The Power of Positive Psychology

This year will be my first Pedagoo event and I am excited to not only to be attending #Pedagoohampshire16 but to also be presenting at it. The brief was to talk about something that we are passionate about, that will inspire conversation and allow further learning and development to be taken away.

I am passionate about mental wellbeing and resilience for teachers and students, so this is at the core of all the work I do. Some people seem to naturally develop mental resilience, others of us need to learn specific strategies to enhance it. What I love about Positive Psychology is that it offers evidence based techniques and tools to help us do just that. If you are up for trying new ideas to enhance wellbeing and like to know there is some research behind it all, then I hope you will like some of what I cover in my talk: The Power of Positive Psychology.
Character Strengths is a key area of research in this field and I have done lots of work with it with both staff and students. The research suggests that learning about and developing our character strengths can reduce stress, increase fulfilment in our work and life in general as well as reduce depressive symptoms. From personal experience, using the tools myself and with others, I know that it can help develop confidence, make us more effective and engaged in the work we do and provides invaluable insights into understanding and connecting with other people.

Students learn so much from what they see around them and although I am undoubtedly preaching to the converted here, I believe that if we are to help students learn the life skills of mental resilience and learning to look after their wellbeing then we must be demonstrating it through what we do, not just what we teach. I hope that my talk will prompt conversations on how we can not only use positive psychology more in the classroom but also how we can further support staff wellbeing.
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If you are thinking about coming to my talk at #PedagooHampshire16 (Find out more here) I look forward to chatting with you further. A thought to ponder until then: What are your top 3 character strengths? Perseverance, Humour, Bravery, Teamwork, Judgement...etc? We will delve into this deeper on the day and what to do with them once identified.