Integrated School Health Tip: The Appreciation Circle

In case you ever wondered whether or not it was a bad idea for substitute teachers to play dodge ball with highly agitated middle schoolers a week and a half before Christmas break......it is.The game resulted in one physical fight, two major conflicts and an entire class that could not focus on anything for the rest of the day.

I had been asked to lead a mousetrap activity from my book but I picked up on the energy right away when I walked into the classroom. Accusations were flying back and forth. People had chosen sides, of course, and the sub was at a loss....the dark side of anarchy.

The plan was to watch the last part of a movie and then do a trust activity with mousetraps but the gods had different plans. I started by just asking what happened and received a multitude of field reports with interesting variations on reality.Of course most of them felt obligated to give their view point and that took awhile. It was starting to drag until one student suggested we do a compliment or appreciation circle "like we do in yoga class."

I first learned this technique from Lynn Duus who called it "strength bombardment." I changed it to appreciation circle and was reintroduced to it again from Lynea Gillen at Yoga Calm who called it the "compliment circle."

By any name, the idea is the same. One person stands in the center of the circle and receives compliments from the rest of the group. I had not often done an appreciation circle in whole classes. I preferred to save it for smaller groups where some degree of intimacy and connection had already been established. My intuition said this could really backfire but I often venture into territory  where angel, demons and fools fear to tread.Certainly nothing of any educational nature was going to happen.

I picked the first of the two girls who had been squabbling about something all day and placed her in the center of the circle. Generally I do not allow kids in yoga class or group to "pass" but I told them in this case I would allow it. I also do not allow any qualifiers. "You are nice but......" I did not ask for elaborate compliments either. I could clearly see that we were starting from ground zero. Anything would be progress at this juncture.

And it worked.

Five or six kids (one at a time) were blessed by standing in a circle of their peers and receiving compliments. The mood shifted almost visibly. It seemed like they were starting to recenter so I told them it was time to start the movie and finish the lesson. There was a clamor to continue. I thought it about it for a minute and then told them I would continue on one condition: no more passes and everybody had to agree.

We continued the rest of the period giving compliments with only one complaint: not everybody had a chance to go.

Instructions for Appreciation Circle

1. Instruct students in how to give a pure compliment. By pure I mean there are no qualifiers. Often I give an extreme example. "You used to be a jerk but now you're nice." That's not OK.
2. One person at a time stands in the center of a circle and receives compliments.
3. That person's only response is "thank you."

Try it, it's simple.Shalom Jeff