We Are 1 Team
Address to Impress
Parent Newsletter
National Youth Motivational Speaker
and Founder of We Are One Team Character
Program – James E. Jones, MBA
This month’s
We
Are One Team Character Play
(lesson) is “Address to Impress”. This lesson focuses on kindness and using our
manners. The key is to have the students
ask themselves, “How do I represent myself and treat others?” As technology increases, children’s face-to-face
social etiquette is rapidly declining. This lesson teaches good, old fashion manners,
social greetings and respectful introductions.
The students will learn how to greet others, how to shake hands, how to
introduce people, and how use their manners to apply kindness to others.
Most
children like attention and will always find ways to get attention. The goal in this lesson is to teach the
students that proper greetings and manners will generate a lot of positive
attention, which is impressive to adults. This month, the teachers will be
working with them to develop those important positive social skills.
The
foundation of this lesson is about respect, with an emphasis on how we respect
ourselves. I don’t think a person can
truly respect another person until they respect themselves first. How a person treats others is a good
reflection of how they feel about themselves.
I like to word it this way, “Don’t
talk about it, Be about it”. Don’t
just talk about being a kind person, be a kind person. Let’s get in the habit of applying kindness
and using our manners. When people take
time to recognize and honor others, those people feel they have been
respected. It is in that feeling that
one starts to define what it is like to be respected. They feel that they matter and are important,
and that other people care about them.
So in this lesson, the focus is less on saying, “Show Respect” and more
on teaching “what behaviors can the student exhibit that allow others to feel
important, that they matter, and that they are cared about?” Remember, if your
child can show that other people are important and do matter, and that they
care about them, then they are more likely to feel the same about themselves.
Take time to
notice how your child is applying this lesson at home by helping to make others
within the family feel important. Really
focus on manners this month with them.
Are they using “Please” and “Thank You”? As parents, I think we come pre-wired to say
to our kids, “What do you say?” Sometimes
it is more effective to just pause and wait for them to figure it out. They will look at you and say, “What?” You can just say, “I’m sorry, I thought you
were going to say something to me after I packed your lunch?” The more we slow down and wait for them to
respond appropriately, the more they will start to figure it out. As they figure it out and realize what is
expected in YOUR FAMILY, the more they will actually start to feel important
themselves and will start to build not only manners, but self-esteem. Remember, more is learned than is
taught. So, the best way to help them is
to make sure that you are displaying the behaviors that you are looking for
yourself.
