Social Emotional Learning Topic: Generosity
/GENEROSITY: 5 Key Lesson Takeaways
Generosity is the act of giving good things to others freely and abundantly.
The culture in a classroom and at home helps to define a child’s spirit of generosity.
Generosity comes in many forms, from charitable donations to volunteering to helping a stranger during times of need.
Shifting from an individualistic and competitive environment will help to foster generosity.
Parenting plays a role in cultivating generosity. The behavior that we show during the holidays can also be extended to the rest of the year. Let children experience first-hand what it feels like to give their time to a cause.
Children’s Book Recommendations:
This book dives into the importance of sharing with the most needy when the Berenstain Bears realize they have too much stuff and decide to donate these items. The Berenstain Bears do not just donate their material goods, but they also donate their time.
In this book, Lola finds the perfect present for her friend Lotta, but now she really wants to keep it. Lola will discover the joy of giving. The theme in this book, one can argue, is that giving is better than receiving.
The main character, August Pullman, an ordinary boy with an uncommon face teaches the significance of acceptance and spreading kindness to everyone, regardless of what they look like, their background, or their differences.
This book narrates the story of George, or the giant in town. As he wanders around and finds a shop selling giant-sized clothing, he decides it is time for a new look. On his way home, George will meet several animals who are in need of his help and his clothes.
Based on a true story, One Hen tells the story of Kojo, a boy from Ghana who converts a small loan into a successful farm. When Kojo’s father dies, his mother receives a small loan and she shares some of it with her son, enabling Kojo to buy one hen. A year later, Kojo raised twenty-five hens. Soon his farm becomes the largest and most prosperous farm in the region. Kojo is also able to return to his school.
Spencer has too many toys. His parents trip over them and fall over them. Spencer realizes that it is time to donate some of his toys, even though it is hard for him to let go of a few.
When Frankie sees a homeless man roaming through the town, he decides to give him a sweater to keep him warm. When his family learns about Frankie’s act of generosity, they decide to give him a special gift.
Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Generosity with Michael Hurley
Jenny Woo [00:00:52] And I'm sitting next to Michael Hurley to talk about generosity. Michael has a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education with a focus on cognitive neuroscience. Prior, he taught seventh grade in California. He did science and math in the Los Angeles Unified School District. And as well as at a charter school where he wore multiple hats. At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, he studied how to practically implement cognitive and neuroscientific findings within the classroom setting. And I have to say, Michael is an avid and really, really fast runner, and I've seen him in action. In fact, this year, in two thousand and eighteen, he completed the Boston Marathon for the very fourth time. And I'm sure there will be many times to come. Welcome, Michael. Thank you, Jenny. It’s a pleasure to be here. Tell us, what does generosity mean to you?
Michael Hurley [00:02:00] To me, it's giving what you have to other people, identifying what other people need, and knowing that you can give it to them. And just being kind of a support person to people when they're in need, kind of when you can identify that. Just kind of giving what you have to others. I think it's as simple as that.
Jenny Woo [00:02:23] So how do you support your students and have that empathy and know what to look for in terms of what people need?
Michael Hurley [00:02:33] Yeah, I think it boils down to what is your classroom culture? Is your classroom culture like that?
Michael Hurley [00:02:42] In my classroom, it was always working as a team and not just like teams within the classroom, but the classroom is the team. And so, if one of us falls, everyone's got to pick them back up. So it's not like, oh, so-and-so didn't do very well on a test during a performance task during some activity. It's ok, well, our team didn't do well, so how can we fix this? And that comes with students working with each other in the classroom. And that's something I think you identify in the classroom, is that everyone has different strengths. And I think we all know that everyone has different strengths. Everyone has some weaknesses and then some students are just further along in some areas than others and vice versa. So it's having students identify like, wow, I'm really good at this, okay, but how can I help others? And so, they're generous with their time, with their knowledge. And so, really building that into your classroom culture, I think promotes generosity in the classroom.
Jenny Woo [00:03:59] Yeah, I really love the culture piece that you're bringing up and really shifting the mindset that it's not an individualistic, competitive environment, but it's really how we do together as a team. Obviously, testing, bell curve, and grades kind of run the opposite of that type of culture. How do you juggle that tension?
Michael Hurley [00:04:26] Yeah, so for testing in general, the tests are coming up and when I worked at a charter school, you know, that’s pretty much how you get to stay open is how well you're doing on your tests. And it's just, whether I agree with it or not, it's a fact of life in a charter school. You have to prove that you're doing right by students. And how do you prove that? It's through the test scores, unfortunately. So, you know, in the classroom, we’d work as a team. How are we going to tackle this test? You know, having students work on problems and bringing up how different people have different ways of finding a solution and kind of working together like, wow, okay, that's a great idea, how about you go work with so-and-so and show them that? Because I think they would really respond to that. So just really still using the team aspect. And yeah, of course, we have tested and, you know, some students are gonna do better than others. But really, it's taking it as you know, I think working on a charter really strengthens that team aspect because your charter is at risk of closing down. So, everyone has to work together. You're all on the same team. So I think just kind of that spirit if like, okay, guys, we're all in this together and we've really got to do well. So, how can we do that? And so everyone's out helping each other. You know, we're just trying to do the best, but we all have to do it. It can't just be a couple of us. So, you know, in that respect, testing kind of strengthened us in away.
Jenny Woo [00:06:09] So interesting. Yeah, yeah. I'm hearing a greater mission, a vision that everyone buys in and shares. Can you give us an example of what happened in your classroom in terms of working around a mission?
Michael Hurley [00:06:24] Yeah, sure. So one of the years I was at my charter school in California, we had a student get really sick. I mean, it started out with just kind of, you know, having to go to the nurse every day. And no one really knew it was wrong, but it turned out he had a pretty serious illness and he had to leave school and he had to go through, you know, various medical treatments. And so, yeah, he was out of the classroom for two, three months. And we honestly didn't know if he was going to come back. And we did not know what the severity was. It was just this very serious thing.
Michael Hurley [00:07:05] And it was, you know a student in our class and the treatments, we know, were expensive and we know that's always a hardship. So the students in my class, kind of going around “we're all in this together,” they wanted to do something for him. So we kind of sat down as a class and we're kind of shooting around ideas like, oh, what can we do? Kids always have ideas for fundraisers like, oh, look, what can we do as a fundraiser. So we're thinking like, oh, a bake sale. Or, you know, maybe we could do some sort of activity that people paid to come to do.
Michael Hurley [00:07:42] So shooting all these ideas around we kind of thought like, well, why don't we do a little bit of all of them? So we came up with the Tournament of Champions, and our school mascot was called the champion.
Michael Hurley [00:07:56] So, it was like a trophy, an anthropomorphic trophy. We were called the champions, so it was perfect. It was called the Tournament of Champions. And so it was for five days. Actually, it was for four days. The fifth day was a student and teacher softball game. So it's kind of like the culmination. But so for four days, we invited students to come and participate in different activities and they would come in teams of three. And each team of three would pay three dollars to get into the tournament. And we got donations for gift cards and things like that. We thought like, oh, we'll get a bunch of kids out here, they'll all compete. We had a three-point shooting contest. You know, how many three points can you make in a minute with your team of three? We had a Home Run Derby, we had a Super Smash Bros tournament. And we thought we'd just get, you know, maybe 30 teams or something, out of the whole school. We were a pretty big school, we were twelve hundred students. So, we thought maybe we would get like 30 teams. We got, I would say, close to a hundred teams coming out for the entire week and they were all donating their three dollars. But the great thing was that we'd have students come up and they would just hand us 20 dollars and say, I want to donate this to the fundraiser. We had whole classrooms just raising money within their own classroom and delivering it to my class. So I’d get a knock on my door and they would say hi, you know, little second grade classrooms, first-grade classrooms. And they've got the envelope that's almost as big as them. We want to donate this to your classroom. I think that spirit of generosity just really ran through the entire school.
Michael Hurley [00:09:47] You know, and I think in part, it's because you're a charter school and, you know like I said, you're all in it together.
Michael Hurley [00:09:53] It was great at the end of the week, we had collected, I'd say, over five hundred dollars just from students, not even from teachers or anything. And we were able to, at the student softball game, our student was actually able to come out just for like 10 or 20 minutes. He couldn't be out for very long. But the doctor said, okay, you can go for 10 or 20 minutes. And so he goes out there and his mother is out there, and we're able to present him with all the money we had fundraised. And, you know, and it was a great thing for the students and it was all run by them. They had given up their lunch, they gave up their recess, you know, just to plan to actually run the events. And it was great to see that students would take that initiative and be so generous with their time for their fellow classmates. And students across the school are just being generous with money they had. And it was just kids giving. I know when I was a kid, like having a dollar was the greatest thing. You could buy so much with that dollar. And kids reaching into their own pockets to donate to this, you know, you were getting change from students.
Michael Hurley [00:11:11] And, you know, it was just amazing to see the school rally around one of our fellow students and just being so generous.
Jenny Woo [00:11:22] Yeah. I'm so impressed by the extensiveness of this movement you created. Students, teachers coming all together because of the spirit of generosity. I want to shift this more to the home environment. And, you know, I can't help but ask, I'm curious, how did you learn about generosity yourself?
Michael Hurley [00:11:45] Yeah. So may surprisingly or may not be surprising, both of my parents are teachers. And so, I honestly think that where I learned generosity is from them. Watching my dad go out and dedicate himself to his school. He ran, not surprisingly, he ran a track team at our elementary school. But, you know, every Saturday we're out there, six-thirty in the morning. We’d run and then he would build things for the school. We are a track team, but we don’t have a real track, it is an elementary school. He builds a long jump pit. We went out there and did that. One of our fellow students, while I was in elementary school, passed away. Our school didn't have a marquee or anything, so he came up with the idea for a marquee and he built this beautiful garden plot around it in brick. He got a plaque ordered and all of us kids were out there digging the foundation for this marquee. We laid the brick. We mixed the cement. We put in the plaque. He had all of us out there doing that. And so, I think that's definitely where I got it from. That’s how I grew up, watching someone dedicate themselves to other people, and being so generous with their time and their money. But like having a great time while doing it, like none of us kids were out there, like oh, this is such hard work, we're giving up so much. It was fun, actually and we found that in the work. And so I would say, yeah, that's definitely a part of where I learned that from.
Jenny Woo [00:13:35] Yeah, what a beautiful story. So now knowing what you know, having taught, still teaching, and also the amazing role models you’ve had in your life, what are some parting words that you can leave us, parents, with in terms of actionable things we can do on a daily basis to embed the spirit of generosity?
Michael Hurley [00:13:59] I think the theme through all of this is really setting an example.
Michael Hurley [00:14:04] You know, actually going out there and showing your children or students what it means to be generous and just kind of like building that. And like I said in the beginning, I think it's all about culture, and it's the culture of your classroom, the culture of your home, wherever you are. It's really about building generosity into that. So, you know, going out and dedicating your time, it doesn't even have to be something large. It could be as little as having your students help a neighbor, helping a grandparent. But, you know, this is really about setting that example. So it's kind of built-in and it's what you grow up knowing and doing. And I think it'll just come naturally after that.
Jenny Woo [00:14:57] Yeah, I really like this natural thing. I think a lot of the times we tend to associate generosity with Thanksgiving, we need to cook the meals or Christmas, let's have a toy drive, right. It's those big one time a year types of things. Or go visit a nursing home, you know, but it really comes on a daily basis and it has to be authentic. That's what I got from your message. It's not something that you check off the list like we've been generous today, right. But it's really a mindset of who we are.
Michael Hurley [00:15:35] Definitely. It doesn't have to be something big. And I think the thing, too, is if it's like some grand gesture every Christmas or something, it's absolutely wonderful, but if that's the only time that it happens, it just becomes like this once in a while kind of thing. So I think that really building with the little things at home, finding ways to be generous every day, and really set that example. That's what’s going to take you a lot further.
Jenny Woo [00:16:06] Great! And with that thank you so much for being here, Michael.
Michael Hurley [00:16:10] Thank you. Again, it's been a pleasure. And I appreciate you inviting me.
Jenny Woo [00:16:13] And thank you for tuning in to 52 essential conversations.