happy classroom essay

Building a Joyful Classroom Community

In a year full of uncertainty and stress, teachers in the early grades can create a safe and even joyful learning environment.

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As teachers, we are experiencing anxiety, disruptions, and uncertainty because of the lingering pandemic. However, happiness can still happen behind our closed classroom doors. This year, I’ve worked hard to make my classroom a happy place for my students, who come to class looking for some sense of normalcy in an otherwise chaotic world.

I ask myself the following questions: What are my students’ favorite activities? What draws the most engagement in the classroom? What can I do to make these occurrences more frequent?

These are the places I have seen joy emerge, and providing more opportunities for this to happen helps me keep going and stay focused on the essential part of my job this year—creating a safe environment where students can find joy in learning even in challenging times.

Build a Strong Community

Being a part of a powerful community allows students to see school as a safe, caring environment and provides support as together we navigate the unknown.

To give an example, I start the day by placing materials such as Legos, drawing paper, and books on tables for my students to choose from as they arrive, allowing them to talk casually and connect with their peers. Then, at our morning meeting, we form a circle and I ask them, “How are you feeling?”

The kids and I sit in silence for a moment, waiting for each other to respond. “I’m overwhelmed,” “I’m exhausted,” “I’m scared,” “I’m very happy to be here,” “I enjoy going to school,” and “I’m feeling all mixed up inside” are among my students’ responses. Sometimes we share some fabulous (or not-so-fabulous) news.

We reassemble for quiet time in the middle of the day. I turn on soft lights as we do a guided meditation to help us refocus and center ourselves. While the kids rest, draw, or read, soft music plays. This sets the tone for a calm afternoon.

We turn on a dance song and sing along to our favorite songs during transitions throughout the day and to add fun to our routine as we clean up the room.

We reassemble in our circle before school ends for the day. I ask each child to describe the day in one word, whether it be a feeling, an accomplishment, or a favorite activity.

These moments unite us as a happy community that looks out for each other, laughs together, takes deep breaths, and reflects on what we are doing together as a class.

Engage in Authentic Curriculum

For years, I’ve taught my students about animal adaptations by comparing various types of bears, which is a popular animal among them. On one of our outdoor learning days this year, my students stumbled upon a porcupine den in the woods behind our school. It piqued their interest, which showed up in their drawings, block constructions, and story writing.

“Everyone acknowledges that curriculum becomes intriguing, alive, and compelling when something out of the blue captures the imagination of a group of children,” David Sobel wrote in his book Childhood and Nature . Their newfound interest inspired me to change course.

In this year’s science unit, we are studying the adaptations of our local porcupine family. To learn more, we brought in a local naturalist. She brought in a real porcupine skull for the kids to see, quills for them to feel, stories about porcupines in the wild, and books to help us all learn more.

We brainstormed important questions the children had using the Question Formulation Technique , which we will use to guide our research. We used online resources to find more books and videos to aid us in our research and nonfiction writing . As a final project, each child will write a chapter book explaining the animal’s survival adaptations.

As a culminating project, we will collaborate with the art teacher to create an artistic representation of the den on a bulletin board, to which the children add information gleaned from the experience. The project keeps growing, and the excitement builds with each new idea that emerges. We invite parents to take part in our class project by posting updates on our classroom blog for them to follow.

This all started with the kids and their excitement because of a discovery we made as a class. Focusing on activities that encourage children’s happiness, curiosity, and engagement—or even making the tiniest change in the curriculum to a topic that matches their interests—can sometimes pave the way for happiness.

Share Student Voices

In these times of uncertainty, we all need a place to be seen and heard. This happens in my class during Writer’s Workshop. Every day, children find a quiet corner of the room to write in, where they create stories about things that matter to them. They write about everything, then draw colorful pictures to go along with their words.

Then comes the most exciting part. Returning to the rug, the children discuss their work with a friend. They enjoy getting together to read aloud to one another. During sharing time, the room is quiet, but the laughter is loud as they read their stories.

We form a circle and project a few stories onto the document camera so that the entire class can see and discuss them. The author then walks to the “Author’s Chair” to receive questions, comments, and compliments on their story from their peers.

One of my students recently wrote a story about how happy she was to receive her Covid shot. “I jumped up and down because I love my covid shot. I got it at school. When it happened, I wasn’t crying. My dad was so proud!” she wrote. She recalled the night we converted our school gymnasium into a vaccination center, with children and parents waiting in long lines for hours to get their shots.

When we get together as writers, we can share these experiences and support one another through the various emotions they bring out in us.

“The happiness of the child is one test of the correctness of educational procedure,” Maria Montessori once said. So, right now, do more of the things that make your students happy.

We all need more of that.

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Seven strategies for a happy classroom

School-going children spend a greater part of their day in classrooms, and for teaching and learning to be truly effective, it is important that classrooms are safe, happy and welcoming spaces. Here are nine strategies that can help teachers create a positive classroom experience.

The ‘Whale Done’ response

Teachers often wait for perfect work or behavior to praise a child. Sometimes it may never happen by the teacher’s standard of perfection. Instead, what if one praises the little steps the child is making to reach the goal?

Taken from the book titled Whale Done  by Ken Blanchard, the 'Whale Done' response empowers one to build positive relationships – teacher and pupils, parents and children or in fact any relationship. A beautiful line in the book says ‘Praise progress, it’s a moving target’. Here is the 'Whale Done' response:

Praise students immediately, i.e. as soon as the behaviour occurs.

Be specific about what they did right or almost right.

Share your positive feelings about what they did.

Encourage them to keep up the good work.

The 'redirection' response

This response needs conscious practice before it becomes a part of a teacher’s behavior.

Describe the error or problem as soon as possible, clearly and without blame.

Explain its negative impact.

If appropriate, take the responsibility for not making the task clear (For instance, ‘I am sorry, I did not communicate the instructions clearly').

Go over the task in detail and make sure it is clearly understood.

Express your continuing trust and confidence in the student.

Ask yourself

When teachers embark on a teaching career, they need to answer some questions for themselves in order to be the kind of teacher they aspire to be. For instance, questions such as:

What kind of values and attitudes do I need, to develop the right kind of values and attitudes in my students?

What kind of skills would I require, to develop key life skills such as managing emotions and problem solving in my students?

How will I maintain a balance between academic performance and emotional wellbeing of my students?

Twenty or thirty years from now how will I want my students to remember me?

Answers to these questions will help teachers gain better insight on how they can excel in their chosen vocation.

Set healthy boundaries

Children need boundary lines within which they can operate and this applies to both classroom and home settings. It reminds me of a child who ran away from the house, and when found by the police, he explained, "I do not want to go home, my home lacks discipline." What the child meant was that there was no one who cared enough about him to give him the boundaries – the limits. Children need to feel secure and cared for and boundary lines help achieve this.

In the classroom, boundaries can be established in different ways. For example, in the lower classes, the teacher—with a little help from the students—can make a 'traffic light' for the class. The red light rules will be common for adults and children. For instance, "We will not use our hands to hit anyone." The amber light rules will be different for teachers and children. For example, "When at work you will not walk around in the class and disturb the others." The green light rules are the areas where children have freedom. For instance, the teacher could give them freedom to create a story, or an art piece or ask questions and share ideas and opinions.

In middle school and high school the students can be involved in the making of class agreements (for example, "We agree to be on time.") and the consequences.  

Focus on the process

Teachers normally focus on the results or the outcome, and while this matters, the method or process is equally important. A seven-year-old child once said to her parents, "Going to school is like hurting a bird whose wings are not hurt." What the child meant was that learning was not fun as she had to do it the teacher’s way and there was no place for her way.

Children are happy when they can experience, explore, observe, communicate – in other words, when they are fully engaged in the process of learning. It is also important to remember that children learn differently. 

Know as much as you can about the kids rather than make them pass through the same eye of the needle.

Howard Gardner

Avoid scapegoating

In every school and possibly in every classroom there are scapegoats. The scapegoat is the student who:

is caught and blamed for all misbehavior in the class/school.

is manipulated and not aware that they are being manipulated.

is generally slower in covering up and therefore the misbehavior is much more visible. The manipulators stand aside and watch the fun.

has no plausible excuse for their behavior except to say that someone else started it (The excuse is not believed by the teacher).

In such situations, teachers should be observant and listen with all their antennae out. Have a meeting with all the concerned students to understand the issue. Do not act as an umpire – instead ask everyone involved questions that will help put the issue in the right perspective. Refrain from being judgmental.

Dr Thomas Gordon in his book Teacher Effectiveness Training,  brings out the concept of 'teacher-owned' problems and 'student-owned' problems. Teachers should learn to identify the problems that they 'own'. Does the behavior of the child affect your feelings and interfere with your needs? For example, is your own success tied to your student’s behavior and performance? If yes, then you as the teacher own the problem. You now have three choices before you:​

Change the student: If the child’s behavior is a problem, then suggesting to the parents that they withdraw the child from school is definitely not the solution. A better way, would be to convey to the child, how the behavior makes you feel, without threatening or ridiculing them. Use the ‘I’ message, for instance, "I feel angry when you act the clown in class and disturb my flow of thought." This will bring in honesty and transparency into the teacher-student relationship. In the long run it will foster a rapport. A little affection and love shown can bring about a miraculous change in the behavior of a child. If the problem is ‘student owned’, help the child take ownership of the problem and face the consequences of the disruptive behavior. Above all, build a partnership with parents. Use the diary – not only as a “complaint book” but also as a means to communicate positive messages about the child to the parents.

Change the environment: Wherever possible think of changing the environment creatively. Generally, the education system tends to make everybody like everybody else. This could be one of the causes for misbehavior as the same fit does not fit all. Every teacher and every student is unique and therefore the system should be dynamic, constantly evolving and changing.

Change yourself: Let me share a thought that I picked up from a book titled  Living, Loving and Learning  by Leo F Buscaglia, PhD. He asks, "Should you be a loving teacher or a loving human being?" He goes on to say that children identify with people, with human beings. They have great difficulty identifying with a teacher for most of the time the teacher is playing a role. We have to be more  than a loving teacher.

As a closing thought, let us also learn from the younger generation. They are our best teachers in that, through their behavior they are giving us messages on how they want to be treated. As a teacher, ask yourself whether you model being an enthusiastic learner. Look at the quality of your teaching and the preparation that goes into your teaching. Teachers who are knowledgeable, have the right attitudes, are organized, behave confidently, and have things under their control, are less likely to face aggression or disruption. The teacher with the greatest openness to the thoughts of others can, and generally will control the outcome of any interaction. Students do perceive the teacher’s efforts. Respect earned and commanded is the greatest antidote to disruptive behavior.

Phyllis Farias is a Bangalore-based Education Management Consultant. Over the years, she has taught at all levels – from primary school to teachers' training in college. In addition, she has conducted workshops, seminars and training programs in schools, colleges and professional institutions throughout the country.

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How To Create A Happy Classroom

Author biography.

Adrian Bethune

Is your classroom a happy place?

Happiness in schools is becoming a serious business as heads and teachers try to tackle both a young people’s mental health crisis and a teaching crisis too.

The evidence is clear that happier children work better, get ill less, have less time off school, get higher grades and are generally more successful. And, if you think focusing on student happiness detracts from ‘serious’ learning, think again. The evidence also shows that schools that work on developing student wellbeing not only have happier pupils but that they do better academically and their behaviour improves too.

10 Steps To A Happy Place

Here are 10 ways to foster happy classrooms to maximise learning and teach your students some life-affirming skills.

1 Tribal classrooms

Humans are an innately tribal and social species. We operate the best and learn the most when we feel safe, secure and connected to others. So, greet your students at the door with a smile and shake their hand. Make everyone feel welcome and that they’re part of your tribe. When there are friendship issues, help to resolve them. A happy classroom is built primarily on positive relationships.

2 Mindfulness

There’s growing evidence that mindfulness interventions can help children reduce their levels of stress, anxiety and depression, whilst increasing their levels of positive emotion, attention and even metacognition. Create moments of stillness in your day when your class pause, take some deep breaths, and then focus on their normal breathing. Each time their mind wanders away from their breathing, guide them to gently bring their attention back to the breath. Every time you bring your attention back to the breath after it has wandered, you strengthen the parts of the brain in charge of attention and emotional regulation.

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3 Rewire negativity bias

The human brain has an innate negativity bias. This helped keep us alive on the savannah as our ancestors who could spot dangers quickly and avoid them, survived and passed on their genes, but our more mindful ancestors who stopped to admire a beautiful vista were gobbled up by a lion. But a practice known as ‘Three Good Things’ can help rewire that bias and level the playing field. At the end of each day, get your students to write down three things that went well for them. Ask them to share their good things with a partner. Repeat often to rewire that bias!

Learning new things is a key facet of a happy life. When we’re engaged and interested in our work, we feel and do better. But if the work is not challenging enough, we get bored, and too challenging and we get overwhelmed. Aim for that elusive Goldilocks sweet-spot of stretching your students to just beyond what they can currently do as that is where neuroplasticity is maximised and the most learning takes place.

When the challenge of a task is just right, when the task has clear goals, and when we’re able to really focus on what it is we’re doing, we are likely to experience ‘flow’ – an optimal state of psychological being. Time rushes by, we lose sense of ourselves and it feels deeply satisfying. Children that experience flow more regularly show deeper learning, greater long-term interest in subjects, and higher levels of wellbeing. Create the atmosphere so your class can lose themselves in their work!

6 Play to their strengths

Character strengths are the core parts of ourselves that shape our personality and motivate us. Studies show that when we use our strengths in novel ways we are significantly happier. Why not get your class to take this youth strengths questionnaire to identify their top ‘signature strengths’ and task them with using them in their school work and at home.

7 Practice kindness

Humans are hardwired to be kind. We get more happiness from buying a gift for others, than we do for ourselves. Kindness is contagious too and it even helps make us healthier. The best way to spread it is to be kind yourself. Teachers who use kind words, are polite, respectful, patient and well-mannered have children who emulate them. You could even encourage your children to carry out random acts of kindness by hosting a ‘Kindness Week’ .

8 Be optimistic

Optimists are happier, have better health and are less likely to suffer from depression than their pessimistic counterparts. But how can you help students be optimistic when things aren’t going there way? A key is to let them know that the problem is temporary (it won’t last forever), that it is specific (it affects one area of their life but other areas are going well) and it isn’t personal (don’t blame yourself as other external factors would have been involved). Help them challenge their negative self-chatter and see their situation from a more hopeful perspective.

Exercise is one of the single biggest things we can do to boost our physical and mental health. Fitter students perform better academically, have better body-image and higher self-esteem. We need to be getting our students out of their chairs and moving more. You could get your class to do ‘The Daily Mile’ where they jog or run a mile every day. Or simply break up lessons with a round of star jumps, burpees, or a few laps of the playground. Short bursts of exercise raises the heart rate and sends more blood and oxygen up to the brain allowing it to think better. Feel good hormones like dopamine and endorphins that exercise releases not only boost happiness levels but they are neurotransmitters too, so they boost brain power!

10 Walk the talk

To create a happier classroom for your children, you must first work on yourself. If you don’t walk the talk, your message will feel inauthentic and your class won’t buy into it. So make sure you look after yourself and practice what you preach. Ultimately, a happy teacher makes a happy classroom. Have a great year fellow teachers!

Adrian Bethune’s new book Wellbeing In The Primary Classroom: A Practical Guide To Teaching Happiness  is out now and includes many more practical tips for creating a happy classroom. Keep an eye on Teacher Toolkit social media this week because we’ll be giving away a free copy to one lucky winner!

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7 thoughts on “ How To Create A Happy Classroom ”

Hi Adrian, I’d like to add on – Taking Action To Resolve Bullying in Classrooms. I’ve seen instances where teachers simply ignore students bullying others in the believe that “it’s a phase and will go away”. I’d say that as teachers in charge of a classroom the onus is absolutely on us to address these situations either through mediation, escalation to parents, or in extreme cases some sort of disciplinary action or a combination of the above. The teacher has to do what is necessary to create a safe environment for all students (including the bully!).

Hi there, I agree with you. Bullying behaviour does need to be dealt with swiftly and effectively. From experience, creating tribal classrooms where all children feel valued and part of a team and school community, as well as working on fostering kindness are very effective at promoting prosocial behaviour and reducing incidents of bullying.

Thanks for your comments. I agree. Incidents of bullying must be handled quickly and effectively. From experience, creating tribal classrooms where all children feel valued and part of a team, and are encouraged to look after one another, plus working on developing kindness, all goes to help Foster prosocial behaviour and reduce the incidents of bullying behaviour.

Adrian, really enjoyed your blog laced with elements of our Mentors in Motion and Mental Health Footprint programmes that The Children’s Foundation is delivering across North East England.

Hi Tony, thanks for your comments. Your work sounds really interesting. I’ll be in touch!

Thanks Adrian

Very engaging article. Reading about (happiness) makes the reader happy, too, just like what you’ve stated in your post that positivity is contagious. And it has to start with the leader in the classroom- the teacher. Then again, positivity has to be coupled by strength so that no one gets gobbled up by the lion. When students are in an optimistic and uncluttered frame of mind, they will be most receptive to learning. It is particularly essential to allow mindfulness to flow in the classroom so that teaching and learning becomes more effective.

Good article. Helps in managing s happy class.

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What Is Positive Education, and How Can We Apply It? (+PDF)

They want their children to be happy and to flourish. They want them to live out their dreams and reach their innate potential.

The challenge, however, is finding the right education model. One that doesn’t stifle their potential nor produce cookie-cutter pupils.

An excellent option to consider is positive education, which combines traditional education principles with research-backed ways of increasing happiness and wellbeing.

The fundamental goal of positive education is to promote flourishing or positive mental health within the school community.

Norrish, Williams, O’Connor, & Robinson, 2013

Continue exploring this article to learn more about the emerging field of positive education and how it is transforming lives around the world.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Education Exercises for free . These ready-made tools are perfect for enhancing your teaching approach, making it easier to engage students in meaningful, student-centered learning.

This Article Contains:

What is positive education, how to apply positive education, positive education in practice, restorative practices, further positive education research, limitations in research, where are we now, 11 positive education books for parents and teachers, 4 videos on positive education, 4 positive education resources, 3 worksheets for positive educators, a take-home message.

Positive education is the combination of traditional education principles with the study of happiness and wellbeing, using Martin Seligman’ s PERMA model and the Values in Action (VIA) classification .

Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, has incorporated positive psychology into education models as a way to decrease depression in younger people and enhance their wellbeing and happiness. By using his PERMA model (or its extension, the PERMAH framework) in schools, educators and practitioners aim to promote positive mental health among students and teachers.

The PERMA and PERMAH frameworks

PERMA encompasses five main elements that Seligman premised as critical for long-term wellbeing:

• Positive emotions : Feeling positive emotions such as joy, gratitude, interest, and hope
• Engagement: Being fully absorbed in activities that use your skills but still challenge you
• (Positive) relationships : Having positive relationships
• Meaning : Belonging to and serving something you believe is bigger than yourself
• Accomplishment : Pursuing success, winning, achievement, and mastery

The PERMAH framework adds Health onto this, covering aspects such as sleep, exercise, and diet as part of a robust positive education program (Norrish & Seligman, 2015).

PERMAH in practice

The figure below is provided by Winmalee High School (2020) in New South Wales, and it shows how the PERMAH framework has been applied in practice through elements such as project-based learning, anti-bullying strategies, and more.

Below, you’ll find another example from Geelong Grammar School, one of the earliest models in the field (Norrish et al., 2013).

Source: Norrish et al., 2013, in Hoare, Bott, & Robinson, 2017, p. 59

VIA Character Strengths

Education has long focused on academics and fostering positive character strength development. However, before the publication of Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification by Peterson and Seligman (2004), any efforts to endorse character strengths were derived from religious, cultural, or political bias (Linkins, Niemiec, Gillham, & Mayerson, 2015).

The VIA classification, however, provides a cross-culturally relevant framework for ‘educating the heart’ (Linkins et al., 2015, p. 65).

Positive education programs usually define positive character using the core character strengths that are represented in the VIA’s six virtues:

• Wisdom and knowledge
• Transcendence

These positive characters aren’t innate; they’re external constructs that need to be nurtured. The goal of positive education is to reveal children’s combination of character strengths and to develop their ability to effectively engage those strengths (Linkins et al., 2015).

VIA strengths in practice

In practice, integrating character strengths into curricula can involve collecting information on students’ VIA strengths, talents, and interests when they enroll.

Revisiting these and communicating them to students throughout their academic journey can also be excellent ways to validate and nurture strengths (Robinson, 2019).

Self-report measures such as the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth  may be useful (Park & Peterson, 2006).

VIA Strengths: Positive Education With Character Strengths

Strengths-based interventions in educational systems are powerful tools that are often surprisingly simple to introduce.

“A school curriculum that incorporates wellbeing will ideally prevent depression, increase life satisfaction, encourage social responsibility, promote creativity, foster learning, and even enhance academic achievement”

(Waters, 2014).

The Geelong Grammar School (GGS) in Australia has often been cited as a model for positive education, since it was one of the first schools to apply positive psychology approaches school wide (Norrish & Seligman, 2015).

At GGS, all teachers and support staff participate in training programs to learn about positive education and how to apply its teachings in both their work and personal lives (Norrish & Seligman, 2015).

For students at the school, positive education is incorporated into every course. For example, in an art class, students might explore the concept of flourishing by creating a visual representation of the concept. The students also have regular lessons on positive psychology, just like they would with subjects like mathematics and geography (Norrish & Seligman, 2015).

These strengths-based interventions also focus on the relationship between teachers and students. When a teacher gives feedback, they are instructed to be specific about the strength the student demonstrated rather than giving vague feedback like “Good job!”

Changes to these small interactions are significant, and paying attention to the wording of positive reinforcement can make a difference. A study of praise conducted by Elizabeth Hurlock (1925) found it a more effective classroom motivator than punishment regardless of age, gender, or ability.

The following video summarizes the innovative ways schools are incorporating positive education into their curriculum.

Euro News: The Art of Happiness Through Positive Education – Learning World

In Australia, one school focuses on wellbeing, under the belief that humans learn best when they are happy. The video above explains the application of positive psychology into the school system at GGS.

Here are just a sample of some ways to incorporate this model into any classroom or school system.

The jigsaw classroom

The jigsaw classroom is a technique in which students are split into groups based on shared skills and competencies. Each student is assigned a different topic and told to find students from other groups who were given the same topic. The result is that each group has a set of students with different strengths, collaborating to research the same topic.

The influence of positive psychology has even extended to classroom dynamics. In positive psychology-influenced curricula, more power is given to the students in choosing their curriculum, and students are given responsibility from a much younger age. In these types of classroom settings, students are treated differently when it comes to praise and discipline.

The character growth card

In Paul Tough’s (2013) book How Children Succeed , he argues that possessing inborn intelligence and academic competency is not enough for students to succeed in school. Instead, he argues that grit, resilience, and other character traits should receive a greater emphasis in schools. Doing so leads to better near-term academic performance in students.

The acclaimed charter school network KIPP took many of these ideas and made them an official part of school protocol. Students at KIPP schools receive a Character Growth Card, which evaluates students’ performance not just for academic subjects like math and history, but also regarding a series of seven character traits. These traits are culled from positive psychology research by Seligman and psychologist Chris Peterson.

KIPP’s system enables the formal assessment of traits that fall outside the metrics used to assess students at most schools, and it teaches the importance of these character traits in a few ways. Teachers model positive behavior, call out positive examples of the character traits in action, and discuss the traits openly and explicitly.

There are no formal lessons teaching character traits like zest or gratitude. Still, KIPP faculty believe that highlighting examples of these traits when they naturally occur is an effective way to encourage their development.

Not everyone seems to believe that KIPP’s method is effective. In an article in The New Republic , education professor Jeffrey Snyder (2014) argues that we don’t actually know how to teach character strengths, so numerically measuring them can do more harm than good.

Even critics of KIPP agree that calling attention to character and positive psychology in schools is a step in the right direction.

The Bounce Back program and building resilience

Researchers Toni Noble and Helen McGrath (2008) devised a practical, cost-effective, and efficient classroom resiliency program called Bounce Back , the first positive education program in the world.

Noble and McGrath (2008) argue that teaching resilience to young children is most useful for lasting change, but that the most pressing need for increased resilience is during students’ transition into secondary school.

The Bounce Back program is targeted to upper primary and lower secondary students, as adolescence is a critical period of change and stress for students. This concept is summarized by their video below:

Resilience: Bounce Back

Bounce Back addresses two key areas: the environmental factors that build up psychological capital and the personal coping skills that students can learn, the importance of which has been highlighted by many researchers such as Reivich and Shatté (2002), and Barbara Fredrickson (2001).

Noble and McGrath (2008) provided a series of practical, day-to-day school activities that helped students feel connected to their peers, school, and the community. Their research showed how schools could create a more supportive environment, both within the school and in students’ families and communities.

To help students develop coping skills, the Bounce Back curriculum provides resources and suggestions for teachers and exercises for pupils. The exercises are designed to encourage pupils to develop optimism in the classroom and grow an accepting and light-hearted attitude.

Bounce Back provides practical tools such as a responsibility pie chart, which guides children to realize that all negative situations are a combination of three factors: their own behavior, the behavior of others, and random events.

Using the responsibility pie chart to understand a specific negative event helps pupils learn what they can change and what they can’t, developing their senses of initiative and responsibility.

These principles have proven useful for other positive psychology client groups. Participants in Possibility Place, a program for boosting resilience and confidence in the long-term unemployed, found the responsibility pie chart very useful in preventing people from berating themselves for things that were not their fault and learning to understand what they could do to resolve the situation.

Bounce Back is a wonderful example of how positive psychology research can be transmuted into tools to help people flourish.

More case studies

As positive education grows in popularity across the world, there are increasingly more global cases of its implementation at the system level. Some great examples include the following (Seligman & Adler, 2018).

Israel’s Maytiv Positive Education Program starts in pre-school and stretches up to the high school level. While positive psychologists still call for cautious interpretation of extant data, the Maytiv Program has shown some promising results such as enhanced student self-efficacy, positive emotions, a feeling of school belongingness, and improvements in the quantity and quality of social peer ties (Shoshani & Steinmetz, 2014; Shoshani, Steinmetz, & Kanat-Maymon, 2016; Shoshani & Slone, 2017).

Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority partnered with the South Australian Department of Education to conduct the Dubai Student Wellbeing Census. Following this, some schools in the United Arab Emirates have been established on positive education principles, including rigorous training of all educators and the introduction of dedicated departments such as one school’s “wellbeing department.”

In Mexico, a partnership between the Jalisco Ministry of Education and University of Pennsylvania also resulted in randomized controlled studies at educational institutions, with promising results. Based on these outcomes, a wellbeing curriculum (Currículum de Bienestar) was developed and implemented with beneficial impacts on measures such as academic performance, student connectedness, perseverance, and engagement (Adler, 2016).

In any given school year, tens of thousands of students are expelled from U.S. public schools. In the 2015–2016 academic year, for example, over 11 million instructional days were lost, according to the ACLU (Washburn, 2018).

Many of these students will be forced to leave their school for an entire academic year, while others will be barred from ever attending a public school in their state.

Considering how many days of school and learning are lost to expulsions and suspensions, some school administrators are starting to rethink those methods. Expulsions and suspensions can sometimes be necessary if a student’s behavior is compromising the safety or learning environment of their fellow students.

Many educators now think these disciplinary measures are unlikely to help children learn from their mistakes or prevent repeat behavior once the offending students are back in school. Some argue that these punishments further alienate these children physically and emotionally from their peers, only making them more likely to repeat harmful behavior (Noble & McGrath, 2008).

Source: Inequalitygaps.org

An alternative method, called restorative practice, is championed by some as an improvement upon the expulsion and suspension model (McCluskey et al., 2008). Restorative practice isn’t an entirely new concept; it’s based on the restorative justice model that has been championed by criminal justice reform advocates for years.

In this model, a meeting is held between the person who “offended” someone, the person directly affected by the offender, and the community entangled in this domino effect of actions. The Venn diagram above offers a visual as to how these parties intersect.

If a school disciplines a student, it’s usually because the student’s behavior had a specific effect on their environment. The idea behind restorative practice is to focus on that effect when pursuing disciplinary action.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Let’s say Maria was talking too loudly during class, disrupting her peers’ ability to focus. In a traditional disciplinary setting, the teacher might ask Maria to stop talking or give her a time-out.

In restorative practice, the teacher would ask Maria why she was speaking out of turn, what effect she’s having on the students around her, and whether she thinks it’s fair for the other students to be on the receiving end of that behavior.

In a more extreme case, like a student provoking and participating in a fight, the restorative practice would be more formal. The child would participate in a meeting with other students and adult leaders in the school. Together, they would discuss what spurred the student to start the fight, how it affected the others involved, and what the student might do instead if they were in a similar situation in the future (Hendry, 2010).

The student might also be assigned activities or programs that would help prevent further fights. As discussed in an article on restorative practice in EducationWeek , a California middle-schooler named Danny went through a similar process. In Danny’s case, his disciplinary requirements included “writing letters of apology, undergoing tutoring, and joining a school sports team.”

While precise recidivism rates vary based on location, the data on restorative practices shows promising results.

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“A central question of youth development is how to get adolescents’ fires lit, how to have them develop the complex of dispositions and skills needed to take charge of their lives”

(Larson, 2000).

Lots of studies have been done on positive education and its potential impacts. Here are some summaries of research findings on the benefits of positive education.

Promoting human development

Clonan, Chafouleas, McDougal, and Riley-Tillman (2004) found that the incorporation of positive psychology in learning environments helped foster individual strengths. It encouraged the development of positive institutions and made students more successful.

Still more research confirms these results, including studies establishing that positive education interventions had a more lasting impact on changing student behavior than other methods (Adler, 2016).

Teaching students how to make themselves happy

In another study, researchers examined the effects of life coaching on high school students (Green, Grant, & Rynsaardt, 2007).

The results showed that following their life coaching sessions, students showed significant decreases in depression and increases in cognitive hardiness and hope (Green et al., 2007). Students are better equipped to improve their subjective wellbeing in the longer term through greater control over their positive emotional experiences (Fredrickson, 2001; 2011).

Decreasing depression

Positive psychology interventions that are used in positive education include identifying and developing strengths, cultivating gratitude, and visualizing best possible selves (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005; Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006; Liau, Neihart, Teo, & Lo, 2016).

A meta-analysis conducted by Sin and Lyubomirsky (2009) with 4,266 participants found that positive psychology interventions do significantly increase happiness and decrease depressive symptoms. Further evidence from randomized clinical trials indicates a similar impact from positive psychology interventions in children (Kwok, Gu, & Kit, 2016).

Facilitating academic performance

Among some of the great examples of positive education’s impact on academic performance, we recommend Angela Duckworth’s work on grit, and Shankland and Rosset’s (2017) study on the positive relationship between learner wellbeing and academic performance (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007; Villavicencio & Bernardo, 2016; Akos & Kretchmar, 2017; Mason, 2018).

Offering easier systems for teachers

Positive education benefits teachers, too. It creates a school culture that is caring and trusting and prevents problem behavior. Recent research suggests that better teacher–student relationships may benefit student academic performance as well (Košir & Tement, 2014).

Increasing motivation among students

Positive education also offers a fresh model of pedagogy that emphasizes personalized motivation in education to promote learning (Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, & Linkins, 2009).

Research has shown that goals associated positively with optimism resulted in highly motivated students (Fadlelmula, 2010). This study showed that motivation may be consistent and long term if it is always paired with positive psychology interventions.

Boosting resilience

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania developed the Penn Resiliency Program . Results from 19 controlled studies of the Penn Resiliency Program found that students in the program were more optimistic, resilient, and hopeful. Their scores on standardized tests increased by 11%, and they had less anxiety approaching exams (Brunwasser, Gillham, & Kim, 2009).

Where many earlier studies on positive psychology focused primarily on adults such as college students, we’re now welcoming research on students as young as pre-schoolers.

There will always be calls for more research, so what’s next, specifically?

Seligman and Adler (2018) suggest the following in a publication on positive education:

• More evidence on the reality of the wellbeing improvements and academic achievement data we’ve seen thus far
• Rigorous cost-benefit analyses on existing positive education programs, which consider effect sizes and duration of reported results
• More scientific rigor in general across the field, including cross-validating measures, less obtrusive and reactive measures, and more big data techniques
• Treatment fidelity measurement, assessing how closely educators are adhering to the manuals they are provided in positive education systems

Overall, research findings on positive education have been promising so far, and time will tell what the future holds for positive education. Interest in applying positive psychology interventions in schools is certainly growing rapidly.

World’s Largest Positive Psychology Resource

The Positive Psychology Toolkit© is a groundbreaking practitioner resource containing over 500 science-based exercises , activities, interventions, questionnaires, and assessments created by experts using the latest positive psychology research.

Updated monthly. 100% Science-based.

“The best positive psychology resource out there!” — Emiliya Zhivotovskaya , Flourishing Center CEO

In the time since Seligman established the basic tenets of positive psychology, it has been implemented worldwide in many ways. While the objective of giving students the tools to build meaningful relationships, feel good, become well rounded, and bring positivity to everything that they do is common among all positive education institutions, each has its own approach.

For example, Perth College trains its staff in positive psychology and coaching and has full lesson units on ethical issues and social justice.

Other schools utilize the Montessori method, which emphasizes student-led, project-based curricula to enhance creativity and hands-on learning.

With the success of many of these approaches and no single dominant method, many organizations are starting to grow in an attempt to consolidate and organize the efforts among different schools.

The International Positive Education Network is one of several institutions attempting to figure out what is working and spread it through means such as conferences and even policy reform.

Recent research has suggested that these sorts of initiatives lead to students growing up with higher levels of creativity, leadership skills, and emotional intelligence (Leventhal et al., 2015). Furthermore, they even lead to improved academic performance and significantly better mental health (Adler, 2016).

With high levels of anxiety and depression in the world today, proactively raising children to handle these problems effectively may be the best antidote we can provide.

Are you interested in reading about how other institutions have embraced positive education or discovering some tactical approaches for teaching strengths? Here is a list of recommended books on topics in positive education.

• Positive Education: The Geelong Grammar School Journey ( Amazon ) – by J. Norrish
• Building Positive Behavior Support Systems in Schools: Functional Behavioral Assessment ( Amazon ) – by D. Crone, L. Hawken, and R. Horner
• Teaching That Changes Lives: 12 Mindset Tools for Igniting the Love of Learning ( Amazon ) – by M. Adams
• Positive Academic Leadership: How to Stop Putting Out Fires and Start Making a Difference ( Amazon ) – by J. Buller
• Playful Learning: Develop Your Child’s Sense of Joy and Wonder ( Amazon ) – by M. Bruehl
• Activities for Teaching Positive Psychology: A Guide for Instructors ( Amazon ) – by J. Froh and A. Parks
• Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings ( Amazon ) – by K. Ginsburg
• Making Wellbeing Practical: An Effective Guide to Helping Schools Thrive ( Amazon ) – by L. McKenna
• Positive Psychology in Practice: Promoting Human Flourishing in Work, Health, Education, and Everyday Life ( Amazon ) – by S. Joseph
• Celebrating Strengths: Building Strengths-Based Schools ( Amazon ) – by J. Eades
• Reshaping School Culture: Implementing a Strengths-Based Approach in Schools ( Amazon ) – by E. Rawana, K. Brownlee, M. Probizanski, H. Harris, and D. Baxter

If you want to learn more about positive education, try watching these videos on the subject. We would also love to hear any additional ideas in our comments section.

1. What Is Positive Education?

This video gives a very brief introduction to positive education and the role it can have on a student’s wellbeing. It also delves into the specific positive psychology techniques used in positive education.

2. Positive Education: Overcoming Disadvantage

How do positive education instructors teach and observe students differently from traditional teachers?

The video shows teachers reflecting on the program, discussing the benefits of “talking back,” focusing on what’s right with children and teenagers, and rebuilding a school’s culture.

3. Positive Education: Teaching Wellbeing

Geelong Grammar School, as described above, is taking an innovative approach in their students’ wellbeing.

This video explains how the school helps students cope with the stressors of life and gives a glimpse of what goes on in a positive education classroom. What makes this video remarkable is it shows how self-aware the students are.

4. Positive Education at Perth College, Anglican School for Girls

At Perth College, skills of wellbeing are taught to girls as a core part of their educational program. “ It’s important to start at a really young age, ” the school director explains.

This video focuses on a school that has wholly implemented positive education into their school program. It outlines how educators incorporate positive education for every age group, how they help their students flourish, and the results it has had on the staff, too.

If you’re interested in learning more about positive education, be sure to check out the following sources.

1. Institute of Positive Education | The Geelong Grammar School

As described above, the faculty at Geelong Grammar School believes that wellbeing should be at the heart of education. The school is known for pioneering a whole-school approach to positive education.

Here, you’ll find a positive education podcast, a curriculum to browse, and classroom materials such as the Mindful Moments and Brain Breaks .

2. International Positive Education Network (IPEN)

IPEN is a network that aims to bring individuals and institutions together to promote positive education.

On the IPEN website , educators can access learning materials such as meditations, vocabulary, video introductions to concepts, and inspiration for lesson plans. IPEN also has an active community of positive educators so users can connect and collaborate.

3. Positive Education Schools Association (PESA)

PESA is a school association working to embed positive psychology into school programs and aiming to improve student wellbeing and academic performance. This association helps schools and teachers gain access to resources and the latest research.

The association’s vision is for an education system that integrates wellbeing science and positive psychology. To this end, PESA facilitates collaboration between positive educators, provides resources, and hosts events.

4. Positive Schools Initiative

The Positive Schools Initiative website links to Australian and Asian conferences for educators, as well as the free digital Positive Times magazine . Here, parents and teachers can find news articles and opinion pieces on topics such as creativity, intrinsic motivation, engagement, goals, and other key positive education themes.

The Initiative is based on the contextual wellbeing model , which aims to create positive schools by supporting four interlinked domains: people, social norms, policy and practice, and physical space.

1. My Favorite Animals

Use this worksheet to help students identify positive qualities in their favorite animals, and acknowledge how those strengths can be seen in themselves as well.

Students are invited to reflect on qualities in their favorite animal that represents how they want others to see them. For example, flamingo – elegant, graceful, etc. Next, they select another animal, and list how others may see them. For example, an owl – quiet, shy etc. Lastly, they select yet another animal and identify who they truly are. For example, a monkey – funny, friendly, etc.

Here is the My Favorite Animals worksheet.

2. Daily Mood Tracker

The Daily Mood Tracker enables students to keep a record of their emotional state throughout the day. It’s simple to use and facilitates a better understanding of their moods while promoting emotional awareness through self-reflection.

Download this free Daily Mood Tracker .

3. Using Traits and Talents to Build Resilience

This fun exercise can be used to motivate students to take a more active approach in dealing with challenging events. By understanding their own gifts – traits and talents – they build their self-esteem, vital to being resilient. For example, dealing with peer problems, a student can find the strength to cope by living in line with their strengths, such as being kind or inventive.

The My Gifts – Traits and Talents activity involves four steps, and is a great tool to remind students of their great qualities.

Top 17 Exercises for Positive Education

Use these 17 Positive Education Exercises [PDF] to enhance student engagement, resilience, and wellbeing while also equipping students with valuable life skills.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

To encourage positive education in more schools, researchers argue that more practitioners should share their knowledge and experiences. Can you recommend any books, strategies, institutions, or resources to your fellow educators? Do you have a case study from your personal experience?

Or perhaps you’re a researcher who is studying the field – in that case, what’s brand new? What would you like to see more of in positive education curricula?

Let us know; we’d like to hear from you. Share your insights below in our comments section.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Education Exercises for free .

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• Kwok, S. Y., Gu, M., & Kit, K. T. K. (2016). Positive psychology intervention to alleviate child depression and increase life satisfaction: A randomized clinical trial. Research on Social Work Practice, 26 (4), 350–361.
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• Liau, A. K., Neihart, M. F., Teo, C. T., & Lo, C. H. (2016). Effects of the best possible self-activity on subjective wellbeing and depressive symptoms. The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 25 (3), 473–481.
• Linkins, M., Niemiec, R. M., Gillham, J., & Mayerson, D. (2015). Through the lens of strength: A framework for educating the heart.  The Journal of Positive Psychology ,  10 (1), 64–68.
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Why is positive education important. What r its advantages?

Hi Nibedita,

Thank you for your question! Positive education integrates traditional educational values with the study of happiness and well-being, aiming to enhance mental health within educational settings. It utilizes Seligman’s PERMA model and VIA classification to promote students’ and educators’ happiness, leading to benefits such as reduced depression, increased life satisfaction, and improved academic performance.

Hope this answers your question! 🙂

Warm regards, Julia | Community Manager

A very insightful read indeed! Positive Education’s integration of traditional principles with happiness and well-being research, such as the PERMA model, is transformative. Implementing character strengths through VIA classification adds depth to nurturing students’ holistic development. A valuable resource for educators at Schools in Magadi Road! #SchoolsInMagadiRoad #PositiveEducation #WellBeingInEducation Thank You Mayank Jain CEO Ezyschooling

Thanks very interesting blog!

Thank you!. I have been looking for information on Positive Education so I can put it into practise in my classroom, and after what I am reading, I am well on the way.

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44 Happiness in the Classroom

Jennifer M. Fox Eades, Department of Education, Edge Hill University, Macclesfield, UK

Martin Ashley, Faculty of Education, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, UK

• Published: 01 August 2013
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This chapter is grounded in the belief that happiness is an appropriate aim of education, and also a tool for facilitating effective education. It argues that for children and young people, “happiness” will encompass a high level of challenge and ample opportunities to develop as active and ethical citizens. The chapter reviews well-being and happiness in the history of education, discusses the relevance of three kinds of happiness to the classroom, and provides examples of classroom practice that include a focus on happiness or well-being. It describes conditions that support happiness in the classroom, and highlights the importance of focusing on whole-school culture, considering the happiness of staff as well as students, and making space for unhappiness.

There is great interest today in the subject of happiness and well-being. In December 2009 policy-makers from 100 countries traveled to Brazil to consider ways of creating policies that focus on happiness instead of economic growth (Grainger, 2010 ). This concern for happiness extends to the field of education. Schools all over the world are focusing on topics such as emotional literacy, resilience, and well-being. The second Australian Positive Psychology and Well-being Conference in 2010 had an entire section devoted to positive education while psychologists such as Martin Seligman suggest that well-being should be taught in schools alongside traditional subjects (Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Rievich, & Linkins, 2009 ).

It might be argued that schools should concern themselves less with happiness and more with learning. However, there is no contradiction between a concern for happiness and a concern for learning. We agree with Noddings's ( 2003 ) contention that “happiness and education are, properly, intimately related: Happiness should be an aim of education and a good education should contribute significantly to personal and collective happiness” (p. 1). This chapter is grounded in the belief that happiness is an appropriate aim of education and also a tool for facilitating effective education because how we feel has a direct impact on how we learn. Happiness in the classroom however extends beyond merely “feeling good” and includes feeling competent, challenged, autonomous, respected, and engaged in meaningful activities. For children and young people “happiness” will encompass the highest possible standards of education, a high level of challenge and ample opportunities to develop as active and ethical citizens. This chapter will give examples of classroom practice that include a focus on happiness or well-being. It will argue that an appropriate concern for the happiness of both students and teachers will ultimately enhance learning and in no way detract from this core purpose.

An Idea with History

There are educational traditions that have focused on the well-being and happiness of the child for many years. Montessori ( 2008 ) emphasized intrinsic motivation and “spontaneous concentration” and argued for the creation of a classroom environment that would integrate both freedom (autonomy) and a high level of challenge (Shernoff & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009 ). Soka Education, developed by Japanese philosopher and educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944), was founded on the principle that the purpose of education is the lifelong happiness of the learner (Jaffe, 1993 ). More recently the Dalai Llama has sponsored an educational initiative (informed by Tibetan Buddhist traditions) called The 16 Guidelines (Murdoch & Oldershaw, 2008 ). These guidelines encourage teachers and students to focus on 16 positive qualities known to enhance one's quality of life and relationships. The education of the whole child is a goal that has also been held by other religious traditions. For example, in a recent book by Christopher Jamison ( 2008 ), the Abbot of Worth Abbey and former Head Teacher of Worth School, he argues that well-being in its deepest sense has always been at the heart of the Christian monastic tradition.

While a concern with happiness in the classroom cannot be said to be new, the understanding that emotions are intimately bound up with cognition and learning, coupled with concern at apparently growing rates of depression among young people, has led to increased interest in the subject of well-being within schools and colleges in recent years (Craig, 2007 ). The field of positive psychology is helping to provide a growing body of evidence about what contributes to happiness and why it is important. It is argued that whilst the human tendency to preference the negative aspects of our experience has had evolutionary value, directing excessive attention towards such experiences compromises our happiness and impedes our ability to learn (Seligman, 2002 ). Positive psychologists propose that this negative attentional bias can be deliberately and effectively balanced by a focus on the positive. Evidence emerging from the field supports the work of teachers in considering the “whole child” and in adopting positive approaches to education. For example, work on the effects of positive emotion on learning, creativity, and memory (Frederickson, 2001 ; Isen, 2000 ) strongly suggests that happy students are likely to learn more effectively. Research such as this is helpful for cultivating classroom practices and curricula that will promote happiness and well-being, whilst also providing excellent educational opportunities.

Promoting Happiness Alongside Educational Excellence

The following example illustrates how concepts from positive psychology can be applied creatively by teachers to simultaneously promote educational excellence and student well-being. Whilst the case study represents an unpublished piece of action research, it is described here to illustrate how positive psychology may be used to benefit students of varying ability.

The Milestone School is a school for students with severe learning difficulties (aged 2–16 years) which runs a project called “Making Listening Special” (Thompson, 2009 ). The project uses concepts from Gentle Teaching (McGee & Menolascino, 1991 ), an approach to working with special needs that explicitly focuses on well-being. The aim of the project has been to increase the happiness, confidence, and sense of belonging of a class of children on the autistic spectrum. It does this by putting the strengths of the children at the heart of curriculum planning and classroom organization. Daily planning is informed by both the curriculum content and the extent to which activities enhance student self-worth and are perceived as meaningful. The staff achieve this via direct observation of students (to detect personal strengths) and then plan daily activities that are designed to utilize those strengths. Activities that allow children to enter “flow” and feel calm are typically given priority and are often used at the start of each day to increase positive emotions (such as serenity). The explicit aim of the project has been to improve learning and deal with the educational challenges of students by maximizing their choices and involving them in decision-making. For example, a common difficulty in class is turn taking and sharing. To address this challenge a weekly session was planned that drew on students’ favorite activities and incorporated choices about how they would work on the skills of “wait and share.” Not only did these skills develop quickly as a result of these sessions, the staff also noticed a transferring of these skills back into the classroom. As a result, the staff have realized that taking the time to listen and observe students is key to gaining an understanding of their individual strengths and needs. Indeed, listening to the students and involving them more in decision-making, appears to have been a potent combination in increasing students’ levels of participation, confidence, understanding, and co-operation, whilst also enabling the students to influence the culture and organization of the school.

What Kind of Happiness Matters in the Classroom?

Ricard ( 2003 / 2006 ) argues that happiness is not simply the absence of unhappiness. Indeed the construct of happiness is a complex one. Seligman ( 2002 ) distinguishes between three kinds of happiness, which lead respectively to what he calls the pleasant life, the engaged life, and the meaningful life. All three kinds of happiness are relevant in the classroom and there is considerable overlap between them in educational contexts. Based on this conceptualization, one can argue that a happy classroom is not the same as a flourishing classroom.

The pleasant life (or hedonic happiness)

This is perhaps what most people think of when the word “happiness” is used. Positive emotion has an important impact on our ability to learn in the present moment and on our longer-term well-being. Frederickson ( 2001 ) highlights the effect of positive emotions like gratitude, joy, serenity, and delight on memory, verbal dexterity, openness in social relationships, and creativity. Creating a positive mood at the start of a school day or a class lesson (e.g., through play, laughter, savoring a happy memory or a piece of food) is likely to have a positive impact on learning (the rationale use by the Milestone School). Research has also shown that positive reminiscence about the past increases happiness in the present (Bryant, Smart, & King, 2005 ) and that expressing gratitude can lead to increased optimism and satisfaction with life (Lyubomirsky, 2008 ). These insights are potentially helpful for teachers in shaping curricula that allow students time to focus on the positive, through activities like writing about happy memories or writing thank you letters. This also emphasizes the educational value of making space during school days to stop and savor one's experiences (a practice that is likely to also shape school culture).

The engaged life (or fulfillment)

This dimension of happiness has obvious relevance to the classroom. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has identified the state of flow as a combination of concentration, interest, and enjoyment. Flow is best described as a state of optimal functioning in which an individual is fully immersed and absorbed in the task at hand, to the extent that they fail to notice the passage of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ). According to Csikszentmihalyi ( 1990 ), flow emerges during periods where the challenge of a task and a person's skill level are at a point of equilibrium and subsides whenever they are not. Accordingly, challenging activities attempted with too little skill typically result in anxiety and frustration, and skill levels that exceed the level of challenge typically result in boredom or disinterest. The challenge for educators is to design activities that balance skill and challenge and to facilitate in older students the total absorption often seen in the very young (who appear to enter flow states easily and regularly). Results of studies conducted in the USA indicate that high school students are less engaged and experience less flow in the classroom than anywhere else. Shernoff and Csikszentmihalyi ( 2009 ) found that students experience greater enjoyment, motivation, self-esteem, and engagement when they perceive themselves to be in control, active, and competent. During after school activities, students experienced a greater variety of instructional techniques than in the classroom and reported more flow and more engagement. Engagement and enjoyment were also higher in mixed adult/student groups than for students alone.

Oral story telling is one practical way of increasing flow in the classroom. When a teacher tells a story well and is completely focused both on the story and the audience they are likely to approach a state of flow. The listeners are also in flow, recreating the story for themselves in their imaginations and totally absorbed in the present moment. It is rare for students not to fully engage with a well-told story. When students learn to tell stories for themselves they become fully engaged in the task at hand, relishing the experience of being in control in deciding how to retell a story: what to include, what to leave out, what words to use, whether to use props or gestures. Full concentration is both essential in storytelling and a precondition for flow.

Mindfulness is another construct with relevance to engagement. Whilst flow is characterized by the narrowing of attention (on the task at hand) and diminished awareness of non-task related information (e.g., situational factors, bodily sensations, etc), mindfulness, by contrast, is associated with an expanding of awareness and an ability to direct one's attention towards present moment experience without becoming enmeshed in it (or captured by it). These are clearly important skills to promote in any classroom. A student's ability to pay attention to the task in hand has a direct bearing on their success and mindfulness practice has been shown to improve a variety of perceptual and cognitive abilities related to the quality of attention (Murphy, Donovan, & Taylor, 1997 ). Hart ( 2004 ) gives examples of simple practices that can integrate mindfulness into the classroom from preschool to university level. For example, teachers at Milestone School hold a basic intention to be mindful and seek to develop their ability to reflect, to monitor their emotions and to teach “with love, kindness, and compassion” (Thompson, 2009 ).

The Mindfulness in Schools Project in the UK is currently trialing a number of mindfulness training programs within different educational contexts with encouraging results (Burnet, 2009 ; Morris, 2009 ). Whilst not all schools will feel equipped to teach mindfulness in a formal sense, at the simplest form mindfulness can be promoted by encouraging students to become more aware of themselves and of others. Other classroom programs such as Celebrating Strengths (Fox Eades, 2008 ) and Strengths Gym (Proctor & Fox Eades, 2009 ) both utilize a teaching technique called a community of enquiry (Lipman, 2003 ) that cultivates mindfulness in students. A community of enquiry is a structured discussion in which participants can speak without interruption and where time is spent in silent reflection. Used thoughtfully and regularly, a community of enquiry will help students to become more aware of their own thought processes, more attentive to their peers, and consequently more mindful.

The meaningful life

Whilst this is perhaps the most difficult dimension of happiness to apply in the classroom, it is possibly the most crucial. This is the dimension that aligns most closely to the Buddhist conception of happiness. Ricard ( 2003 / 2006 ) argues that while pleasure is important, it is fleeting and focused on the individual. Buddhist notions of happiness, however, regard it as a form of lasting well-being, with selflessness an integral part. According to Seligman ( 2002 ) meaningful happiness includes values and strengths, a sense of belonging or social connectedness, and satisfaction with life. It might also include a focus on spirituality and ethics. As Montessori ( 2008 ) discovered, meaningful activities are essential to fostering intrinsic motivation, whilst concentration, attentiveness, and student engagement have all been found to be significantly higher when learning is perceived as both challenging and relevant (Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Schneider, & Shernoff, 2003 ). As mentioned earlier, the Milestone School found that allowing students to choose meaningful activities increased classroom participation levels. Other studies have confirmed this observation. For example, a pilot study conducted by Frost and Stenton ( 2010 ) involved students in the management of their schools (by giving them meaningful activities and some operational responsibilities) and observed a “radical shift” in the attitudes of participating students.

Whilst all the dimensions of happiness discussed overlap significantly, all make unique contributions to the flourishing classroom. The examples in this chapter reflect a small sample of the range of creative work being done in schools around the world.

Happy Students or Happy Schools?

Whilst schools are principally concerned with the academic achievement and well-being of individuals, teaching most typically occurs within groups and a broader educational context that influences happiness. The question can therefore be asked: Are educators best to focus on the happiness of individuals in classrooms or on whole classrooms and the wider institution? Positive psychology has been criticized in the past for an overemphasis on the individual and a neglect of what is required to create positive institutions (Gable & Haidt, 2005 ). Ideally, a focus on happiness in the classroom will consider both the individual and the wider institution of which individuals are part.

Much of the work in education inspired by positive psychology has, indeed, focused on individuals rather than on institutions. A pilot study by Ewen ( 2009 ) found that a 10-week positive psychology group coaching program for Year 5 students resulted in significant increases in goal striving, hope, and well-being. The students completed the Values in Action (VIA) Inventory of Strengths for Youth (Park & Peterson, 2006 ) and created “Strengths Shields” for display in the classroom. They also learned about goal setting, completed mindfulness exercises, wrote gratitude letters, and told a story about themselves at their very best. Similarly, a high school study by Green, Grant, and Rynsaardt ( 2007 ) found that ten individual coaching sessions, facilitated by a trained teacher-coach, resulted in significant increases in cognitive hardiness and hope and decreases in depression for a group of female students (n = 28). Another individually focused program is The Penn Resiliency Program (PRP), which aims to reduce hopelessness, anxiety, and depressive symptoms and to increase students’ ability to withstand the common problems of adolescence (Gillham, Brunwasser, & Freres, 2007 ). Designed and researched by psychologists over the past 20 years using control studies, PRP delivers a series of structured lessons designed to teach realistic thinking (Gillham, Brunwasser, et al., 2007 ; Gillham, Reivech, et al., 2007 ). Research has shown that this program is optimized when it is facilitated by either psychologists or by teachers who have undergone intensive training and supervision.

By contrast, the Geelong Grammar School in Australia is currently attempting to embed positive psychology into the practice and curriculum of the whole school (Seligman et al., 2009 ). Starting in January 2008, teachers at the school received intensive training from a team of psychologists over a period of months in topics such as resilience, strengths, gratitude, and positive communication. The school has introduced stand alone courses (across several grades) on subjects like strengths and supplemented them with whole-school practices, such as students starting the day with a focus on “what went well” (WWW) the previous day (Fox Eades, 2006 ). In addition, teachers are developing their own methods of applying the principles they have learned. For example, a sports coach using a character strengths framework to debrief teams following a game (Seligman et al., 2009 ).

Celebrating Strengths—A Focus on the Institution

One institution-wide approach is the Celebrating Strengths framework (Fox Eades, 2008 ), which takes a whole-school view of well-being. One of the unique features of this approach is that it focuses as much on the adults as it does on the students in a school, and as much on the school environment as it does on the content of lessons. The approach is built upon the belief that a flourishing classroom requires a flourishing teacher, recognizing that a highly stressed, unhappy teacher will find it hard to create the conditions needed for students to flourish. Developed in collaboration with teachers and students in the UK, Celebrating Strengths started as a pilot project designed to promote mental health in classrooms through a focus on oral storytelling and regular community celebrations.

A wide range of traditional stories, told by students and teachers alike, are connected to seven annual celebrations. Particular strengths are then associated with each celebration and students learn to “strengths spot” in themselves, in the stories they hear, and in one another. Story telling, like strengths, crosses the entire curriculum so it enables positive concepts like courage and kindness to be embedded into the daily life and the curriculum of the school. Schools using the Celebrating Strengths approach do not have dedicated lessons on positive psychology. This was partly to avoid adding to an already overcrowded curriculum, and partly because the aim was to embed principles of positive mental health into the existing curriculum, organization, and daily life of the school.

An unpublished evaluation of Celebrating Strengths found that the project had affected teachers as well as students (Linley & Govindji, 2008 ). Pilot schools reported increases in student confidence, self-esteem, and social and emotional intelligence. They also reported increases in teacher engagement, work enjoyment, and resilience. One teacher reported a renewed sense of vocation. In addition, student behavior and especially teamwork improved and students realized, sometimes for the first time, that their peers with special educational needs also had strengths. According to the findings from this pilot study, a focus on the whole institution resulted in increases in happiness for individuals (Linley & Govindji, 2008 ). Encouraged by these preliminary findings, several other institutional interventions are currently being piloted with the aim of developing strengths-based school cultures and increasing teacher satisfaction, student academic performance, and the well-being of students and teachers.

An example of this work is the development of Strengths Gym (Proctor & Fox Eades, 2009 ). Originally conceptualized as a component of the Celebrating Strengths framework, Strengths Gym is now a program in its own right 1 and is being used by students between the ages of 11–14. The aim of Strengths Gym is to encourage students to build their strengths, learn new strengths, and to recognize strengths in themselves and others. Student booklets contain descriptions of 24 strengths, based on the VIA inventory of strengths classification (Peterson & Seligman, 2004 ) and a selection of exercises, called “Strengths Builders” and “Strengths Challenges,” that encourage students to reflect on the strengths they see most in themselves and to use those strengths in different ways. Designed to be used flexibly, these exercises can be completed by students working alone or in class and may be applied in school-wide initiatives (such as focusing on a particular strength for a day). The Strengths Gym handbook provides teachers with brief theoretical rationale for each strength, along with ideas for lesson plans. It also provides stories, historical or contemporary, that illustrate the strengths being used in real life. Preliminary research has found that participation in the program is associated with significant increases in life satisfaction among students (Proctor, Tsukayama, Wood, Maltby, Fox Eades, & Linley, 2010 ).

To complement the use of Strengths Gym with younger students, work in one high school that piloted the program also focused on engaging the staff and older students in trying to embed strengths-based ways of working into all levels of school life. This included having senior leaders participate in strengths-based coaching conversations designed to deepen their awareness of their own strengths and setting time aside at leadership meetings to engage in development work that focused explicitly on strengths. A range of initiatives were developed, including strengths-based careers preparation for older students, a strengths-based student leadership program, cross-curricular links to strengths, school wide “traditions” with a focus on strengths, and reflective and strengths-based assemblies. While the initiatives were wide ranging, all were underpinned by the following core principles: (1) the focus on strengths applied to staff and students equally; (2) students were to be involved in the planning and implementation of projects wherever practical; (3) teachers and students were the “experts” in their own school, and (4) teacher well-being was central to the success of the project.

Creating the Conditions for Happiness

Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000 ) proposes that well-being derives from the satisfaction of three basic human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. All of the work that has been described in this chapter may be seen as fulfilling one or more of these needs. For example, evidence-based coaching interventions (e.g., Ewen, 2009 ; Green, Grant & Rynsaardt, 2007 ) and programs like the PRP (Seligman et al., 2009 ) which teach skills like goal setting, explanatory style, or active constructive responding, increase students’ sense of competence and their perceived ability to face challenges. Similarly, work at the Milestone School (Thompson, 2009 ) has adopted “student as expert” as one of its guiding principles, purposefully maximizing student choice and thus promoting autonomy for children with severe learning difficulties. It also promoted student competence, by respecting and making space for students’ strengths, and relatedness through a focus on warm accepting relationships with the teacher. As such, it appears that (in line with the basic predictions of self-determination theory) an explicit focus on strengths may create conditions that enhance well-being through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and confidence (Linley & Harrington, 2006 ).

Another crucial element of the “happy classroom” is the provision of meaningful activities. Montessori education is a good example of a tradition that places “meaning” at the heart of education. Students engaged in what they regard as pointless exercises will struggle to concentrate or to feel any degree of engagement with what they do. Epstein ( 2007 ) argues that much of the “problem” with teenagers in the West today stems from the fact that our culture deprives them of autonomy and meaningful activity. Indeed, research has demonstrated that schools which foster student autonomy, responsibility, and egalitarian staff–student relationships report higher levels of student engagement than traditional schools with more controlling staff and more rigid, irrelevant curriculum (Shernoff & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009 ).

Teachers are the single most important factor in creating happiness in the classroom so the well-being and happiness of each teacher is of great importance. Meaningful challenge is certainly crucial to student engagement, but whether challenge is perceived as positive or negative by students is directly related to the classroom climate created by the teacher. A focus on process rather than outcome, on effort rather than attainment, and on the positive value of risk taking and mistakes produce a high level of motivation and enjoyment for students (Turner & Meyer, 2004 ). Turner and Meyer ( 2004 ) also argue that this emphasis on challenge, effort, and student accountability must be accompanied by positive affect and enthusiasm on the part of the teacher. For this reason, any program that promotes happiness for students but which neglects the happiness of staff is not likely to be a successful long term strategy. As Noddings ( 2004 ) points out, “if children are to be happy in schools, their teachers should also be happy. Too often we forget this obvious connection.” (p. 261) A focus on student happiness needs therefore to be underpinned by a whole school philosophy that respects and promotes autonomy, competence, and relatedness for staff and students alike. Controlling management practices, deficit-based performance review, rigid learning schemes that allow no place for teacher creativity or student initiative will undermine or limit the effectiveness of any number of happiness programs. A focus on the individual will therefore ideally be balanced by a genuine and authentic whole school ethos that promotes well-being for all members of the community.

Imposing Happiness?

The challenge for leaders, coaches, or psychologists wishing to promote applied positive psychology innovation in schools is that imposed change can lead to demoralization and a perceived lack of autonomy and competence in staff. A recent study by Grenville-Cleave ( 2009 ) found that UK teachers had less perceived control—and less well-being—than other professionals. As Frost and MacBeath ( 2010 ) point out, “Teachers have, for decades, been at the receiving end of so many demands and ‘brilliant’ but ephemeral ideas, so that any impetus for sustained change has to be understood within the context and developmental history of the school” (p. 28). A top-down, expert-led initiative can be counter productive if it imposes rigid structures on teachers and does not acknowledge their expertise. As such, the challenge for researchers and practitioners becomes: How can new ideas be introduced into classrooms in a way that affirms the existing strengths and expertise of staff and students?

Strengths Gym (Proctor & Fox Eades, 2009 ) is an example of a program that, despite being designed by “experts,” seeks to satisfy the autonomy, relatedness, and competence needs of both students and staff. For students choice is an integral part of the program, with options being provided within each lesson. For example, students can choose to work individually or in groups. They are considered to be the “experts” on the strengths they possess and are invited to lead classes whenever their strengths become a focus of study. For the teachers, they are encouraged to engage in activities alongside students as co-learners, not experts. Their handbooks present Strengths Gym as a flexible framework, rather than a blueprint, and provide suggestions and ideas, rather than prescriptions. In addition, stories are provided in the handbook for each lesson because story telling is considered a key pedagogical tool, an inherently respectful teaching method, and a powerful means of building positive relationships (see Fox Eades, 2006 , 2008 ).

Another approach that offers great potential in this area is Appreciative Inquiry (AI; Cooperrider, Whitney, & Stavros, 2008 ), as the use of AI at the institution level would involve seeking to identify what is already being done to enhance happiness in schools and then to build upon the best elements of such work. In so doing, an institution's current efforts become a platform for transformative initiatives that emerge from within the institution itself (even though they may be enhanced by theories or knowledge derived from other disciplines, like positive psychology). Though not widely known in education, some schools are already using AI to bring about effective change at the level of the institution (Adamson, Samuels, & Willoughby, 2002 ).

Making Room for Unhappiness?

It is perhaps unfortunate that schools in the UK are now assessed on how well they promote student well-being. Creating happiness targets alongside targets for achievement in English, maths, and science was perhaps not the best way of recommending well-being to the UK's teachers. There is a danger that happiness becomes yet another target for both staff and students to fail at and it is too important for that. As Parke ( 2007 ) notes, “nothing truly valuable can ever be made into a target.”

Recently Ben-Shahar ( 2002 ) has called for “permission to be human,” emphasizing the fact that we all feel a full range of emotions at some point, including occasionally feeling discouraged or low. A school or classroom that promotes a meaningful level of happiness, as opposed to simply pleasure, will be one where both students and teachers can be authentic, however they are feeling. Students learn regardless of how well or unhappy they are feeling because they are remarkably resilient. Teachers teach effectively however much stress they may be under because they are competent professionals. One of the reasons Celebrating Strengths (Fox Eades, 2008 ) has always used traditional stories in the classroom is that they make space for the negative or uncomfortable emotions (like anger, fear, and hate) in a safe and containing way. All emotional life is relevant to the flourishing classroom. Moreover, sometimes, as Bushe ( 2007 ) argues, “the motivation underlying ‘keeping the focus on the positive” (p.4) is to avoid the anxiety of dealing with real concerns or to suppress the expression of dissent.” Neither is desirable. A classroom or a school that takes happiness seriously will stifle neither debate nor the appropriate expression of any human emotion.

Recommendations for Practice

The following recommendations can be made for practitioners interested in promoting happiness within educational contexts:

Change initiatives must take the well-being of staff into account.

Involve students and staff in considering how to apply positive principles in a school.

Focus on the whole-school culture as well as the individual.

Practice positive psychology in lessons and life, don't just teach about it.

Positive practices need to be modeled by the adults within the school.

Make space for unhappiness—it is part of being human.

Ricard ( 2003 / 2006 ) points out that happiness, in the sense of a deep, lasting well-being, is a skill that can be learned with committed effort. Whilst teachers cannot guarantee their students happiness, they can ensure that they create conditions (both at the classroom and school levels) that allow their students to flourish and learn the skills required to be happy. The conditions that promote happiness in the classroom—autonomy, relatedness, competence, meaningful activities, a focus on strengths, mutual respect, and positive regard—are also the conditions that promote creativity, curiosity, love of learning, and intrinsic motivation. A focus on happiness is not an “add on” to the real business of education, but a necessary condition for fostering the lifelong love of learning that is the goal for every school. Moreover, for schools to realize that goal, it is not enough for teachers to be concerned with the well-being of their students; school leaders, politicians, and society as a whole must also consider the well-being of teachers. Schools where teachers and students feel valued and able to flourish, will be effective schools, as well as happy ones.

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Please see: http://www.strengthsgym.co.uk for more details.

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A Space for Joy

• Posted May 27, 2022
• By Lory Hough
• Disruption and Crises
• K-12 School Leadership
• K-12 System Leadership
• Teachers and Teaching

Julia de la Torre, Ed.M.’06, is tired. The teachers, staff, and administrators at the preK–12 school she oversees in New Jersey are tired. Her students are tired and often uncertain. Now in our third calendar year of the pandemic, there’s still much to deal with and process, even as schools are moving toward the summer break.

“I am tired of COVID protocols and the endless emails and video messages that I send to our families about the changing rules related to the pandemic,” de la Torre says. “I’m wearied by carrying the emotional weight of people’s worst fears about their health.” But more than anything, she says she’s worried that during these chaotic years, her relationship with students, staff, and families has been rooted in crisis.

That’s where the ladybugs and joke book come in. They’re de la Torre’s attempt to upend the tired, the chaotic, the crisis with another powerful word — a word that’s normally easy to find in schools but has been in short supply these days: joy.

Erosion of joy

On top of her desk at Moorestown Friends School, de la Torre keeps a big book of kids’ jokes. A colleague gifted her the book recently and she uses it to bring kid humor into almost every meeting she attends.

“I spend a lot of time in meetings and on Zoom, and it can be easy to feel disconnected from our shared purpose,” this former high school French teacher and principal says. “The jokes keep things light and reconnect us with the innocence of children, the purity of their humor, and the reason why we love being in student-centered communities. The pandemic can sometimes mean we take ourselves too seriously, so I try to keep laughter as a central theme at school.”

For her students, especially the younger ones, that includes ladybugs.

“I have a tradition at my school where I hide little ladybug stickers all throughout the lower school,” she says. “Ladybugs bring good luck in German culture, and I like to share that part of my multicultural background. You’d be amazed to see the joy on a student’s face when they find one of these tiny hidden treasures.” As she walks down the hall, students love to update her on how many stickers they found. “They also learn to leave the stickers behind so that other students can discover the joy. I love that the ladybugs not only connect me to them on a daily basis, but they also encourage students to think about their peers and what will bring them joy in their day.”

Joy. It seems like such a simple word, but it was hard to find back in the spring of 2020, when COVID first sent learning online and took away face-to-face and “fun” activities like clubs, sports teams, classroom parties, recess, musicals, and chorus concerts. Even now, with students back in person and masks optional in many places, the push to make up what was “lost” is stressful.

As Decoteau Irby, an associate professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago wrote last fall in a Harvard Education Publishing blog post, “If there has ever been a time where I’ve witnessed the widespread erosion of joyfulness among children and school-aged youth, it has been throughout the past two years. In March 2020, joy gave way to confusion, fear, and uncertainty as the world came to terms with the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Katie Salch, an ELA and math curriculum coordinator at Glendale Elementary School District in Arizona finishing the Certificate in School Management and Leadership Program at the Ed School, says part of the stress she has seen in her district has to do with the ups and downs of this long pandemic.

“Students are on edge with the unknown. Are we going to close again? Am I going to get quarantined today? Is this phone call to send me to the office to go home?” For teachers, “Navigating a classroom with students in and out for 5–10 days, and keeping up with who is out when it's like a who’s-on-first comedy sketch, is stressing teachers out. When the teacher then gets sick, all bets are lost with keeping up with where students are at academically for those 5–10 days.”

Personally, she feels stressed trying to come up with ways to support everyone.

“There isn’t a day that goes by in our schools that is normal,” she says. “It eats at your nerves and eats up your quota of coping mechanisms.”

De la Torre says the cumulative impact of operating a school in an unpredictable setting was especially tough when learning was both virtual and in-person. Educators had to learn new technology at lightning speed and figure out how to keep kids interested. It was definitely not an in by 8, out by 3 kind-of-day.

“The lines between work and home blurred and teachers were working harder than they ever have,” she says. On top of that, everyone was concerned about the health and wellbeing of every community member. “It’s an enormous emotional load to carry, and teachers have done it beautifully. [But], with every change in COVID guidelines, state mandates, and local case rates, I worry that we will crumble under the weight of it all.”

Last November, the Education Week Research Center found that nearly 75% of teachers say their morale is lower than it was before the pandemic. Talk to any teacher you know, and they’ll say either they’ve considered leaving the profession or know other educators who already have.

Jeff Durney, Ed.M.’21, is back teaching at the K–6 Boston Public School he worked at for 10 years as a STEAM specialist before coming to the Ed School. He says the vibe has been very somber this year, especially for teachers.

“It’s draining to have to put on the ‘everything is normal’ face every day,” he says. “At some point, we’ve all covered another class and/or lost a lunch block to support staffng shortages. In addition, we’ve had teachers give students rides home due to no coverage for bus drivers being out. As a teacher, you can often find yourself feeling like you’re on an island, but the pandemic has made it worse. Teachers have had to support the kids in their class while also supporting their own families as well.” Although he says he works in a supportive and understanding school, he is considering leaving the classroom, although even that takes its own kind of energy. “The workload and expectations for teachers have become too much. In conversations with various educators, a lot of us are too tired to look for positions outside the teaching profession. Furthermore, many of us are far too exhausted to sell ourselves during an interview.”

As Salch says, “I’ve had many teachers and coaches resign this year for several reasons. A majority are for health and safety and other employment in the private sector of education. Working remotely for almost a year really sat well with some educators and they are transferring to jobs where they can continue to do that.”

Bill Brooks, a Certificate in School Management and Leadership 2021 graduate, has seen the same trend as middle school dean of students at TASIS Portugal in Lisbon, where he also teaches English.

“I know several colleagues who have left or are thinking about leaving the profession,” he says. “In most cases, the cost of staying in the profession reached or is reaching a breaking point. It has simply become too much, and some reckon that a career switch is a better path, ultimately.”

Is learning even meant to be joyful? 

Anyone who has picked up an instrument or tried to learn a new language knows that learning can be hard and frustrating. As Irby pointed out, “Learning is not always a joyous undertaking. Pushing through a diffcult subject, topic, or painstaking assignment can be tough.”

But, he adds, “joy at school and in learning is a foundation from which students gain the confidence that academic struggle is temporary and worthwhile.” There’s also a very real connection to the brain. “The brain does not exist by itself,” writes Professor Jack Shonkoff , director of the Center on the Developing Child . “Connecting the brain to the rest of the body is critically important. When we’re stressed, every cell in the body is working overtime.”

Students who appear joyless or unmotivated (previously on Zoom, now in person) may not be making voluntary choices, says Judy Willis, a neurologist who went on to teach middle school for 10 years. Their brains, as Shonkoff points out, may just be responding to what’s going on around them, like the ups and downs of the pandemic and our push to “catch up” academically in schools.

“The truth is that when we scrub joy and comfort from the classroom, we distance our students from effective information processing and long-term memory storage,” Willis recently wrote in the Neuroscience of Joyful Education . “Instead of taking pleasure from learning, students become bored, anxious, and anything but engaged. They ultimately learn to feel bad about school and lose the joy they once felt.” Neuroimaging studies and measurement of brain chemical transmitters reveal that “when students are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely through the affective filter in the amygdala and they achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience ‘aha’ moments. Such learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery.”

Irby saw this with his own children. When school went remote, they were not happy. “On the best days, they were ambivalent. On the bad days, they were miserable,” he says. When they returned to in-person learning this past fall, things mostly got better. His son, a first-grader, didn’t like people being too close and didn’t want to be overly corrected for his efforts, but “they were very happy to return to school. They loved almost everything about returning, from packing their book bags, seeing their friends and socializing, to developing relationships with their teachers.”

Push to get kids up to speed

Happy is great, but what about the important idea that we need to regain academic ground lost during the pandemic? As Professor Tom Kane and his colleagues at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR) reveal in their new Road to COVID Recovery  project, using real-time data and working with school districts across the country, learning loss from the pandemic is significant.

“I don’t think there’s a broad appreciation for the magnitude of the declines we’ve seen,” Kane told Ed.  — the equivalent of kids missing three or four months of school last year. As he said in a recent The 74 article, “School districts have never had so many students so far behind.” And especially for some students. The Brookings Institute reported in March that test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math and 15% in reading, primarily during the 2020–21 school year.

CEPR has called for tutoring, extra periods of instruction, Saturday academies, and afterschool programs. Schools, they say, should focus for the next couple of years on getting students back to pre-COVID academic levels.

But what does catch up mean for the joy that tired students and teachers also desperately need?

In a Harvard EdCast interview in February, Susan Engel, a senior lecturer at Williams College and author of the new book, The Intellectual Lives of Children , said, “I heard a first-grade teacher say to me, back in August, when she was planning her remote teaching, she said, ‘The parents are so worried that their children aren’t going to keep up this year.’ And I said, ‘Keep up with what?’ And she looked surprised, and she said, ‘Well, with the standards.’ But I mean, the standards are completely arbitrary. Who made up those standards? Just a lot of people sitting in rooms. I don’t know. And I’m not sure they were good standards in the first place, but it’s silly to let those constrain you too much as a teacher right now.”

Which is why it was interesting, says Wade Whitehead, a fifth-grade teacher in Virginia now in his 28th year of teaching, that in the spring of 2020, when it became clear that we weren’t going back to in-person any time soon, “the first two things we threw out the window were grades and standardized testing.”

Why was that, he wondered? “I think it’s because those two rob students and teachers of joy. I think it was to keep students and teachers happy” as we shifted focus to everyone’s crushing social-emotional (SEL) needs. And there were other changes that at any other time would have seemed radical: Schools shortened the school day and cut back to just a few class blocks a day. “COVID was an opportunity for schools to go deep. People had the freedom to just learn. If you want to be around someone who is happy, be around someone who’s just learning something to learn, especially faceto-face. You’re just happier that way.”

Unfortunately, says Whitehead, a a Certificate in School Management and Leadership graduate, a year later, we “picked up those two apples” — grades and standardized tests — “and put them back in the cart. I’m not against grades or tests. I’m for amazing grading systems and amazing assessment and accountability systems.”

Durney agrees that the “normal” way of schooling wasn’t working for everyone and says that we can still rethink schooling.

“We need to use the pandemic as an opportunity to consider how we meet the needs of all our students through engaging tasks,” he says. “Students have access to apps, games, etc., and there are things that can and should be leveraged when designing learning opportunities. It isn’t just academics that students missed over the past two years. They need opportunities to engage in activities that allow them to build and strengthen their SEL skills. Rigor can and should be fun!”

Kane agrees and says that academics and emotional care go hand-in-hand. If students feel more comfortable being back in school, they are going to have an easier time focusing, just as finding success in the classroom can lead to positive e­ffects on mental health.

Irby also says it’s not an either-or as we move forward.

“I would say to educators who want to prioritize getting kids up to speed academically over joy that the two are not mutually exclusive. They should think about them as mutually reinforcing,” he says. “Not only do joy and academic rigor go hand in hand, but tactful educators plan to ensure both happen in tandem.” He noted that Gholdy Muhammad’s framework outlined in her book Cultivating Genius includes five pillars to consider when planning lessons, and joy is one of them. “An example is children’s museums, which off­er learning opportunities that center play and fun. Exhibit curators plan with joy and excitement at the center of their learning design, but they don’t forgo academic content. In other words, the same way a teacher can plan to have students learn a disciplinary skill, they can plan for students to experience joy while doing it. One priority doesn’t need to outweigh the other.”

He says this is especially important for students who experience “compounding killjoys” — students who “live with circumstances and experiences that make it very diffcult to be joyful. Some big picture joy killers include poverty, racism, social isolation, and concrete realities that stem from racial, social, and economic injustice such as hunger and food insecurity, housing insecurity, exposure to violence, health ailments, and living in a household or community where adults experience chronic stress. The more of these killjoys that students experience, the more concerned educators should be about using learning as a means to cultivate joy.”

For example, he says that if students don’t have access to safe green space, recess should become a priority. If they experience conflict with relationships in their lives, educators can create learning scenarios that are collaborative, “which provide opportunities to find joy in working with people.”

Keeping this in mind, Sandra Nagy, Ed.M.’02, managing director of Future Design School, says any e­ffort to get kids caught up and still feel joy needs to be intentional.

“In order for this important change to take hold in schools, there needs to be a space for joy,” she says. “That means balancing eff­orts to address learning loss with looking ahead to what we can do next and celebrating the way teachers proved their ability to innovate and adapt in the past two years.”

And Brooks says we can do something else to bring back joy that would once have been considered radical: We can slow down.

“We can engage with students where they are, whatever they’re interested in at the moment, because that’s the ‘stu­ff’ of the world they’re trying so hard to build normalcy from,” he says. “We can play with them on the field and court and laugh with them throughout the day. There will still be time for all that needs to be learned.”

Is joy still below the surface?

It’s all important — and it’s not all doom and gloom. Even tired educators say that below the frustrations, they see joy again.

“Given the circumstances, I have seen a lot of joy at school,” says Durney. “One of the many benefits of working with elementary-aged children is that they can find joy and humor in just about any activity.” Right before winter break, for example, they held an outdoor schoolwide activity where students were able to share their work and play games created by their peers and with parent involvement. “It felt like pre-pandemic times where we’d gather as a whole school community. The day ended with our principal jumping into the frigid waters at the M Street Beach in South Boston because as a school community we exceeded our fundraising goal. The smiles and laughter throughout the entire day were a great way to end the first stretch of the school year.”

Salch addressed burnout when students — and teachers — stopped using a diagnostic online program by creating a challenge where students would earn a popcorn party if they logged in for 10 of 15 days in December.

“We have a local chocolate factory that sells 10-gallon bags of popcorn for $6. We can feed a whole school for less than $15,” she says. “Students that earned the reward came out to the courtyard to eat a coffee filter full of popcorn and dance to Kidz Bop .”

She celebrates her teachers, too — even in small ways. “I do everything I can to keep my teachers joyful,” she says. “I write handwritten notes to them monthly thanking them or congratulating them on something they accomplished. I give random gifts of pens or stickies to show appreciation. I organize themed meetings that included engaging activities that show each other we are humans before we are our professions.”

Joshua Neufeld, a first-grade teacher at the American International School of Guangzhou in China and a participant in a Project Zero program in 2021, is part of a peer coaching network for international teachers called Positivity Playground. He found that regular staff socializing has helped morale.

“The pandemic has been challenging for everyone, and Positivity Playground reminded me that together, as colleagues, we can generate more positive emotions and manage negative emotions effectively.” With this in mind, Neufeld organized a weekly lunchtime tea party for his colleagues called Positvi-Tea. It’s a time for teachers to hang out and talk, he says, often about things other than school. “This is a time that energizes the participants and challenges them to continue the day with a positive outlook. I leave the meetings feeling recharged, viewing upcoming situations with a sense of realistic optimism.”

Beyond celebrations and gatherings, others say a focus on personalized learning and setting small, actionable steps (not just big lofty goals) can help bring joy back. Brooks says teachers and other educators can also pay more attention to self-care.

“I am striking a better work-life balance, taking time to be with my family and recharge,” he says. “Doing so allows me to be more fully present and increases the likelihood of finding and making joyful moments at work.” The same needs to be done for all educators. “It does not take anything extraordinary to bring joy back to the workplace of teachers. I would argue it comes down to acknowledging the difficulty of the work in these times, commiserating openly and honestly about these challenges, facing them together, and celebrating every small success of the professionals in the building. Impromptu conversations, dropping by to check in, and showing gratitude are a few other easy and regular ways to bring a sense of joy back to the workplace on a daily basis.”

With her ladybug stickers in hand and her joke book open and ready for the next meeting, Julia de la Torre is still tired, but she knows the joy at her school is there.

“Quite frankly, joy is the reason I come to work every day and why I love my job,” she says. “Pop your head into any classroom and you’ll see kids thriving, connecting, and enjoying school. They may have masks on, but you can see joy in their eyes and in their laughter. I’m always trying to remind my teachers that there is joy everywhere in schools, if you stop to look for it. It may be harder to find during these challenging times, but it’s the joy that keeps us coming back for more.”

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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