How to Promote Positive Emotions and Happiness at School
Teachers are often required to teach children a wide range of skills. Along with teaching literacy, math, science, history, and the arts, teachers may also want to start teaching happiness to their students.
In recent years, health in the school systems is an important topic. More schools are beginning to include physical activity and nutrition as part of their curriculum. However, there is much more to the health of a child than outdoor activities and eating a healthy diet.
Your health can also refer to your emotional well-being. Your happiness is just as important to your health as the amount of physical activity that you get each day.
Teachers can include social-emotional education in their curriculum to help encourage children to become more aware of their own well-being and happiness.
Teaching Children How to Focus on the Good
There are several ways to incorporate well-being in the classroom. The first method relies on the theory that positive experiences can continue to have a lasting effect on personal development.
The belief is that positive memories can help to broaden our thinking and attention. These positive experiences may even help create more positive experiences.
Teachers can include activities to help promote this theory. Teaching children how to recognize negative and positive experiences and emotions is a key part of this learning strategy. However, teachers also need to instruct children on ways to deal with the negative memories.
People tend to dwell on negative experiences. Teaching children early in life to focus more on the positive through reminiscing is a valuable skill that will help them through the rest of their lives.
Teaching Children Basic Relationship Skills
Close relationships and friendships are also integral parts of our well-being. Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, you require social connections. However, you need social skills to make these connections.
Children often develop social skills through interactions with their peers. Encouraging these interactions may promote stronger social ties.
Enrolling your child in an international kindergarten in Bangkok may allow your child to interact with students from other nations or ethnic groups. When a classroom includes a diverse group of students, children have more opportunities to learn basic relationship skills.
Introducing Activities to Promote Happiness
Discussing the benefits of positive emotions and relationship skills is easy. However, teachers still need to find ways to bring these lessons into the classroom. You can use the following activity to help children explore their emotional well-being.
This activity requires a whiteboard and a selection of colourful non-permanent markers. You should perform this activity near the end of the school day or the end of the week. Ask each student to write down three separate things that they believe went well during the school day or week.
Students are given the chance to share their thoughts with their peers, writing down their answers on the whiteboard. This encourages more social interaction and communication.
Allow children to freely discuss these responses as they are written on the board. This activity helps children recognize negative and positive emotions. They also learn how to focus more on the positive.
When you first start teaching happiness in your classroom, other teachers may be sceptical. However, when they start to see the effect it has on your students, they will likely ask you for advice on implementing the same lessons in their curriculum.