Jenni Cook's posts
Steps to Flourishing
22/09/2016
Over the past year, we have been working hard to evaluate and improve our Positive Education program. Whilst doing this we have also been grappling with how to provide training for new teachers and the community. Our first step to address this was to introduce evening community workshops. These workshops...
Positive Education 2015
04/02/2015
This year marks a new and ambitious stage in our Positive Education Journey! During the second half of last year, a dedicated group of teachers worked hard to develop a Positive Education program of one 50 minute lesson a week for every year level in the school. The year 8...
PERMA for Staff
26/08/2014
Once a term teachers from the Heysen Partnership schools meet to share how they are embedding positive education into their practice. This sharing allows us to learn from each other, to have an overview of what is happening throughout the partnership, and to keep the momentum going. The theme for...
Neuroscience and Education
20/08/2014
On the first day back at school this term staff enjoyed a presentation from Neuroscientist, Professor Billy O’Connor, a passionate researcher into neuroscience and education. Billy is the head of Teaching and Research in Physiology at the University of Limerick Graduate Entry Medical School and was on sabbatical at Flinders...
Geelong Grammar comes to Mount Barker
15/08/2014
Course Leaders and Participants Staff at Mount Barker High School and the surrounding primary schools began their July holidays with a four-day course – Discovering Positive Education, run by Geelong Grammar School’s Institute of Positive Education. They were joined by interested staff from both public and private metropolitan schools. The...
Starting Points
04/07/2013
STARTING POINTS – CASTING STONES IN DAMS AND WATCHING THE RIPPLES GROW! On June 7th we took a bold step in our positive psychology journey and held a statewide conference called Starting Points. The name reflected where we are – at the start of our journey into positive psychology. We...
Measure, Measure, Measure
17/12/2012
Dr Martin Seligman visited our school in February this year. At the end of his visit, our principal asked Martin’s advice on where we should start if we wanted to build a flourishing school. His response was very quick and very clear – on top of making sure all our...
Problems are our friends
13/12/2012
At the end of Martin Seligman’s first visit to Adelaide in February, I was sitting at a table with Martin and other partners in his residency. I remember feeling uncertain about how to move forward and daunted by the fact that there were so few answers to so many questions....
Beginning our positive journey
05/12/2012
I first became aware of positive psychology in January this year. Mount Barker High School was invited by the Education Department, (we call it the Department for Education and Child Development – or DECD) to become its lead school in the residency of Dr Martin Seligman, a world-leading ‘positive psychologist’....
About our blog
01/12/2012
In February 2012, Adelaide Thinker in Residence Martin Seligman proposed a powerful idea: to ‘psychologically immunise’ the young people of South Australia against mental illness. Mount Barker High School is the State’s pilot site to explore how positive psychology can be applied across an entire school to improve the wellbeing...