Readiness is the ability and willingness to engage, which fuels the child to persist and follow through to the next step. Yet, readiness doesn’t emerge on its own, nor is it a feeling that comes naturally. Instead, it is a mindset that needs to be nurtured and conditioned by supportive environments and opportunities for discovery, curiosity, and the growth of interests.
When students feel good about themselves and believe they can succeed, that willingness grows. Positive Action helps them build that confidence one small, positive choice at a time. The idea is simple: we feel good about ourselves when we do positive actions. Over time, those small wins strengthen a student’s sense of self and prepare them to engage, persist, and learn.
Engagement changes everything. Students become more determined, participative, and curious, which are critical skills for academic growth. But for interest to happen, students need to bring into the classroom more than notebooks and homework: their readiness to learn. To explore the evidence on how readiness directly influences academic outcomes, read: Beyond Scores: Why Learning Readiness Matters More for Academic Progress.
Students don't talk themselves into readiness; they do themselves into readiness. Educators and parents play an active role in this process by, one, sustaining motivation through mental wellness, and two, nurturing children's positive sense of self.
We’ve explored learner readiness and its connection to mental health, and how it drives academic growth. Now we turn to the foundation beneath them all: a student’s sense of self.
Students can’t engage with learning if they don’t believe they belong in the classroom. They can’t persist through challenges if they don’t believe they’re capable. And they can’t find meaning in school if they don’t understand who they are or what they care about. These are the truths that shape readiness from the inside out, and they’re why Positive Action starts with the self.
“Sense of self” is how a student understands who they are and what they value, how they see their strengths, and how their choices express who they are at school, at home, and with friends. It is not predetermined. It’s an ever-evolving inner essence, built over time with every choice we make and each moment of reflection.
Like a compass, a student's sense of self helps them navigate through choices and challenges. If well-developed, it can guide thoughtful decision-making and help stay focused on self-improvement. Otherwise, students get stuck in confusion, doubt, and fear that can challenge their problem-solving and self-management.
“Sense of self” is often compared to or understood alongside other related ideas, which deepen understanding of personal goals and growth.
“How we see and feel about ourselves.” This is Positive Action’s framing of identity. It answers the question, “Who am I?” For example, a student might think they are creative and helpful toward their classmates. This guides their approach toward life choices and relationships.
“How we evaluate our worth and how we think others see us.” This perception shapes our pride or doubts about ourselves. Often, a person has their own understanding of their own value. A healthy self-esteem plays a critical role in personal resilience and seeing mistakes or failures as opportunities for learning.
“The belief that we can succeed at a task and that effort will make a difference.” This is the mindset that cheers us on, saying, “I can do this if I try.”
“The ability to pay attention to our thoughts, actions, and feelings, and understand how they influence one another.” With this intelligence, students can pause and assess why they feel frustrated, proud, or nervous, allowing them to retrace their steps and adapt.
While these ideas overlap, each highlights a different aspect of how we come to know and believe in ourselves. Together, they build a strong and evolving sense of self, one that supports curiosity, motivation, resilience, and learning readiness.
With a sense of self, students don't just know what to learn; they know who they are as learners.
Positive Action keeps this simple: we feel good about ourselves when we do positive actions. This powerful idea turns self-understanding into something students can practice every day, not just think about.
Students use the Thoughts-Actions-Feelings (TAF) Circle to understand how their outward behavior and internal world are connected.
When students make positive choices and do positive actions, they experience positive feelings, which strengthen their self-concept. This positive sense of self leads to more positive thoughts, which in turn influence their actions and feelings in a positive cycle.
The desirable outcome of this responsible behavior fuels students’ internal motivation to continue to do good. As students feel confident in their abilities, they are more willing to try and take healthy risks. Hence, they feel more driven, interested, and ready to learn.
Conversely, negative choices lead to negative feelings and thoughts. By becoming aware of the TAF Circle, students can pause, reflect, and make better choices next time before those thoughts spiral into further discouragement or self-doubt.
The universal six-unit concept design of Positive Action addresses the various dimensions of a student’s identity and self-understanding. With this whole-self approach, the program builds a holistic foundation for their personal growth and lifelong learning readiness.
Positive Action is grounded in the simple philosophy that we feel good about ourselves when we do positive actions. With this as the foundation, the program promotes doing into becoming: every act becomes a step toward a stronger, clearer, and more empowered sense of self.
Over time, small positive choices and actions accumulate. Students begin to see themselves differently—not simply as learners attending class because of responsibility, but as capable, caring individuals with their own interests, agency, and willingness to shape their own growth and meaning.
Such a newfound sense of self can fuel students’ confidence, learning readiness, and persistence even when learning becomes mundane or complex.
The following strategies are encouraged by the program to help students practice consistent positive actions:
In every Positive Action lesson, students are encouraged to practice one positive action for themselves and others each day. These actions can be as simple as speaking kindly to themselves in the mirror or helping others at home or in school.
One methodology across all grade levels in the program is to recognize students when they do something positive. This simple strategy serves as positive reinforcement, amplifying students' self-belief. It builds their self-esteem, makes them more willing to try new challenges, and makes them feel more ready to learn.
Repetition is a practical approach to promoting consistency. When students repeat small positive actions, they begin to form reliable patterns that grow interests, willingness, and identity.
In practice, that means guiding students to notice not just what went well once, but what they did to make it happen, and to do it again. As for learning readiness, the more students experience positive outcomes from coming to class engaged, the more interested they become. Their motivation is ignited and sustained, and they attend ready to learn again.
The bottom line is this: When students feel grounded in who they are, they bring stability and purpose to everything they do in the classroom. They make positive choices, connect with others, and stay engaged even when tasks are challenging. This inner stability fuels motivation and focus, which prepares them to learn.
Students want to be seen as themselves—not as a label, test score, or someone else’s sibling. Every learner brings a story. When classrooms make room for those stories and guide students to make sense of who they are, readiness begins to grow.
This is true across the spectrum: students with behavior challenges, justice involvement, advanced placement, those facing disciplinary support, or students working ahead of grade level. All are looking for identity and direction. When education honors that need, students begin to connect effort with purpose.
As Charlotte Danielson and Lee Kappes explain in their article The Impact of Belonging on Student Growth (sponsored by ASCD), “Classrooms are microcosms of society,” where belonging, voice, and identity shape every learning interaction. A classroom that values identity doesn’t just teach academics; it cultivates citizens who can see themselves as capable, responsible, and connected to something larger than themselves.
Research reinforces this connection. A meta-analytic review of research found something powerful: how students see themselves shapes how well they learn.
Interestingly, the connection was strongest when students’ self-beliefs were specific to a subject, such as feeling that they are “good at math” or “a capable reader,” rather than based on general confidence. This shows that students build readiness not just by feeling good about themselves, but by believing they can succeed in real learning tasks.
The study’s findings echo what Positive Action practices every day: confidence grows through experience. When students notice how their positive actions lead to progress and good feelings, their self-belief strengthens. That belief fuels the motivation to try again, focus longer, and keep learning.
Evidence from Positive Action reveals the connection between how students see themselves and how they engage in learning.
In a large, multi-year study across Chicago public schools, researchers found that students who participated in the Positive Action program developed stronger self-concept and self-esteem. These effects lead to measurable improvements in both behavior and engagement.
What’s most important is why these changes happened. Researchers found that the program’s impact on positive behaviors was mediated by growth in students’ social-emotional and character development—the very skills that shape self-concept and self-esteem. In other words, as students began to feel more capable, responsible, and valued, they made better decisions, stayed engaged longer, and cared more about their learning.
In a longitudinal evaluation study conducted in two low-income, racially diverse rural counties, researchers examined the influence of the Positive Action program on students’ self-esteem, stress, and behavior.
The results showed consistent benefits for students who participated in the program:
Modest increases in self-esteem and reductions in school hassles can help create the conditions for students to be ready to learn.
Another large-scale longitudinal study examined how dosage (number of years and lessons completed) in the Positive Action program affects emotional and behavioral outcomes, including self-esteem, school hassles, aggression, and internalizing symptoms.
The results were clear: greater exposure produced stronger benefits for students’ sense of self and school experience.
Building learning readiness isn’t just about exposure; it’s about consistency. The more opportunities students have to practice positive thinking and behavior, the more those actions strengthen their sense of self and learning readiness.
A sense of self creates ownership. Ownership unlocks willingness. Willingness builds engagement. In Positive Action, this grows through the Thoughts, Actions, Feelings (TAF) Circle:
This internal loop becomes a behavioral feedback cycle that supports persistence. Students no longer wait for motivation from a teacher or a reward: readiness becomes self-driven. It’s the turning point where learning shifts from something done to them to something they do for themselves.
The process of developing a sense of self starts small and becomes a pattern.
These aren’t dramatic moments. But when they link up, students start asking questions, accepting challenges, taking initiative, and returning to tasks after setbacks. Engagement rises because they believe their effort matters.
Positive Action turns this growth in self-concept into daily practice, so readiness for lifelong learning can prosper.
Through short, consistent lessons, students learn to notice the process of the Thoughts–Actions–Feelings (TAF) Circle at work in their real-life behaviors, how every choice they make shapes how they feel and who they become. Each unit reinforces a different aspect of self-development: physical, intellectual, social, and emotional growth. Together, these lessons strengthen both identity and follow-through, helping students connect what they do with how they see themselves.
Over time, small wins accumulate. Students begin to act with more purpose, stay focused longer, and recover more quickly from setbacks. This steady rhythm of action and reflection transforms readiness from something teachers try to build to something students carry with them.
That’s why studies consistently show higher self-esteem and fewer school hassles among students who participate in Positive Action, especially when they experience it over time. The program doesn’t just teach skills; it builds a durable sense of self that supports motivation, engagement, and persistence.
As Carl Slater’s article, “Crafting Data-Driven Narratives About Students,” highlights, the stories students tell themselves matter as much as any score. When students believe they can learn, they are far more likely to engage with learning itself.
Positive Action helps them write that story, one daily choice at a time, until “I can” becomes “I’m doing it,” and readiness becomes who they are.
At the heart of learner readiness is how students see themselves. Positive Action develops that readiness from the inside out, guiding students to connect their thoughts, actions, and feelings through consistent, evidence-based health and social-emotional learning lessons.
When students feel good about who they are, they make better choices, take healthy risks, and stay engaged in learning. Over time, they begin to see effort as progress and persistence as strength.
Positive Action gives educators a clear framework for building this foundation every day. Through short, practical lessons, schools can nurture self-concept, strengthen relationships, and create classrooms where readiness and motivation thrive.
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Because when students believe in themselves, learning follows.
