A Month of Gratitude: A Conversation with Barbara Mayfield, MS, RDN, LD, FAND
November in the My Healthy Year datebook centers on gratitude, offering students and educators a reason to pause and reflect. This intentional focus helps improve wellness and reinforce the power of perspective in everyday life.
To spotlight this theme, we spoke with Barbara Mayfield, a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and the expert behind My Healthy Year. Her work blends nutrition, education, and social-emotional learning into a planner designed to support healthy habits year-round.
Meet Barbara Mayfield: Champion of Wellness Education
Barbara’s professional journey spans classrooms and communities, from preschoolers to dietetics students. Her mission has always been clear: to help people build healthy, sustainable habits through education and encouragement.
Barbara explains why mental and physical wellness are such a passion for her. “As a health professional, I recognize that health is more than physical health, and practices such as gratitude can be as health-promoting as adequate sleep and hand-washing. Additionally, it is the habits we practice 24/7 that determine our health; therefore, setting goals to adopt health-promoting behaviors, such as practicing gratitude, can be life-changing.”
That philosophy is the foundation of My Healthy Year, a planner that helps students build confidence, structure, and emotional resilience one day at a time.
Wellness, One Habit at a Time
Barbara knows that small, consistent actions have the greatest impact. That’s why My Healthy Year was designed with a monthly structure that introduces and reinforces simple wellness themes, from healthy eating to mindfulness to gratitude.
“We become what we repeatedly do,” Barbara shares. “So creating habits is fundamental to creating lasting change in anything. The research I share about habit formation shares how we most successfully achieve this.”
Each page supports self-awareness and goal-setting, making it easy for educators to integrate social-emotional learning into the school day without needing extra prep time or a separate curriculum.
Barbara explains that social-emotional learning belongs in everyday education. “Social and emotional learning should not be a struggle, because it doesn’t require its own period in the day, but should be modeled every moment by how we listen, respect others, encourage, demonstrate kindness, etc.”
Gratitude as a Daily Practice
Gratitude offers measurable benefits to both physical and mental health, and Barbara is passionate about helping students experience those effects firsthand. In November, the planner encourages daily reflection and kindness-focused activities that shift student focus from stress to strength.
“When gratitude becomes a way of life, it permeates everything in significant ways,” Barbara says.
She also encourages teachers to model thankfulness. Quick shoutouts, personal stories, and classroom appreciation rituals help normalize gratitude and strengthen student connection. “Model it,” she urges. “Share something from your own life that was a potentially negative experience where something amazing happened as a result. Share examples from others to inspire them!”
A Tool That Builds Over Time
Unlike short-term wellness lessons, My Healthy Year provides ongoing guidance that builds throughout the year. Its structure supports long-term habit formation, helping students develop skills they’ll carry beyond the classroom.
Barbara notes, “As a daily planner, it allows for a focus on health that extends beyond a week-long unit and becomes a learning experience that builds gradually throughout the year, step by step.
Bring Habit-Building and Gratitude to Your Classroom
Support your students in developing lifelong skills in emotional wellness, goal-setting, and self-care. Explore My Healthy Year now.
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