1/6 students are effected by mental health, and this number is growing globally. The happiness project can be taught in schools in a variety of ways. Teaching students different tactics for managing stress, mindfulness and how to be happy in and outside of school. This program of study is scalable, cheap and easy to run in any setting.
Each week during tutor time you can try out different skills and techniques from the Happiness Project. Creating a focus for the week will allow you to watch videos, teach practice and get feedback from students on the success of each week. Students relationships became stronger with each other and with the teacher, and importantly happiness went up! The impact of this was an increase of 10% in happiness and reduction in stress. Students felt better able to manage emotions and conflict. There was an opportunity to use virtual reality through a program called WISE, which also helped students with mental wellbeing and taught meditation techniques. On completion this innovation was presented to the leadership team with the plan to roll it out 2021/22 across the school. The resources have been developed for this and could simply be shared to others schools in other settings.
I plan to implement the happiness project across the school coming up with a variety of ways that it can be rolled out, using tutor time, homework and curriculum planning to ensure that every child feels happier, but also so the student feels able to support themselves with their own mental health and wellbeing as they become adults. Leadership were so impressed that they plan to roll out the program across the school the next academic year due to the high impact it had on student social, emotional and mental health and ease of scalability for both the resources and the delivery.
Anyone can do it, take the time to plan tutor times, start with a 6 week schedule and go from there. If you ask the students what makes them happy, or what they found to be more successful the happiness project will guide itself. Check with pastoral lead before altering a tutor time schedule. To get in touch: jen.frazer@shaftesburyschool.co.uk
