Hi All,

This is some background on Happiness Psychology and the ripple effect with students. It shows the many benefits and potential of implementing it into the class.

It relates to the first posting and explains why I am so passionate about this subject matter.

Happiness Psychology

Background

·         Use of best practices to motivate and inspire students

·         People naturally need to create and sustain meaningful experiences for all students

·         The study of positive emotions, positive character traits and enabling institutions (Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005, p. 410)

·         Valued experiences, growth, love, education and play (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000)

·         When individuals are aware of, pursue, and blend engaged life, meaningful life and pleasant life = authentic happiness or a full life achieved (Murray, 2003, Seligman, 2002, Seligman et al., 2005)

·         It’s about the capacity to love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skills, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent and wisdom

·         create a system where positive thoughts , emotions and actions outweigh negative ones on a daily basis.

·         Concrete gestures (genuine smile)and lived examples of a pleasant life

·         Immediate , consistent and encouraging motivational feedback to all students in the class to eliminate the current situation of boredom, frustration, humiliation, alienation and fear

·         play is determined not by the nature of the activity but rather by the attitude towards the activity.

·         Without dopamine, human aspirations remain frozen, as it were, in an endless winter of discontent…only the strongest emotional messages instigate behavior. When dopamine synapses are active in abundance, a person feels as if he or she can do anything…I call this emotional circuitry the “seeking system” of the brain (Panksepp, 1998 pg. 144)

·         happiness is a learnable emotion

·         When we educators fail to appreciate the importance of students’ emotions, we fail to appreciate a critical force in students’ learning. Once could argue, in fact, that we fail to appreciate the very reason that students learn at all, (Immordino-Young and Damasio 2007, pg. 9)

·         Something as simple as whistling a happy tune really does seem to make a positive difference in out mindset.

·         A study by World Health organization on children in 35 countries (currie et al, 2005) found that many children reported a rather low level of satisfaction with school.

·         Most parents want happiness, confidence, contentment, balance, good stuff, kindness, health and satisfaction for their children.

·         The prevalence of depression among young people is shockingly high worldwide. Nearly 20% of youth experience an episode of clinical depression by the end of high school (Lewinsohn et al. 1993).

·         Depression is about10x more common now than it was 50 years ago (Wickramaratne et al, 1989)

·         Children and adolescents spend much of their waking time in school. Most important goal for education is to prepare children to become responsible citizens (Cohen, 2006)

·         Helps students identify their signature characters and increase it in day to day life.

http://www.upworthy.com/this-kid-thinks-we-could-save-so-many-lives-if-only-it-was-okay-to-say-4-words?g=2&c=ufb1

PROS

·         reduces and prevents symptoms of depression and anxiety

·         reduces hopelessness and increases optimism

·         reduces negative emotions and emphasis on positive qualities.

·         broad social conpetenceand confidence

·         Happy teenagers go on to earn very substantially more income 15 years later than less happy teenagers, equating for income, grades and other obvious factors (Diener et al, 2002)

·         People experience more flow at work and home (Csikszentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989)

·         Optimistic people are much less likely to die of heart attacks than pessimists, controlling for all known physical risk factors (Giltay et al., 2004)

·         Women who display genuine (Duchenne) smiles to the photographer at age 18 go on to have fewer divorces and more marital satisfaction than those who display fake smiles (Keltner et al., 1999)

·         Positive emotion reduces at least some racial biases. For example, although people generally are better at recognizing faces in their own race than faces of other races, putting people in a joyful mood reduces this discrepancy by improving memory for faces of people from other races (Johnson & Fredrickson, 2005)

·         Economically flourishing corporate teams have a ratio of at least 2.9:1 of positive statements to negative statements in business meetings, whereas stagnating teams have a much lower ratio; flourishing marriages. (Gottman & levenson, 1999; Fredickson & Losada, 2005)

·         Hedonic Benefits (joy, love, contentment & pleasure) = Pleasant life

·         State of flow = engaged life = loss of self-conciousness, time stops for youàbeing one with the music (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)

·         Deploy your highest strengths and talents to meet the challenges that come your way, it Facilitates learning.

·         Leads to a meaningful life as we have better connections with people and thus transcends the self (Durkheim, 1951/1897; Erickson 1963)

·         less dependence on drugs to feel better and healthier.

·         Improve the climate of the school as a whole and fosters growth

·         foster gratitude

·         Celebrating little victories contributes to the quality of life of a child as the child feels valued by others, creating a positive cycle.

·         Start appreciating the little things that make a difference in life.

·         Inspires creativity, fulfillment and well-being.

FUTURE

·         How people celebrate good events that happen to their spouse is a better predictor of future love and commitment than how they respond to bad events (Gabe et al., 2004)

·         Increase students’ ability to handle day-to-day stressors and problems that are common for most students during adolescence.

·         Teach students to think more realistically and flexibly about the problems they encounter

·         Teaches assertiveness, creative brainstorming, decision making, relaxation and several other coping and problem solving skills

·         greeting each student with eye contact and smile, connecting on a friendly level (butler & Anderson, 2002; Foster & Lloyd

·         Engage in activities relevant to their current life circumstances, higher flourishing environment

·         Students interested and enjoying their learning experience and have a state of arousal or excitement

·         Task skill balance, goal setting and self-assessment, teacher behavior modeling skills and feedback from peers

·         Fun and rewarding activities in class and through extracurricular activities.

·         Talking with students, learning about their likes and dislikes, asking about activities they have not previously experienced and incorporating this information into daily lessons to enhance student experience and interest.

·         Identify student passions, be flexible to explore and to create an exciting, engaging and relevant educational environment.

·         measure how much positive experience you had daily, how much actions portray genuine positivity, enthusiasm and interest towards education

·         More authentic relationships with students

·         More people smiling naturally as they are genuinely happier.

·         Positive effects on a daily basis.

·         Ability to become absorbed in whatever activity one is engaged in at the present moment, thus live in the moment and not dwell so much on the past.

·         The engaged life occurs when students are happy not because of what they do, but because of how they do it.

·         Promoting engagement based on feelings of autonomy, personal control, optimal challenge and overall well-being are all effective ways to enhance the quality of education (Alderman, Beighle & Pangrazzi, 2006)

·         Focusing on individual strengths and motivating students toward self-determined behaiour that makes them feel competent, in control and connected to others is essential to the pursuit of an engaged life (Kilpatrick, Hebert & Jacobsen, 2002)

·         A greater good for society

·         Increased levels of kindness, humanity, justice, temperance, love social intelligence, fairness and teamwork.

·         Focusing on and practicing activities that deal with good and moral qualities such as gratitude can increase happiness (Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005)

·         achievement of happiness is one of the most important goal of humankind (Fordyce, 1977)

·         Happy people, hold the belief that life is under their control, rather than controlled by others or chance and view goals as achievable.

·         Richer and deeper learning experiences.

·         Higher health as individual can distinguish cause and effect.