A very wise person asked.

Which was answered by other very wise people by shrugging their shoulders, their question mark faces and a mumbling “eh, don’t know”.

How does one know?

Is it a set answer like formulas in Mathematics and Physics, or is it more fluid like Music, Language, and Art? 

What makes it difficult is that Positive Education is not tactile or visual and we cannot smell or hear it. But it is there, we can feel it. It is the professional combination of education combined with positive psychology’s emphasis of individual strengths and personal motivation to promote learning. 

Ok, this sounds like more work added to an already full curriculum. More sighs….Let’s do what humans do best, categorize situations to make sense of the happenings around them. What happens is people are helping each other to reach a goal. 

King’s is a high school with teachers who spread their knowledge through a set curriculum and a choice of mindset. If one further categorises and creates a mind map one can add numerous headlines on these mind maps. Such as the choice of words used during teaching. The effect of using words to be respectful, encouraging, and motivating will lead to an acceleration of the student’s behaviour and knowledge. 

Asking how a person is doing and unravelling the person is needed to create a teaching tool for the student to reach his personal excellence. Having one-on-one or group discussions, feedback and chats with fellow students are ways to exchange curiosity, honesty, leadership, self-regulation and team work to name just a few.

Parent, teacher, student interviews are a great example of gratitude, perspective and courage. As parents and caregivers of high school students the interaction with teachers is from a distance compared to the interactions at primary schools. 

Teenagers/students are becoming more independent and self-regulated, which is a normal process of transforming towards adolescence. However, once one starts to ask a teenager questions at the end of the day, the answers are often, short, vague, and unrelated and leaves the parent/caregiver in the dark. 

However, it does pay off to ask the question at a later stage and after food consumption. Going back to the extension of the day and the workload, parent, teacher student interviews are a welcome moment of feeling connected with the school and the teachers. I think I can speak on behalf of other parents/caregivers that I am always amazed and thankful at how well the teachers know their students, our sons.

The group of very wise people are looking more confident now, have a smile on their face and come to the conclusion everyone is practicing Positive Education in their daily teaching! Only it might be unstructured, not shared amongst other teachers, not knowing it is Positive Education. The next logical step is to collect all these personal practices and to link them to a structured and streamlined programme. Because this is a re-structure of what all are already doing, it is not adding more work to a curriculum!

So, maybe Positive Education can become tactile, there are posters hanging in each classroom with the character strengths. There are cards and activities to use to weave learning, growth, and wellbeing. One can do an online survey to find out what one's character strengths are. It can become visual, students have created cloaks and flags to engage their roots, creativity, and curiosity. 

One might be able to hear it, the “please” and “thank you”, the tone of kindness. There are books and articles to read. Songs and poems might be created and maybe one can even smell Positive Education, think of the different foods on the Cultural Day!

It might be fair to conclude that Positive Education in a holistic approach already practiced at the school unknowingly and now structured and full focused and combined and heading in the same direction.

The goal has always been Personal Excellence for everyone involved.

PS. Remember education is an investment in oneself!