I am currently in my eighth year of teaching and something that I have always loved to do for my students is writing them happy mail. It may be partially due to the fact that my love language is words of affirmation, specifically written words of affirmation. That aside, I have been pleasantly surprised each year with how much my students love getting happy mail from me. Most students keep them in their pencil boxes, or backpacks and have pulled them out again to reread.

Writing happy mail is something that I started when I had a student who had a really hard day and I knew would be nervous for school the next day. I wrote them a letter saying how excited I was to see them that morning and I could not wait to watch them have a good day. Since then, I have used happy mail to do the same thing as well as many other reasons. Some days I write happy mail to highlight a success or small win that a student had the day before. On the other hand, some days I write happy mail to acknowledge something that many have happened outside of school that their parents told me about to let them know I am there if they need to talk.

If happy mail is something that you want to start in your own class, here are my favorite tips!

• * Use some sort of tracker to record who you are writing happy mail to each week. This lets me see if I am writing to certain students more than others, and lets me make sure that everyone is getting mail from me.
• * Buy a variety of different stationery options and keep a drawer fully stocked! You never know who you may be writing to, or for what reason, so it is fun to have options to choose from.
• *Switch it up and take turns writing happy mail to students that is for them to read and also writing happy mail to parents about how amazing their child is. My kids always get excited when I saw amazing things about them to their adults.

Since starting happy mail I even created my own template that helps me write happy mail for multiple reasons. Each postcard has a different sentence starter that helps me write to my students for a variety of reasons! To make them more fun you can even print them on colored paper, which is what I do in my own classroom. Check out the link below to see all FIVE postcards.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Positive-Postcards-for-Students-9777160