission to Ignite Good! Even though my students are young, The Global Game Changers program has created a way for the students to understand good deeds and how they can help other people who are not as fortunate as they are.

This program has changed the way that my students talk and act toward one another. We talk about classroom behavior, or misbehavior, and how Little Big Heart would like to see the students behave. My children are quick to point out when another student is acting like Krumi, but they are even quicker to congratulate one another on positive behavior. Last week in class, one of my students put extra effort into her work, and also helped another student who was struggling on her project without being prompted. I noticed this, and congratulated the student. The rest of the class started clapping and congratulating her on her effort, too. This positive reinforcement encourages the other students to behave like Global Game Changers. On the flipside, I had another student who was not following directions. He hit a classmate and was not following the class directions, and I overheard a girl tell this boy that he was not being a Global Game Changer.

I have also been thrilled that our lessons about the Global Game Changers have extended beyond the classroom!  On a daily basis, my students tell me how they were like Global Girl at home when they helped Mom with their younger sibling, or how they helped dad with a chore around the house.

With Thanksgiving around the corner, we have been talking a lot about how not everyone has food and many will not be able to celebrate Thanksgiving the way that my students’ families do.  We brainstormed different ways to help those less fortunate than us, and together as a class, we put on our Global Game Changer capes, and worked together to create a better Thanksgiving for others.  We collected canned goods, donated house supplies to our classroom charity, and made Thanksgiving cards for people in a local nursing homes.

The Global Game Changers makes my students excited to give and share their stories about how they Ignite Good! at home, at school, and in the larger community.  A teacher could not ask for a better teaching environment than one where students are excited and eager to help their classmates, their teachers, and their community.

-Briegel Moss