At the core of Start with Joy is the belief that students' happiness is as important as their academic learning. The purpose of the book is to show us how students’ happiness can be supported during their learning, specifically their literacy learning. As teachers, we need to be intentional about supporting students’ happiness. We can’t just hope that students’ happiness is a by-product of our teaching. We need to create opportunities for students to engage in work that is joyful and meaningful.
As teachers, as Cunningham pointed out, we need to ask ourselves what is happiness? What does happiness look like in our school? What does it look like in learning? How can we make our classrooms more joyful by tapping into students' hearts and bodies the same as we do their minds? How can we intentionally plan for students' happiness as well as their understanding?
How can we work to change the mentality that success is tied to stress and anxiety and winning at all costs? As teachers how can we emphasize our students' strengths and acknowledge that we all face challenges?
Chapter 2 questions: "Research across fields has shown that happy people have one thing in common and it has nothing to do with their IQ, gender, or socioeconomic status: they have plenty of good relationships" (Cunningham, 2019, p. 31). As seen in the text, literacy is a method by which relationships and connections with our students, and amongst our students can be fostered.
If we want to promote connection in our classrooms, and ultimately joy, we must be intentional in designing instruction. A result of successfully designing our instruction to strengthen student's people sense is also strengthening their perspective-taking, or understanding the goals and intentions of others (Cunningham, 2019). At the conclusion of the chapter, the author once again reviewed several activities that we, as educators can use as potential tools in designing instruction that will help to encourage connection. Out of all of the design strategies presented, which one(s) do you find to be the most beneficial and would you consider adopting into your curriculum? Why?