Affirmation boxes

Adult learners often bring negative experiences with previous schooling to bear on their perceived abilities to succeed in an ABE or ESOL class. Within the Managing Stress to Improve Learning project, we researched affirmation theory as a base for developing expressive arts projects to help students become more confident learners. According to Phyllis Siegel (2004), "Self-affirmation theory posits that negative reactions to threats to one’s self-integrity may be eliminated by 'affirming some other aspect of the self that reinforces overall self-adequacy.' Indeed, the opportunity to self-affirm - even in a domain unrelated to the source of the specific threat (to self integrity) and even without removing the threat itself - has been found to attenuate the negative effects associated with those factors believed to threaten self-integrity." (p 590)

At Project Hope, students engaged in an affirmation box project where they reflected on their strengths, skills, and abilities and created artifacts to display those areas to share with others.

Today in class I was going to start off the class with an icebreaker. However, when I stepped into the classroom, to my surprise, I saw the students already working on their affirmation boxes. They arrived early and figured they’d get a head start on decorating them…One student decorated the top of her box full of the color sky blue. She compared the openness of the sky to her never ending knowledge she continues to have in her life. She said when she was a child, she didn’t get to do arts and crafts like she is now and she’s really enjoying it. One student mentioned that it (the affirmation cards) forced her to think positively and to think of goals she wanted to reach. She stated that writing her affirmation down will help her to stay on track with accomplishing her goals.

- Jeymi Arroyo, Project Hope, Roxbury, MA

To read more about the Affirmation Box project, go to the lesson plans Affirmation Activity: Getting Started and Creating Affirmation Boxes.

To view Shirley at Project Hope present her affirmation box, watch the video below.

For more about affirmation theory, see:

Siegel, P.A. et al. (2005).Reducing the tendency to self-handicap: The effect of self-
affirmation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41 (6), 589–597. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103105000077

Sherman, D. et al. (2006). The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory. Retrieved from http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/~d_sherma/advances.final.pdf

Participants at final workshop for Managing Stress project create mini-affirmation boxes using metal cylinders: