Resources
At Mount Barker High School we believe that Positive Education should be shared.
Our teachers are keen to have others implement positive education in their teaching and are happy to share their ideas, experiences and lesson plans!
Jars of Love
Your task: Create a "Jar of Love"
By showing someone your gratitude for their influence on your life you will be developing the P and R elements of PERMA.
Download the pdf document below for more:
Wellbeing and Education
When in Adelaide Dr. Seligman prepared an overview of Positive Psychology for school Principals to use with parents. It introduces his main ideas and explores how to build wellbeing.
Below is a copy of this presentation in pdf format.
Wellbeing and Education - Introduction for Principals
Character Strengths
Building Character Strengths
When we first considered using positive psychology in teaching and learning at Mount Barker High School we looked at what Professor Martin Seligman suggests is a good place to start.
We thought that it is important to use his ideas to improve our students' wellbeing, as well as their educational performance. As Seligman writes, Well-being should be taught in schools because it would be an antidote to the runaway incidence of depression, a way to increase life satisfaction, and an aid to better learning and creative thinking.
In his book Flourish Professor Seligman explains that discovering and using 'Signature Strengths' is the backbone of a number of established positive educational programs in other schools. The idea is that we have more satisfaction when we do things using our main character strengths. Seligman explains that when we do this we are more likely to go into 'flow', which means becoming so engrossed in a task that we lose track of time. So this became an obvious place to begin.
What are 'Character Strengths' and 'Signature Strengths'?
‘Character Strengths' were identified by Seligman and Chris Peterson, who closely examined the traditions of many cultures to find out what strengths of character are valued in around the world. They named twenty four 'Character Strengths' that people from most cultures believe are important.