Syn Lab
The reinvention of our school system will not be possible without teachers, and they need support more than ever in the evolution of their profession so that they can continue to accompany young generations to build themselves against new challenges.
The Celebration of Teachers is inspired by Teachers’ Day that exists in almost a hundred countries throughout the world. At the time of the event, the students thank their teachers by writing words of thanks, organizing shows, bringing them flowers…We wish to give each individual in France the chance to participate in a time of positive exchange between different actors in the educational community and to be able to go off of these positive bases to construct the future of our education.
The project is based on a participative online platform. On this site, all are invited – children, parents, students, grandparents…-to contribute in different ways.
This cultural experiment wants to be open and positive !
What exactly is gratitude ?
Larousse dictionary defines it as “recognition for a service, for a received benefit ; affectionate feeling towards a benefactor” (French Larousse Dictionary, 2015). The word gratitude comes from the combination of the two Latin words gratia and gratus that mean for one, favor, and for the other, agreeable. All the words deriving from this Latin relate to notions of kindness, generosity, giving, the beauty of receiving and offering, or receiving something without getting anything in return (Pruyser, 1976, P. 69). Most commonly, gratitude is defined either as an emotion or as a personality trait (see Watkins, Woodward, Stone and Kolts, 2003 ; Emmons, McCullough, and Tsang, 2002). In its conception as an emotion, gratitude can be pictured as a subjective feeling of amazement, recognition and of appreciation of a received benefit. From the personality trait point of view, it can be considered rather as a predisposition to the experience of the state of gratitude.
Throughout history and in many cultures, gratitude has always been placed at the center of philosophical and theological theories on virtue (Dumas, Johnson, and Lynch, 2002). The expression and experience of gratitude are considered a human force that improves personal and relational well-being and that is beneficial to society as a whole (Harpman, 2004 ; Simmel, 1950). Gratitude allows us to be conscious of the fact that we need others to exist ; to this effect, Aristotle wrote that : “The man that is incapable of living in community and that does not feel the need to because he is fine alone is not part of society and as a result, is a brute or a god”. However, although gratitude has been a topic of interest for a long time in several disciplines, the sciences have only undertaken its conceptualization and its study for one decade (see Snyder and Lopez, 2007 ; Wood, Joseph, and Linley, 2007 a and b ; Emmons and McCullough, 2004 ; Emmons and Crumpler, 2000). The current research at the heart of these initiatives is that of “positive psychology”, that forms a scientific basis dedicated to showing that positive emotions contribute to our emotional and social well being. One of the first series of innovative studies on the effects of gratitude is a series of three studies realized by Emmons and McCullough in 2003.
In the first study, these researchers compared subjects that kept weekly journals writing grateful, neutral, or negative feelings. The results showed that only the subjects with feelings of gratitude exercised more regularly, felt better in their lives, and were more optimistic about the coming week.
In the second study, they asked the subjects this time to keep daily gratitude journals, and the analysis of their writing showed that the subjects were more enthusiastic, more concentrated, and more determined. Moreover, taking into account their health, there was evidence of a correlation between their interpersonal relations and their academic success.
In the final study, the researchers were interested in the neuromuscular effects that the practice of gratitude could produce and stated that the subjects that kept a gratitude journal had not only fewer muscle aches, but were also more optimistic, more energetic, and more linked to others, and has less difficulty sleeping.
In the same way, another team wanted to deepen these findings and was interested in the link between the practice of gratitude and physiology and more particularly at its link with life expectancy. Their work examined a religious group in Minnesota ; those arriving in the convent had to write a letter presenting themselves, then restarted this writing at 40 or 70 years old. The researchers therefore used 150 years of biographical letter archives and medical files. Their analysis showed evidence of a link between an increase in life expectancy at 7 years old and the quantification of positive emotions such as optimism, amazement, and gratitude (Danner, Snowden, and Friesen, 2001). Other later work extended this research to other more current areas such as the workforce, arriving at the same conclusions.
All of these studies considered together suggest that gratitude has a causal influence on well being and that an effective strategy to improve well-being would be to bring people to direst their attention towards the benefits that they have received or to reflect on the aspects of their lives for which they are grateful (Froh, Sefick, and Emmons, 2008 ; Seligman, Rashid, and Parks, 2006 ; Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade, 2005 ; Seligman, Steen, Park, and Peterson, 2005). A great number of works underline the probable link between gratitude, well being, and mental health. From this perspective, gratitude, seen as a personality trait, is put at the center of psychotherapy that aims to enable individuals to live their lives in the most satisfying way possible (see Linley and Harrington, 2006 ; Smith, 2006 ; Park et, al., 2004). Additionally, taking into account the positive effects observed as a result of the conscious practice of gratitude, specific programs have been developed to nourish and cultivate it in daily life. For example, Miller (1995) provided a simple cognitive-behavioral approach in four steps to learn gratitude by identifying ungrateful thoughts ; in formulating thoughts of gratitude, in replacing ungrateful thoughts with grateful thoughts and by translating interior sentiment into exterior action. Another alternative to reinforce one’s feeling of gratitude is provided by the Naikan therapy, which is a Japanese form of meditation (Reynolds, 1981). More precisely, the individual learns to meditate daily on three questions linked to gratitude : what do I receive ? What do I give ? What troubles and difficulties did I cause for others ? In doing this, gratitude meditation would contribute to bringing feelings of gratitude and motivation to make it the same.
In a recent study, Chinese researchers examined the combined effects of gratitude and sleep quality on symptoms of anxiety and depression. They stated that heightened levels of gratitude and better sleep quality were associated with a decrease in anxiety and depression (Ng and Wong, 2012).
Other researchers have wondered if it is the level of gratitude that improves these symptoms or if it is the fact that these patients sleep better ? The response to this question came from a study of cerebral images by the American researchers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who examined blood flow in the different regions of the brain while subjects expressed sentiments of gratitude (Zahn et. Al, 2009). They concluded that the subjects who expressed more gratitude showed an increase in activation in the hypothalamus region, which is a cerebral region that controls a great range of essential body functions, like eating, drinking, or sleeping. This cerebral region is best known for having an influence on the regulation of our metabolism and our stress levels. The sensation of gratitude has been similarly associated with an augmentation in the activation of cerebral dopamine regions. This neurotransmitter that is dopamine is commonly associated with the notion of “reward”. This means that an action that induces an increase in dopamine secretion will drive us to want to reproduce it so as to feel “the reward” again. Gratitude can therefore have a powerful impact on our lives, because it engages our brain in a virtuous cycle. In effect, our brain has difficulty dealing with both positive and negative stimuli at the same time. Robert Emmons explains that gratitude “helps a person to direct their attention towards happy things in their life and to distract them from things that are missing” (Emmons, 2007).
All the same, gratitude does not destroy our negative emotions ; rather, it incites us to develop positive emotions concentrating on our luck, and for certain researchers that associate it with a capacity for resilience, it would be a factor of protection against professional burnout (Peterson et Seligman, 2004).
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