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"atmosphere of exuberant discovery"

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Julia de la Torre, Ed.M.’06, is tired. The teachers, staff, and administrators at the preK–12 school she oversees in New Jersey are tired. Her students are tired and often uncertain. Now in our third calendar year of the pandemic, there’s still much to deal with and process, even as schools are moving toward the summer break.

“I am tired of COVID protocols and the endless emails and video messages that I send to our families about the changing rules related to the pandemic,” de la Torre says. “I’m wearied by carrying the emotional weight of people’s worst fears about their health.” But more than anything, she says she’s worried that during these chaotic years, her relationship with students, staff, and families has been rooted in crisis.

That’s where the ladybugs and joke book come in. They’re de la Torre’s attempt to upend the tired, the chaotic, the crisis with another powerful word — a word that’s normally easy to find in schools but has been in short supply these days: joy.

Erosion of joy

On top of her desk at Moorestown Friends School, de la Torre keeps a big book of kids’ jokes. A colleague gifted her the book recently and she uses it to bring kid humor into almost every meeting she attends.

“I spend a lot of time in meetings and on Zoom, and it can be easy to feel disconnected from our shared purpose,” this former high school French teacher and principal says. “The jokes keep things light and reconnect us with the innocence of children, the purity of their humor, and the reason why we love being in student-centered communities. The pandemic can sometimes mean we take ourselves too seriously, so I try to keep laughter as a central theme at school.”

For her students, especially the younger ones, that includes ladybugs.

“If there has ever been a time where I’ve witnessed the widespread erosion of joyfulness among children and schoolaged youth, it has been throughout the past two years.” – Decoteau Irby

“I have a tradition at my school where I hide little ladybug stickers all throughout the lower school,” she says. “Ladybugs bring good luck in German culture, and I like to share that part of my multicultural background. You’d be amazed to see the joy on a student’s face when they find one of these tiny hidden treasures.” As she walks down the hall, students love to update her on how many stickers they found. “They also learn to leave the stickers behind so that other students can discover the joy. I love that the ladybugs not only connect me to them on a daily basis, but they also encourage students to think about their peers and what will bring them joy in their day.”

Joy. It seems like such a simple word, but it was hard to find back in the spring of 2020, when COVID first sent learning online and took away face-to-face and “fun” activities like clubs, sports teams, classroom parties, recess, musicals, and chorus concerts. Even now, with students back in person and masks optional in many places, the push to make up what was “lost” is stressful.

As Decoteau Irby, an associate professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago wrote last fall in a Harvard Education Publishing blog post, “If there has ever been a time where I’ve witnessed the widespread erosion of joyfulness among children and school-aged youth, it has been throughout the past two years. In March 2020, joy gave way to confusion, fear, and uncertainty as the world came to terms with the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Katie Salch, an ELA and math curriculum coordinator at Glendale Elementary School District in Arizona finishing the Certificate in School Management and Leadership Program at the Ed School, says part of the stress she has seen in her district has to do with the ups and downs of this long pandemic.

“Students are on edge with the unknown. Are we going to close again? Am I going to get quarantined today? Is this phone call to send me to the office to go home?” For teachers, “Navigating a classroom with students in and out for 5–10 days, and keeping up with who is out when it's like a who’s-on-first comedy sketch, is stressing teachers out. When the teacher then gets sick, all bets are lost with keeping up with where students are at academically for those 5–10 days.”

Personally, she feels stressed trying to come up with ways to support everyone.

“There isn’t a day that goes by in our schools that is normal,” she says. “It eats at your nerves and eats up your quota of coping mechanisms.”

De la Torre says the cumulative impact of operating a school in an unpredictable setting was especially tough when learning was both virtual and in-person. Educators had to learn new technology at lightning speed and figure out how to keep kids interested. It was definitely not an in by 8, out by 3 kind-of-day.

“The lines between work and home blurred and teachers were working harder than they ever have,” she says. On top of that, everyone was concerned about the health and wellbeing of every community member. “It’s an enormous emotional load to carry, and teachers have done it beautifully. [But], with every change in COVID guidelines, state mandates, and local case rates, I worry that we will crumble under the weight of it all.”

Last November, the Education Week Research Center found that nearly 75% of teachers say their morale is lower than it was before the pandemic. Talk to any teacher you know, and they’ll say either they’ve considered leaving the profession or know other educators who already have.

Jeff Durney, Ed.M.’21, is back teaching at the K–6 Boston Public School he worked at for 10 years as a STEAM specialist before coming to the Ed School. He says the vibe has been very somber this year, especially for teachers.

“It’s draining to have to put on the ‘everything is normal’ face every day,” he says. “At some point, we’ve all covered another class and/or lost a lunch block to support staffng shortages. In addition, we’ve had teachers give students rides home due to no coverage for bus drivers being out. As a teacher, you can often find yourself feeling like you’re on an island, but the pandemic has made it worse. Teachers have had to support the kids in their class while also supporting their own families as well.” Although he says he works in a supportive and understanding school, he is considering leaving the classroom, although even that takes its own kind of energy. “The workload and expectations for teachers have become too much. In conversations with various educators, a lot of us are too tired to look for positions outside the teaching profession. Furthermore, many of us are far too exhausted to sell ourselves during an interview.”

As Salch says, “I’ve had many teachers and coaches resign this year for several reasons. A majority are for health and safety and other employment in the private sector of education. Working remotely for almost a year really sat well with some educators and they are transferring to jobs where they can continue to do that.”

“It does not take anything extraordinary to bring joy back to the workplace of teachers.” – Julia de la Torre, Ed.M.'06

Bill Brooks, a Certificate in School Management and Leadership 2021 graduate, has seen the same trend as middle school dean of students at TASIS Portugal in Lisbon, where he also teaches English.

“I know several colleagues who have left or are thinking about leaving the profession,” he says. “In most cases, the cost of staying in the profession reached or is reaching a breaking point. It has simply become too much, and some reckon that a career switch is a better path, ultimately.”

Is learning even meant to be joyful?

Anyone who has picked up an instrument or tried to learn a new language knows that learning can be hard and frustrating. As Irby pointed out, “Learning is not always a joyous undertaking. Pushing through a diffcult subject, topic, or painstaking assignment can be tough.”

But, he adds, “joy at school and in learning is a foundation from which students gain the confidence that academic struggle is temporary and worthwhile.” There’s also a very real connection to the brain. “The brain does not exist by itself,” writes Professor Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child. “Connecting the brain to the rest of the body is critically important. When we’re stressed, every cell in the body is working overtime.”

Students who appear joyless or unmotivated (previously on Zoom, now in person) may not be making voluntary choices, says Judy Willis, a neurologist who went on to teach middle school for 10 years. Their brains, as Shonkoff points out, may just be responding to what’s going on around them, like the ups and downs of the pandemic and our push to “catch up” academically in schools.

“The truth is that when we scrub joy and comfort from the classroom, we distance our students from effective information processing and long-term memory storage,” Willis recently wrote in the Neuroscience of Joyful Education. “Instead of taking pleasure from learning, students become bored, anxious, and anything but engaged. They ultimately learn to feel bad about school and lose the joy they once felt.” Neuroimaging studies and measurement of brain chemical transmitters reveal that “when students are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely through the affective filter in the amygdala and they achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience ‘aha’ moments. Such learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery.”

Irby saw this with his own children. When school went remote, they were not happy. “On the best days, they were ambivalent. On the bad days, they were miserable,” he says. When they returned to in-person learning this past fall, things mostly got better. His son, a first-grader, didn’t like people being too close and didn’t want to be overly corrected for his efforts, but “they were very happy to return to school. They loved almost everything about returning, from packing their book bags, seeing their friends and socializing, to developing relationships with their teachers.”

Push to get kids up to speed

Happy is great, but what about the important idea that we need to regain academic ground lost during the pandemic? As Professor Tom Kane and his colleagues at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR) reveal in their new Road to COVID Recovery project, using real-time data and working with school districts across the country, learning loss from the pandemic is significant.

“I don’t think there’s a broad appreciation for the magnitude of the declines we’ve seen,” Kane told Ed. — the equivalent of kids missing three or four months of school last year. As he said in a recent The 74 article, “School districts have never had so many students so far behind.” And especially for some students. The Brookings Institute reported in March that test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math and 15% in reading, primarily during the 2020–21 school year.

CEPR has called for tutoring, extra periods of instruction, Saturday academies, and afterschool programs. Schools, they say, should focus for the next couple of years on getting students back to pre-COVID academic levels.

But what does catch up mean for the joy that tired students and teachers also desperately need?

In a Harvard EdCast interview in February, Susan Engel, a senior lecturer at Williams College and author of the new book, The Intellectual Lives of Children, said, “I heard a first-grade teacher say to me, back in August, when she was planning her remote teaching, she said, ‘The parents are so worried that their children aren’t going to keep up this year.’ And I said, ‘Keep up with what?’ And she looked surprised, and she said, ‘Well, with the standards.’ But I mean, the standards are completely arbitrary. Who made up those standards? Just a lot of people sitting in rooms. I don’t know. And I’m not sure they were good standards in the rst place, but it’s silly to let those constrain you too much as a teacher right now.”

Which is why it was interesting, says Wade Whitehead, a fifth-grade teacher in Virginia now in his 28th year of teaching, that in the spring of 2020, when it became clear that we weren’t going back to in-person any time soon, “the rst two things we threw out the window were grades and standardized testing.”

Why was that, he wondered? “I think it’s because those two rob students and teachers of joy. I think it was to keep students and teachers happy” as we shifted focus to everyone’s crushing social-emotional (SEL) needs. And there were other changes that at any other time would have seemed radical: Schools shortened the school day and cut back to just a few class blocks a day. “COVID was an opportunity for schools to go deep. People had the freedom to just learn. If you want to be around someone who is happy, be around someone who’s just learning something to learn, especially faceto-face. You’re just happier that way.”

“One of the many benefits of working with elementary-aged children is that they can find joy and humor in just about any activity." – Jeff Durney, Ed.M.'21

Unfortunately, says Whitehead, a a Certificate in School Management and Leadership graduate, a year later, we “picked up those two apples” — grades and standardized tests — “and put them back in the cart. I’m not against grades or tests. I’m for amazing grading systems and amazing assessment and accountability systems.”

Durney agrees that the “normal” way of schooling wasn’t working for everyone and says that we can still rethink schooling.

“We need to use the pandemic as an opportunity to consider how we meet the needs of all our students through engaging tasks,” he says. “Students have access to apps, games, etc., and there are things that can and should be leveraged when designing learning opportunities. It isn’t just academics that students missed over the past two years. They need opportunities to engage in activities that allow them to build and strengthen their SEL skills. Rigor can and should be fun!”

Kane agrees and says that academics and emotional care go hand-in-hand. If students feel more comfortable being back in school, they are going to have an easier time focusing, just as nding success in the classroom can lead to positive eects on mental health.

Irby also says it’s not an either-or as we move forward.

“I would say to educators who want to prioritize getting kids up to speed academically over joy that the two are not mutually exclusive. They should think about them as mutually reinforcing,” he says. “Not only do joy and academic rigor go hand-in-hand, but tactful educators plan to ensure both happen in tandem.” He noted that Gholdy Muhammad’s framework outlined in her book Cultivating Genius includes ve pillars to consider when planning lessons, and joy is one of them. “An example is children’s museums, which oer learning opportunities that center play and fun. Exhibit curators plan with joy and excitement at the center of their learning design, but they don’t forgo academic content. In other words, the same way a teacher can plan to have students learn a disciplinary skill, they can plan for students to experience joy while doing it. One priority doesn’t need to outweigh the other.”

He says this is especially important for students who experience “compounding killjoys” — students who “live with circumstances and experiences that make it very diffcult to be joyful. Some big picture joy killers include poverty, racism, social isolation, and concrete realities that stem from racial, social, and economic injustice such as hunger and food insecurity, housing insecurity, exposure to violence, health ailments, and living in a household or community where adults experience chronic stress. The more of these killjoys that students experience, the more concerned educators should be about using learning as a means to cultivate joy.”

For example, he says that if students don’t have access to safe green space, recess should become a priority. If they experience conflict with relationships in their lives, educators can create learning scenarios that are collaborative, “which provide opportunities to nd joy in working with people.”

Keeping this in mind, Sandra Nagy, Ed.M.’02, managing director of Future Design School, says any eort to get kids caught up and still feel joy needs to be intentional.

“In order for this important change to take hold in schools, there needs to be a space for joy,” she says. “That means balancing eorts to address learning loss with looking ahead to what we can do next and celebrating the way teachers proved their ability to innovate and adapt in the past two years.”

And Brooks says we can do something else to bring back joy that would once have been considered radical: We can slow down.

“We can engage with students where they are, whatever they’re interested in at the moment, because that’s the ‘stu’ of the world they’re trying so hard to build normalcy from,” he says. “We can play with them on the eld and court and laugh with them throughout the day. There will still be time for all that needs to be learned.”

Is joy still below the surface?

It’s all important — and it’s not all doom and gloom. Even tired educators say that below the frustrations, they see joy again.

“Given the circumstances, I have seen a lot of joy at school,” says Durney. “One of the many benefits of working with elementary-aged children is that they can find joy and humor in just about any activity.” Right before winter break, for example, they held an outdoor schoolwide activity where students were able to share their work and play games created by their peers and with parent involvement. “It felt like pre-pandemic times where we’d gather as a whole school community. The day ended with our principal jumping into the frigid waters at the M Street Beach in South Boston because as a school community we exceeded our fundraising goal. The smiles and laughter throughout the entire day were a great way to end the first stretch of the school year.”

Salch addressed burnout when students — and teachers — stopped using a diagnostic online program by creating a challenge where students would earn a popcorn party if they logged in for 10 of 15 days in December.

“We have a local chocolate factory that sells 10-gallon bags of popcorn for $6. We can feed a whole school for less than $15,” she says. “Students that earned the reward came out to the courtyard to eat a coffee filter full of popcorn and dance to Kidz Bop.”

She celebrates her teachers, too — even in small ways. “I do everything I can to keep my teachers joyful,” she says. “I write handwritten notes to them monthly thanking them or congratulating them on something they accomplished. I give random gifts of pens or stickies to show appreciation. I organize themed meetings that included engaging activities that show each other we are humans before we are our professions.”

Joshua Neufeld, a first-grade teacher at the American International School of Guangzhou in China and a participant in a Project Zero program in 2021, is part of a peer coaching network for international teachers called Positivity Playground. He found that regular staff socializing has helped morale.

“The pandemic has been challenging for everyone, and Positivity Playground reminded me that together, as colleagues, we can generate more positive emotions and manage negative emotions effectively.” With this in mind, Neufeld organized a weekly lunchtime tea party for his colleagues called Positvi-Tea. It’s a time for teachers to hang out and talk, he says, often about things other than school. “This is a time that energizes the participants and challenges them to continue the day with a positive outlook. I leave the meetings feeling recharged, viewing upcoming situations with a sense of realistic optimism.”

Beyond celebrations and gatherings, others say a focus on personalized learning and setting small, actionable steps (not just big lofty goals) can help bring joy back. Brooks says teachers and other educators can also pay more attention to self-care.

“I am striking a better work-life balance, taking time to be with my family and recharge,” he says. “Doing so allows me to be more fully present and increases the likelihood of finding and making joyful moments at work.” The same needs to be done for all educators. “It does not take anything extraordinary to bring joy back to the workplace of teachers. I would argue it comes down to acknowledging the difficulty of the work in these times, commiserating openly and honestly about these challenges, facing them together, and celebrating every small success of the professionals in the building. Impromptu conversations, dropping by to check in, and showing gratitude are a few other easy and regular ways to bring a sense of joy back to the workplace on a daily basis.”

With her ladybug stickers in hand and her joke book open and ready for the next meeting, Julia de la Torre is still tired, but she knows the joy at her school is there.

“Quite frankly, joy is the reason I come to work every day and why I love my job,” she says. “Pop your head into any classroom and you’ll see kids thriving, connecting, and enjoying school. They may have masks on, but you can see joy in their eyes and in their laughter. I’m always trying to remind my teachers that there is joy everywhere in schools, if you stop to look for it. It may be harder to find during these challenging times, but it’s the joy that keeps us coming back for more.”

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Educators talk about the impact COVID has had on school happiness.

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Research has shown that the strongest predictor of happiness - more than even money or physical health - is the strength of your social connections. That's true for adults and children.

Christina Hinton, Ed.M.'06, Ed.D.'12, knows all too well the importance of happy students and teachers after nearly a decade partnering with schools around the world to conduct collaborative research in classrooms as founder and CEO of Research Schools International.

When she was a doctoral student at the Ed School, Hinton found in her study on happiness that for students from elementary school to high school, happiness is positively correlated with motivation and academic achievement. She also found that creating strong relationships with teachers and peers plays an important role in student happiness.

Now more than ever it is crucial to discover ways to encourage happiness and connection when so many are still apart, and Hinton says it doesn't take that much to do. "You can do really small things and they can have a big impact on happiness." Some of her suggestions include:

Find the right balance of challenge. Research has shown that too little challenge can lead to boredom, but too much challenge and a person will become discouraged. "There is an optimal level of challenge where people are engaged but not overwhelmed called the Zone of Proximal Development," says Hinton. During remote learning, setting realistic goals is important. Teachers need to remember that students aren't going to move at the same pace as they could in the classroom, and to also adjust goals for students in unique circumstances.

Provide social connection. All students are going to need extra emotional support this year, and it is important to make a special effort to build community. Hinton says teachers, especially those still teaching virtually, should find new ways to connect, such as offering virtual office hours or fun end-of-year virtual social events. Hinton also says to remember to practice compassion, especially with students who are disruptive. "Everyone is experiencing stress right now. You don't know what they are facing at home. Offer compassion, understanding and support. Instead of punishments, set clear boundaries with natural consequences."

Help students to flourish. When students are flourishing, they are more motivated and more effective learners. Hinton says there are a number of ways to promote flourishing during in-person or remote learning, such as:

Practice gratitude. "Research shows that low-lift strategies that promote gratitude can have a big impact on happiness," Hinton says, like having students write down one thing they are grateful for in a Zoom chat or before an in-person class begins.

Support others. "If you want to be happy and flourish, you should focus on supporting others," Hinton says. Encouraging students to engage in acts of kindness in their daily lives is a good place to start, or teachers can choose a cause to work on together as a class.

Incorporate humor. Finding something to laugh about this year might be difficult, but it's worth it. "Research shows that laughter not only boosts well-being and happiness, but also physical health," Hinton says.

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Research has shown that the strongest predictor of happiness - more than even money or physical health - is the strength of your social connections. That's true for adults and children.

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To start off, I realize that not everything can be fun in school.

Classrooms are places with often competing priorities - testing, schedules, curricular demands, and the like are not always within the direct control of classroom teachers. I get that.

While not everything can be fun, its important to know that when classroom activities are fun, enjoyable, and pleasurable some amazing things happen. Most notably, when activities are perceived as fun the brain responds with a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Why does dopamine matter? It's the chemical most commonly associated with pleasure and reward. When we experience something enjoyable, our brains reward us with good feelings as if to say, "Hey, that felt good. Remember to do that again." Not only does dopamine make us feel good, it helps with attention, motivation, and memory.

That's an important message: dopamine levels are associated with memory, attention, and motivation! Aren't those the big three (along with getting kids to behave better) that teachers are always striving to improve in their students? If students are disengaged and bored, there will be lower levels of dopamine. If they are engaged and having fun, dopamine levels increase.

Bottom-line - dopamine is a classroom teacher's best friend.

There is also some interesting research that suggests that merely labeling something as "fun" helps our most underachieving students the most (Hart and Albarracin, 2009).

So, where do we start? Certainly, giving some consideration to highly-engaging and fun activities is worth the time. I've got tons of resources and ideas in two books and for free on my website.

But the easiest place to begin is by simply asking your students. As this school year winds down, take the time to simply ask students what they perceive to be fun and enjoyable classroom learning experiences. Do some informal surveying of your students with questions like, "What was the most fun thing we did this year?" and "What changes could I make next year in order to make the lessons more fun and engaging?"

For a quick and simple Course Evaluation tool, click here.

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Why "fun" matters more than you may realize

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Dr. Harris provides top-notch, evidence-based training for teachers, leaders, students, and parents that focus on increasing student achievement. Work with Bryan to bring highly engaging trainings that provide cutting-edge insights and easy-to-use strategies that make a positive difference for all students.

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For two weeks in third grade, I preached the gospel of the wild boar. My teacher, the sprightly Mrs. DeWilde, assigned my class an open-ended research project: Create a five-minute presentation about any exotic animal. I devoted my free time before bedtime to capturing the wonders of the Sus scrofa in a 20-minute sermon. I filled a poster as big as my 9-year-old self with photographs, facts, and charts, complete with a fold-out diagram of the snout. During my presentation, I shared my five-stanza rhyming poem about the swine's life cycle, painted the species' desert and taiga habitats in florid detail, and made uncanny snorting impressions. I attacked each new project that year - a sketch of the water cycle, a history of the Powhatan - with the same evangelism.

Flash forward to the fall of my senior year in high school, and my near-daily lunchtime routine: hunched over at a booth in Wendy's, chocolate Frosty in my right hand, copying calculus worksheets from Jimmy and Spanish homework from Chris with my left while they copied my notes on Medea or Jane Eyre. Come class, I spent more time playing Snake on my graphing calculator than reviewing integrals, more time daydreaming than conjugating verbs.

What happened in those nine years? Many things. But mainly, like the majority of my fellow Americans, I fell victim to the epidemic of classroom boredom.

A 2013 Gallup poll of 500,000 students in grades five through 12 found that nearly eight in 10 elementary students were "engaged" with school, that is, attentive, inquisitive, and generally optimistic. By high school, the number dropped to four in 10. A 2015 follow-up study found that less than a third of 11th-graders felt engaged. When Gallup asked teens in 2004 to select the top three words that describe how they feel in school from a list of 14 adjectives, "bored" was chosen most often, by half the students. "Tired" was second, at 42 percent. Only 2 percent said they were never bored. The evidence suggests that, on a daily basis, the vast majority of teenagers seriously contemplate banging their heads against their desks.

Some of boredom's progression seems obvious, such as:

An escalating emphasis on standardized tests. Fifth-grade teacher Jill Goldberg, Ed.M.'93, told me, "My freedom as a teacher continues to be curtailed with every passing year. I am not able to teach for the sake of teaching." With lack of teacher freedom comes lack of student freedom, and disengagement and tuning out.

The novelty of school itself fades with each grade. Here I am for another year in the same blue plastic chair, same graffitied fake wooden desk, surrounded by the same faces. Repetition begets boredom (e.g., I haven't had a Frosty in a decade).

Lack of motivation. Associate Professor Jal Mehta says, "There's no big external motivating force in American education except for the small fraction of kids who want to go to the most selective colleges."

The transition from the tactile and creative to the cerebral and regimented. Mehta calls it the switch from "child-centered learning to subject-centered learning." In third grade I cut with scissors, smeared glue sticks, and doodled with scented magic markers. By 12th grade I was plugging in formulas on a TI-83 and writing the answers on fill-in-the-blank worksheets. And research papers stimulate and beget rewards at a thousandth the speed of Snapchat and Instagram.

But who cares? Isn't boredom just a natural side effect of daily life's tedium? Until very recently, that's how educators, academics, and neuroscientists alike have treated it. In fact, in the preface to Boredom: A Lively History, Peter Toohey presents the possibility that boredom might not even exist. What we call "boredom" might be just a "grab bag of a term" that covers "frustration, surfeit, depression, disgust, indifference, apathy." Todd Rose, Ed.M.'01, Ed.D.'07, a lecturer at the Ed School and director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program, says the American education system treats boredom as a "character flaw. We say, 'If you're bored in school, there's something wrong with you.'"

But new research has begun to reveal boredom's dismal effects in school and on the psyche. A 2014 study that followed 424 students at the University of Munich over the course of an academic year found a cycle in which boredom bore lower test results, which bore higher levels of boredom, which bore still lower test results. Boredom accounts for nearly a third of variation in student achievement. A 2010 German study found that boredom "instigates a desire to escape from the situation" that causes boredom. It's not surprising, then, that half of high school dropouts cite boredom as their primary motivator for leaving. A 2003 Columbia University survey found that U.S. teenagers who said they were often bored were more than 50 percent more likely than not-bored teens to smoke, drink, and use illegal drugs. Proneness to boredom is also associated with anxiety, impulsiveness, hopelessness, loneliness, gambling, and depression. Educators and academics, Ed School faculty and alumni among them, have begun to engage with boredom, investigating its systemic causes and potential solutions. Mehta, who's been studying engagement since 2010, says, "We have to stop seeing boredom as a frilly side effect. It is a central issue. Engagement is a precondition for learning," he adds. "No learning happens until students agree to become engaged with the material."

"Yo, Mr. P., I just wanted to let you know on Day One that I'm not a science person."

"Mr. P., I'm not very good at science."

"Science is not my favorite subject, Mr. P."

Every year for 14 years, Victor Pereira Jr. (pictured, right), heard this from a handful of his students during the first week of his ninth- and 10th-grade science classes. After falling behind in specific subjects throughout elementary and middle school, students "were full of preconceived notions" of their capabilities, says Pereira, who taught at South Boston's Excel High School before becoming a lecturer at the Ed School and master teacher in the Harvard Teacher Fellows Program. Engaging the students who are already discouraged was an uphill battle.

For comparison, Pereira remembers observing a second-grade science teacher's lesson and leaving the class deflated. "Those kids were curious, they listened intently, and they were excited to take chances." In second grade, he says, "you can use your common language and experiences from your everyday life to explain what's happening and engage in the science lesson." However, as students advance in science, learning its progressively technical terminology "requires almost learning another language." Technicality can breed boredom and frustration, which breeds more boredom.

As Rose puts it, "The friction is cumulative." For example, the best predictor for how students will fare in algebra is how they fared in prealgebra. A downward spiral emerges: "You're not doing well, and you're going to keep not doing well," Rose says. "And then that becomes a part of how you see yourself as a learner."

Rose has a master's and doctorate from the Ed School, but he also had a 0.9 GPA in high school before he dropped out, primarily from boredom. He says he grew weary of the "poor design of the learning environment that creat-ed so many barriers to me being able to learn." For one, because of his "pretty poor working memory," he often forgot to bring home his homework or forgot to bring the homework he completed back to school. He says he was never taught skills like planning and organizing, and failed because the grading rubric neglected his style of learning. Eventually, "I couldn't see why I should be there. They didn't know why I should be there. We both agreed."

Sam Semrow, Ed.M.'16, can relate. She attended a public high with a 10/10 rating on greatschools.com in a wealthy suburb of Chicago, but what she calls the "lack of individualized understanding of who we were as students" discouraged her. She read novels through math class, skipped days, contemplated dropping out, and barely graduated with a 1.8 GPA.

Rose has proposed a solution. In his book The End of Average, he illustrates that classrooms are falsely designed to cater to the "average learner." Fourth-graders take tests and read texts written at a "fourth-grade reading level" that assume an "average" fourth-grader's knowledge of rock formations and the Civil War and the "average" fourth-grader's cognitive development. In reality, Rose says, "that average fourth-grader doesn't exist." Each student is much more "jagged" in his or her skill-set - advanced in memory, underdeveloped in organization, say, or vice versa. By designing for the average of everyone, the classroom is ideal to no one. And in this design, boredom runs rampant, and there's no room for a cure.

"If you see human potential as a bell curve and there are only some kids who are going to be great and most kids are mediocre, then engagement really wouldn't matter," Rose says. "But if you really believe that all kids are capable, then you would build environments that really worked hard to sustain engagement and nurture potential."

Rose suggests adding much more choice to the classroom. Allow exams to be written or taken orally. Assign students more hands-on projects, in which they become in control of their own learning. New research bolsters his theory. Since 2011 Mehta and current doctoral student Sarah Fine, Ed.M.'13, have been studying "deeper learning" (learning that is both challenging and engaging; see sidebar) at more than 30 American high schools, and they have found that schools with the most project-based curricula tend to foster the fewest bored students.

Of course, no teacher can assign and grade 30 individual projects and create 30 individual lesson plans every day. Rose suggests schools more often exploit digital, scalable technologies that can deliver readings and assignments tailored to specific types of learners. With boredom, Rose says, "the focus is on the curriculum first. I think we can talk to teachers about it second. Let's do something for them instead of asking more of them.

Still, teachers can staunch boredom. Mehta and Fine (read sidebar) discovered that even in underperforming schools where boredom was near universal, "there were individual teachers who were creating classrooms where students were really engaged and motivated." These teachers trusted students to sometime control the class. They tried to learn from their students as much as they taught. They weren't afraid to go off script.

In some ways it's no surprise Spanish and calculus were my worst subjects senior year: They had the most monotonous curricula and the dullest teachers. In Spanish we spent weeks watching the "educational" and horrendously acted soap opera La Catrina and more weeks slogging through call-and-response lessons recorded 20 years earlier, on cassette. I had by then ruled out a career in math, and my teacher did little to explain the pertinence of limits and derivatives in my life beyond that I may fail another test. My English and U.S. history teachers, however, inspired me to thrive. Mr. Howell had us imagine how Huckleberry Finn's Jim and Pap would interact if they were guests on Da Ali G Show and helped us identify fallacies by having us debate the war in Iraq. And Mr. Rice culminated each chapter of American history with a class-wide debate in which we each assumed the role of a different figure from that period, bonus points for showing up in costume.

Of course, there's value in teaching students to suck it up and work. As Mehta (pictured, left) notes, learning any discipline or gaining any skill requires a certain amount of "necessary boredom. ... If you want to be a great violinist, you've got to practice your scales. You want to play basket-ball? You've got to shoot your free throws." An overemphasis on engagement, Emory professor Mark Bauerlein writes in " The Paradox of Classroom Boredom" in Education Week, may inadvertently "stunt students in preparation" for college, where pushing through tedious work - like memorizing equations for organic chemistry - is required to advance. "In telling [students], 'You think the material is pointless and musty, but we'll find ways to stimulate you,' high school educators fail to teach them the essential skill of exerting oneself even when bored."

"The problem," Mehta says, "is that we haven't created trajectories where students see the meaning and purpose that would make the necessary boredom endurable." The problem is relevance.

Every teacher and academic I talked to kept coming back to relevance. Semrow says she grew bored because for most subjects, "I didn't see what it meant for my life." Few teachers contextualized their lessons. "Especially for 17- and 18-year-olds, we're dealing with a lot of issues about what's next for us." The curriculum rarely addressed how trigonometry and human anatomy fit into her future. But Semrow says she graduated by the grace of the few teachers who did stress relevance.

Pereira says that the examples of how biology fit into his students' lives - for example, explaining the water cycle through the Flint, Michigan, water crisis - often "weren't good enough. They're not in teenage language." To counter that, he often let students "give better examples that translate to the larger group." And when the class seemed particularly bored, he made room for in-class adjustments to reignite the lesson. For example, when he started a photosynthesis lesson one day, students sighed, "We already know this." But one student brought up a news article about scientists who were experimenting with growing plants in space. Pereira then decided the students would design their own photosynthesis experiment testing various wavelengths and light intensities, and then present their data in a form of a letter of recommendation to NASA.

Rose adds that high schools rarely take advantage of an adolescent's cognitive development. Teenagers "take on identities; they're more socially oriented. This is the first time when abstract ideas can be motivating. They become more politically engaged and think about things like justice. Yet we're still keeping them in the kind of education system... that wants nothing from them in terms of their own ideas. School has already decided what matters and [what it] expects from you. It's like an airplane: Sit down, strap in, don't talk, look forward. Why would it be meaningful?"

The beauty of relevance, Rose says, "is that it's free. If you're an educator or curriculum developer, and you saw your responsibility to ensure every kid knew why they were doing what they were doing, you can do that tomorrow."

Of course, impassioned teachers who communicate the relevance of their lessons often aren't enough. Jill Goldberg, Ed.M.'93, who teaches fifth grade at a public school in Newtonville, New York, has been shaping her lessons to be more interesting and relevant for the past 24 years. Still, her students fiddle with pencils, scribble notes to friends, and "practically have drool coming out of their mouths." She tells them, "I wish there was a full-wall mirror behind me ... so you could see what your faces and body language convey to me."

Goldberg lays some blame on parents. When she asks her students why they're in school, "they tell me it is because their parents work and so this is where they need to be during the day. Some say it's like their 'job' to go to school. ... No child ever [says] that learning and being educated is important. No one ever says that they love to learn new things no matter what the subject. No parents or students seem to believe that pure learning for the sake of learning is the goal.

"Why do my students' parents work?" Goldberg adds. "They most likely tell their children that they work in order to make money in order to live the life they want to live. But do they love their work? Why have they chosen the field in which they work? Are these adults who are inspired to make the world a better place?"

Rose (pictured, right), however, cautions against casting too much blame on parents. "Even though it feels right, it will excuse [society] from the responsibility of how we rethink our own environments in the classroom."

For example, poor scheduling also cultivates boredom. Seven a.m. start times for high school often mean rising at dawn to catch the bus, which means much less sleep than the National Sleep Foundation's recommended eight to 10 hours a night, which means severely diminished alertness. In most high schools, regardless of the subject, the day's first classes have the worst average grade. Schools that have bumped start times an hour later have seen the number of Ds and Fs cut in half.

Mehta adds that "having students take six or seven classes of 45 or 50 minutes at a time basically gives them enough time to just start to do something before the period ends." Often, much of that time is spent reviewing homework and menial tasks, exacerbating boredom. Semrow notes that "being in school longer would have given teachers more free time to reach out to me" to get to know her strengths and weaknesses as a learner.

Educators and scientists have yet to agree on a definition of boredom, let alone unearth its exact causes and cures in the classroom. The most exhaustive book on the subject to date, Boredom in the Classroom: Addressing Student Motivation, Self-Regulation, and Engagement in Learning, is 72 pages long. As Dean James Ryan recently wrote in Education Week, "Boredom ought to be considered much more seriously when thinking about ways to improve student outcomes. ... I would think it is in all of our interests at least to confront this stubborn fact of school rather than simply to accept boredom as inextricably linked to learning."

"But the biggest shift we need," Rose believes, is much more elemental. "We need to get away from thinking that the opposite of 'bored' is 'entertained.' It's 'engaged.'" It's not about pumping cartoons and virtual reality games into the classroom, it's about finding ways to make curriculum more resonant, personalized, and meaningful for every student. "Engagement is very meaningful at a neurological level, at a learning level, and a behavioral level. When kids are engaged, life is so much easier."

Zachary Jason is a Boston-based writer who writes for Boston Magazine, the Boston Globe Magazine, and The Guardian.
Read about Rose's Read "Why the Periphery Is Often More Powerful Than the Core" by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine, Ed.M.'13 End of Average Illustration by Todd Detwiler; Photos by Tim Llewellyn research in our Fall 2015 issue.
Read Dean Ryan's blog post on boredom in Education Week.

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For two weeks in third grade, I preached the gospel of the wild boar. My teacher, the sprightly Mrs. DeWilde, assigned my class an open-ended research project: Create a five-minute presentation about any exotic animal. I devoted my free time before bedtime to capturing the wonders of the Sus scrofa in a 20-minute sermon.

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oung children sit cross-legged on the mat as their teacher prepares to teach them about the weather, equipped with pictures of clouds. Outside the classroom, lightning forks across a dark sky and thunder rumbles. Curious children call out and point, but the teacher draws their attention back - that is not how the lesson target says they are going to learn about the weather.

It could be a scene in almost any school. Children, full of questions about things that interest them, are learning not to ask them at school. Against a background of tests and targets, unscripted queries go mainly unanswered and learning opportunities are lost.

Yet the latest American research suggests we should be encouraging questions, because curious children do better. Researchers from the University of Michigan CS Mott Children's Hospital and the Center for Human Growth and Development investigated curiosity in 6,200 children, part of the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. The study is highlighted in a new book by Judith Judd and me, How to Succeed at School. What Every Parent Should Know.

The researchers gauged levels of curiosity when the children were babies, toddlers and preschoolers, using parent visits and questionnaires. Reading, maths and behaviour were then checked in kindergarten (the first year of school), where they found that the most curious children performed best. In a finding critical to tackling the stubborn achievement gap between poorer and richer children, disadvantaged children had the strongest connection between curiosity and performance.

Further, the researchers found that when it came to good school performance, the ability to stay focused and, for example, not be distracted by a thunderstorm, was less important than curiosity - the questions children might have about that storm.

Ilminster Avenue nursery children. Researchers have found children aged 14 months to five years ask an average of 107 questions an hour. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

Teachers who concentrate on developing focus and good behaviour because of the links to good academic performance, now need to take on board that developing curiosity could be even more important.

The study's lead researcher, Dr Prachi Shah, a developmental and behavioural paediatrician at Mott and an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan, says: "Promoting curiosity in children, especially those from environments of economic disadvantage, may be an important, under-recognised way to address the achievement gap. Promoting curiosity is a foundation for early learning that we should be emphasising more when we look at academic achievement."

Children are born curious. The number of questions a toddler can ask can seem infinite - it is one of the critical methods humans adopt to learn. In 2007, researchers logging questions asked by children aged 14 months to five years found they asked an average of 107 questions an hour. One child was asking three questions a minute at his peak.

But research from Susan Engel, author of The Hungry Mind and a leading international authority on curiosity in children, finds questioning drops like a stone once children start school. When her team logged classroom questions, she found the youngest children in an American suburban elementary school asked between two and five questions in a two-hour period. Even worse, as they got older the children gave up asking altogether. There were two-hour stretches in fifth grade (year 6) where 10 and 11-year-olds failed to ask their teacher a single question.

In one lesson she observed, a ninth grader raised her hand to ask if there were any places in the world where no one made art. The teacher stopped her mid-sentence with, "Zoe, no questions now, please; it's time for learning."

Engel, who is professor of developmental psychology at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, says: "When you visit schools in many parts of the world it can be difficult to remember they are full of active, intellectual children, because no one is talking about their inner mental lives. How well they behave, and how they perform seem much more important to many people in the educational communities. Often educational bureaucracies have shunted curiosity to the side."

When teachers teach young children not to ask questions, it is not surprising that high-performing students studied by American researchers in 2013 were found to be less curious, because they saw curiosity as a risk to their results. The questions they asked were aimed at improving their results, whereas the questions asked by more curious students were aimed at understanding a topic more deeply.

Of course, some teachers do encourage and enhance curiosity - Engel says that in every school she visits there tends to be one teacher who is managing it. But it is usually down to an individual - rather than a systematic approach such as that introduced at Ilminster Avenue nursery school, in Bristol.

Last September the nursery took the radical step of permanently removing most of its toys for two-year-olds and replacing them with a range of cardboard boxes, tin cans, pots and pans, old phones, kettles, computers and plumbing supplies - anything with creative possibilities.

The children took to the new objects immediately, making slides for building blocks with guttering, dens and spaceships with cardboard boxes and having conversations with imaginary people on old phones. Old keys were used to lock things away or unlock imaginary kingdoms. Most haven't asked for the toys back.

Matt Caldwell, the headteacher, says sceptical parents and teachers have been convinced by the change because of the rise in creativity and conversation among the children.

He says: "What children love is to copy what adults are doing with objects. What people and objects do makes them curious about their world.

"School kills curiosity. When do children get to ask questions about things that interest them? As soon as they are at primary school they have to shut up and learn. It's not the fault of teachers. They have so many targets to meet."

Paul Howard-Jones, professor of neuroscience and education at Bristol University, who has visited to observe the children playing with their new "toys", says humans learn from novel situations and curiosity is important to that process.

"Children should be prompted and encouraged to ask questions even though that can be challenging for the teacher," he says. "We do need to find some time for questions during the day. There is not enough time in schools for creativity and following up on curiosity."
How to Succeed at School: Separating Fact from Fiction. What Every Parent Should Know, by Wendy Berliner and Judith Judd,

A child at Ilminster Avenue nursery. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

is published by Routledge

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'Schools are killing curiosity': why we need to stop telling children to shut up and learn

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Pupils who ask lots of questions get better results, especially those from poorer homes

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When was the last time you flew too high on a swing and lost your stomach, or busted out laughing so hard that you started crying?

If it's been awhile since you've had this kind of fun, you're not alone.

A lot of us are still recovering from antisocial habits formed in the pandemic. And these days, events outside of our control are taking a serious toll on our health. Last fall, 76% of adults surveyed by the American Psychological Association said stress from politics, race relations, violence and inflation has affected their health. They report experiencing headaches, fatigue, depression, nervousness and exhaustion.

But the antidote may be hiding in plain sight. Two recent books argue that making room for more fun in your life could counteract both the stress and the tendency to escape it by zoning out online.

In The Fun Habit: How The Disciplined Pursuit of Joy And Wonder Can Change Your Life, published in January, psychologist Mike Rucker makes the case that pursuit of fun experiences may be even more valuable than seeking the sometimes abstract goal of happiness.

"Happiness is a state of mind," Rucker writes. "But fun is something you can do. It doesn't require education, money or power. All it requires is intentionality. If happiness is a mirage, fun is your backyard oasis."

And science journalist Catherine Price, author of The Power of Fun, published in 2021, has a similar view. (She took a break from her latest interest, online blues piano lessons, to take my call.)

"We really trivialize fun and we are so casual and sloppy about how we use the word," Price says, but it is "essential for our happiness and health."

And fun can be so many things. Last year, when NPR asked readers to share what they're really into, more than 1,500 of you responded with a deliciously wide range of pursuits, from hula hooping to home brewing beer to raising reptiles. And more than 800 said you do these activities just because they're fun.

Here's advice from Price and Rucker - and inspiration from NPR readers - for ways to build more fun into your life.

1. Stop worrying about how happy you are

As a founding member of the International Positive Psychology Association, Rucker has put many teachings of happiness science into his life, like keeping a gratitude journal. But after his brother died unexpectedly in 2016, Rucker felt burned out and lonely. He began to feel that the more he pursued happiness, the more elusive it became.

"Happiness is really an evaluation," he says. You are constantly asking yourself what is going right and what is going wrong. It can become a trap, he warns.

People who highly value happiness may end up feeling "disappointed about how they feel, paradoxically decreasing their happiness the more they want it," wrote the authors of a 2011 study in the journal Emotion.

In contrast, fun is relatively easy to achieve yet many adults are conditioned to believe that it isn't important, and experience very little of it. For Rucker, seeking lighter moments helped him through his loss.

"Even if you're not happy, you can have fun, even if that's just having coffee with a friend," he says. "For me, it was certainly going to comedy clubs [after my brother died]. I wasn't happy, but I was really enjoying the jokes."

Science has just begun to study the importance of fun and play, so there's not a strict definition. But Rucker writes that fun generally involves doing something active and intentional (as opposed to mindlessly watching TV), often includes other people, is something you choose for yourself, and can give a thrill that transcends the ordinary.

NPR audience member Lynn Braz found that when she started taking flying trapeze classes at age 42: "Now, at age 61, I am flying every weekend throughout the warmer months. Flying trapeze is the hardest, scariest, most exciting and most fun thing I've ever done."

Price, who also is the founder of ScreenLifeBalance.com, defines fun as a state in which we experience playfulness, connection to others, and flow - that feeling where you lose track of time because you're "in the zone" and not worried about how you look or how well you perform.

2. Find your 'fun magnets'

If you're not sure where to start, Price recommends you ask yourself: What are my "fun magnets?"

"Put your phone away for a while and come up with three to four memories when you had real fun," she advises.

Look for common threads, like which people are involved, what kinds of activities you enjoy, where do they take place. Are there activities that would be fun that you'd like to try? Are there activities you can get rid of that are not fun?

Fun can be many different things, Rucker says. It's really whatever tickles your sense of delight.

NPR's audience shared hundreds of ideas about what turns them on.

Tara Fisher described her love of building and fighting with robots. "It's a great way to learn lots of STEM skills and meet fun, intelligent people," she wrote. "Plus, it's fun to smash each other's 'toys.'"

Nicole Diekow told NPR, that for her, it's thrift shopping. She's been doing it since the 1980s when she and her mom were on a tight budget. "This sparked a fascination that has stuck around my whole life ... You never know what treasures you might find or what friends you may meet."

3. Put fun on the calendar

Once you identify what fun is to you, you can start to schedule more of it. "It's like going on a diet by figuring out what kinds of foods you love, and then eating more," says Price.

I know - groan. Scheduling fun? Isn't it supposed to be spontaneous? And aren't we overscheduled already?

But fun comes more easily when you're young, says Price. When you're older, you don't find yourself in the kind of unstructured environments conducive to fun, like a playground full of kids you don't know.

Sometimes people you could have fun with are waiting for an invitation. "It's like romance," she says of scheduling fun. "You need to light some candles, set the scene."

But it's well worth it. People who take a vacation return to their work less stressed and possibly more creative, and the benefits could extend to smaller adventures.

When you put something fun like a hike on the calendar, you open up to moments of " awe and wonder," like the surprise appearance of a deer on the path, for example, Rucker says. These moments can improve mood and lower stress levels, which can reduce the risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Scheduling fun doesn't have to be arduous or expensive. When Price was working on her book during the height of the pandemic, she recruited a virtual group of people - a Fun Squad - to bounce ideas around with.

One Fun Squad friend said that a Taco Tuesday night she held with her friends was the highlight of her week, Price says. For herself, she regularly jams with a group of musicians.

NPR reader Nancy Lomini-Perretta decided to try a beginning mahjongg class for seniors at her local college in 2019. Now she plays every Monday with a group of women she met in that class. They call themselves "The Fabulous Five" or "The Mahvelous Mahjongg Madams."

"Taking this class ... brought five women together who happen to have the same sense of humor and just plain enjoy each other's company," she says.

4. Unplug (no, but seriously!)

Pay attention to how much of your leisure time is spent scrolling on a phone or passively watching TV, Rucker advises. That's "yielding to the nothing," he says, and is a deceptively easy escape from feelings of boredom or discomfort.

Most of us have control over at least two hours of our day for leisure activities, and some of us have up to five hours. But the average American uses up more than two hours on social media per day. Consider using your time instead to do "just one thing that used to bring you joy," suggests Rucker.

Technology can be the enemy of fun. If you're always connected to your phone, checking that one last email or text, you're not present. Rucker says. "We need to "stop being 'on' all the time."

When Rucker realized he was checking his phone often while watching his daughter take gymnastics class, he decided instead that they should take a dance class together. "Now we have amazing memories," he says.

Real fun usually involves sensory experiences and, often, interactions with other people.

NPR listener Rachel Maryam Smith fell in love with making giant soap bubbles when she was in college. She soon started making them in public, eventually hosting events with up to 300 people. She loves that bubbles put a smile on everyone's face.

"Big bubble making [is] more than the jaw-dropping aesthetics, but a reminder that life is brief and beautiful," she wrote.

Action seeker and NPR fan says Mike Ferris practicing handstands "feels like flight at 33 years old." He encourages others to try it too: "Who hasn't tried a handstand once in their life, at least as children? It's simply fun to do a move that our bodies aren't designed to do to survive."

5. Share the fun and amplify it

Another tip Price swears by for more fun is sharing what brings you delight with someone else. Price now has running text chains with several friends who send her photos of upbeat moments throughout their day. Just for fun, she recently sent some friends $10 disco balls she discovered on Amazon so they could delight in their own dance parties.

She borrowed the idea from poet Ross Gay, who wrote an entire book of essays on delights, including odes to handmade infinity scarves, loitering and weeds.

NPR listener Kami Koontz shares her source of fun whenever she can. She bought a ukulele in early 2014 on a whim and taught herself to play it.

"I have since started a local uke group, a local uke band, and have raised money to donate Ukes to schools and libraries," she writes. "Doing all of these things has brought a variety of charming people into my life, a little music family of sorts."

Like any new habit, fun takes practice, as well as trial and error. Experts say start small and build.

"It's harder to get to spontaneity if you have to schedule it on your calendar, but once you do, you're creating more opportunity for spontaneity to happen," Rucker says.
Carmel Wroth contributed to this report.

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Here's why you should make a habit of having more fun

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Happiness can sometimes feel just out of reach. But having more fun? You've got this - and those giggles and playful moments can make a big difference to your health and well-being.

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the end of the rainbow: how educating for happinessnot moneywould transform our schools

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education / educational policy & reform / general

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education - aims and objectives - united states

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education / educational policy & reform / general

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The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness-Not Money-Would Transform Our Schools

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The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness-Not Money-Would Transform Our Schools [Engel, Susan] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The End of the Rainbow: How Educating for Happiness-Not Money-Would Transform Our Schools

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Dancing in the Streets: Book on Collective Joy

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Dancing in the Streets: Book on Collective Joy

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From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy...

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A new teacher I know recently shared the reason he decided to become an educator: "Cheesy maybe, but I became intrigued by teaching because of smiles. When a student I am working with smiles, the feeling I get is indescribable."

My friend is describing "empathic joy"- the experience of sharing and understanding positive emotions. When our students feel happy, we feel happy. When our students celebrate a success, we celebrate with them. Empathic joy delights in the good everyone can share. And in the classroom, empathic joy might have academic benefits: Researchers following primarily white teachers in ethnically diverse schools linked teachers' joy to students' higher test scores.

Unfortunately, day-to-day workplace challenges can undermine the contagious sense of joy that may have brought you to teaching in the first place: conflicts among colleagues, budget cuts and layoffs, or high-stakes testing pressure, to name a few.

If you are struggling to recall recent experiences of joy, here are five suggestions for nurturing and developing empathic joy in your classroom.

1. Slow down, and pay attention to the good things

"Withitness" is a term coined by educational psychologist Jacob Kounin to describe the capacity to recognize the dynamics in your classroom as a whole, while still seeing the individuals within it.

But our perception of the reality around us is shaped by many unconscious biases, not the least of which is negativity bias-our tendency to focus on negative events, like the student who is acting out or the parent who criticizes your teaching.

We may also hold biases against our students, unconsciously feeling someone cannot learn due to limitations associated with their race, language, culture, or socioeconomic status. A list of tried-and-true instructional strategies has no meaning if I don't really believe that the squirrely child in front of me has the capacity to learn.

How can you correct for your biases and make sure you're seeing the classroom as a whole, in all its possibilities? Start by pausing and trying to be present, recognizing quiet moments of triumph in the classroom. This is mindfulness-cultivating moment-to-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, and surroundings.

Educator and researcher Patricia Jennings describes how mindfulness helps teachers to slow down, set up a positive learning environment, and strengthen their relationships with students. She features three concrete mindfulness practices that teachers can regularly use in their classrooms, including "centering," "working with difficult emotions," and mindful use of "wait time."

If we develop skills to foster both open awareness and focused attention over time, then we will become more present and responsive to the range of students in our classrooms.

The daily practice of mindfulness can support a teacher in embodying a more attuned presence throughout the school day.

2. Keep joyful memories alive

My friend remembered being captivated by students' smiles early in his career. Can you recall a similar visceral experience that may have enticed you into teaching? A self-contented sigh in a moment of accomplishment? Eyes that brightened with understanding? The eager chatter of students raring to go before a debate? Consider asking yourself the following questions:

When and how did I last experience empathic joy?

Where?

With whom?

Did my student/s sense that I was celebrating with them?

In Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson reminds us that if we consciously take the time to savor positive experiences (for up to 30 seconds at a time), we are more likely to combat negativity bias and to begin rewiring our brains. Over time, we can experience greater pleasure in joyful moments.

As you reflect on experiences in your school and classroom, focus on one or more of the following research-based practices for cultivating joy and a sense of social connection.

Three Good Things: Take 10 minutes at the end of the day (for one week) and write down three things that went well for you. Remember how you felt at the time and what may have sparked this event in the first place. Why did it happen?

Meaningful Photos: Spend a week taking photos of things that give you joy and purpose; then sit down and take a look at your collection. What does each photo represent for you, and why is it meaningful?

Reminders of Connectedness: Identify words, images, and objects in your school and classroom that evoke a sense of community and social connectedness.

After you reflect on your own joy, don't stop there. Keep those memories alive by celebrating them with your students and their families.

3. Share joy to foster connections with students and families

There are many practical ways that you can broadcast joy in your classroom.

Start by sharing one of the practices above with your students. For example, create a bulletin board space for the "Three Good Things" exercise, display the "Meaningful Photos" you collected, or facilitate a discussion around classroom "Reminders of Connectedness."

Leave one or two celebratory post-it notes on a student's desk each day. Capture a moment that you enjoyed as you watched a student high-five a friend or solve a tough math problem with a self-satisfied grin.

Include a classroom meeting exercise where you and your students recall joyful moments. "I felt happy/excited when I saw [students' names] huddled up with their heads together preparing for their book club presentation. It took a lot of work, but they were so energetic and supportive of each other."

Generate postcards and/or emails for a handful of students and their families each week. "This week I really loved watching [student's name] in the classroom. I was so happy to see ... and I just wanted you to know." Short and sweet.

When you actively celebrate successes with your students and their families, you are likely to generate stronger feelings of connectedness and belonging in your classroom.

4. Consciously make micro-affirmations

What about the days when you aren't feeling particularly joyful or empathic? You can challenge yourself to recognize and acknowledge the good in your students.

Micro-affirmations are small acknowledgments of a person's value. They can work to create a sense of connection between teacher and student-and they serve as a counter to micro-aggressions (snubs, insults, or slights directed at members of marginalized groups, whether intentional or unintentional). They indicate that students are both capable and welcome in your classroom.

Here are several examples of micro-affirmations that teachers can regularly model:

Making eye contact with students while they are talking

Calling on students of different races and genders equally in all subjects

Referring to individual students by name

Using inclusive language (e.g., referring to "families" rather than "parents," "mothers," or "fathers")

Openly acknowledging a range of students for different tasks and actions

Showing enthusiasm in the classroom (even when you are tired)

One long-time language arts teacher I know concentrates on specific micro-affirmations (up to three) on mornings when she is feeling tired. "When I focus my energies on modeling enthusiasm, calling on lots of students by name, and thanking them for their participation and engagement, I begin to thrive off of their energy, and it feels like we all start to feel more connected," she says.

5. Take care of yourself

Teachers are notorious for neglecting self-care practices. Some claim that getting themselves to the restroom on a busy school day is cause for celebration. Why do many of us struggle to address basic health needs like getting to the gym, eating breakfast, and taking weekly time to socialize?

It may be because so many teachers are genuinely idealistic and altruistic. The trouble, of course, is that we can neglect ourselves if we're constantly focused on the needs of others. If we want to generate joy and connection in the classroom, we have to genuinely care for our students, and authentic care does not emerge in a vacuum. You've heard it before (and you know it in your heart): Self-care is the only way to build up enough emotional ballast to engage meaningfully with your students.

Self-care starts with self-compassion. Be gentle and understanding with yourself as you move toward new self-care habits. Recognize your common humanity; know that you are not alone in your struggles to find time and energy to take care of yourself, and mindfully hold your thoughts and emotions in balanced awareness. No need to ignore your feelings of depletion, but no need to exaggerate them either. Then you can move toward greater well-being and resilience with these science-based self-care strategies.

If you practice self-compassion, engage in self-care, and consciously remember, celebrate, and share positive moments in your classroom, you may find yourself experiencing more empathic joy-and so might your entire classroom.

Greater Good wants to know: Do you think this article will influence your opinions or behavior?

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How to Nurture Empathic Joy in Your Classroom

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A new teacher I know recently shared the reason he decided to become an educator: "Cheesy maybe, but I became intrigued by teaching because of smiles. When a student I am working with smiles, the feeling I get is indescribable." My friend is describing "empathic joy"- the experience of sharing and understanding positive emotions.

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It's been over 10 years since the first World Happiness Report was released in 2012. Since then, the United Nations has released an annual ranking of the world's happiest countries: the places where the populations are, on average, more content than in other destinations. In that time, many nations have gone through a multi-year pandemic, natural disasters, and wars, but the UN and governments across the globe remain committed to finding out what exactly makes people happier so they can develop policies to increase well-being.

Around 1,000 people in each U.N. member state rate their quality of life on a scale from 0 to 10, while researchers cull data from six areas: GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support, trust and corruption, perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity. Spoiler alert: Countries where the "happiness gap" is smaller-where the population has a similar experience of and access to the six factors listed above-tend to be happier overall. The latest report was released in March.

How does the study work?

Below, we talk about the factors that might explain the variation in self-reported happiness between countries globally. The World Happiness Report doesn't construct its list based on these factors and measures-rather, the people polled provide self-assessments of their own lives by placing themselves on the Cantril Scale. This is basically assessing where you would put yourself on a ladder of self-satisfaction; the top of the ladder, or 10, would be the happiest you can be, while the bottom of the ladder, or zero, would be the least happy you can be.

The World Happiness Report then measures and investigates a number of factors that could correlate with the variations in the average happiness of each country's population, which we discuss below. Read on for the list of the 10 happiest countries in the world-and who knows? Maybe just daydreaming about visiting these countries will give you a boost of happiness.

A version of this article originally appeared in Condé Nast Traveller UK. All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

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These Are the Happiest Countries in the World

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As ever, the Nordic countries reign supreme.

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Opinion _ Post-Covid Happiness Comes in Groups (1)

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We have all been 'in the zone' or lost track of time at some point in our lives. Maybe we were reading a book, having a conversation with a friend or playing a game, when we became so absorbed that we forgot about the time. I have experienced the state of flow while studying, playing video games, writing articles, reading novels... Often when I come out of the state of flow and find how much time has passed, I feel a little disappointed because I wanted more time to continue doing what I was doing. However, other parts of the routine are calling me, such as it is late and time for bed.

As a learner, flow is when I am focused on my task, to the point that I do not care about the time because I am having so much fun doing what I am doing. As a teacher, the following questions come to mind:

In this article, I try to answer these questions by analyzing the theory of flow developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Based on my earlier description of state of flow and your own experience of it, you will realize that being in flow is internal and can be identified as intrinsic motivation - our personal need to continue doing something because we like it, rather than extrinsic where we aim for a reward after the activity is completed. Activities that lead to flow are called autotelic ( auto=self, telos=goal) because they are enjoyable and they are not the means to an end - the process of being engaged is the end itself (Boniwell, 2008). Mihaly explored this concept of creativity and flow in his book, Creativity : flow and the psychology of discovery and invention (1997).

Maria Montessori's philosophy of education emphasized flow as an important part of the development process of the child. She believed that deep concentration and flow were at the heart of education and lifelong development.

The paths the child follows in the active construction of his individuality are indeed identical with those followed by the genius. His characteristics are absorbed attention, a profound concentration which isolates him from all the stimuli of his environment. - Montessori on Spontaneous activity in education ( Presentation link)

The state of flow can be attained by balancing the skills one possess with the challenges. Egbert (2004) analyzed the state of flow in foreign language acquisition and presented the relationship between tasks, learner skills, flow and performance, as shown below. When tasks and skills together support and lead to flow, performance improves, further developing the learners' skill. This is applicable to other subjects areas as well because the tasks would be subject specific, the process itself would not change.

The relationship between tasks, skills, flow and performance. Adapted from Egbert (2004)

Flow Theory & Scaffolding

Wheeler (2016) puts the onus of engagement of students in lessons on the teachers - we have to make more interesting lessons, such that students stay focused. He explains Flow Theory as a way to engage students more effectively.

There is a fine balance between the challenge of the task, and the skills the learner has at their disposal. Maintaining this balance avoids disillusion if your skills don't measure up to the challenge, or boredom if the task is too simple and easy to achieve. - Wheeler (2016)

This sounds a lot like the description for scaffolding. In scaffolding, the students works on a task which is in their Zone of Proximal Development, i.e., the task is a little beyond their current capabilities, and with the help of a more knowledgeable person, such as the teacher, the students can attain this knowledge and complete the task using the supports provided. If too many scaffolds are provided, it leads to boredom. If fewer scaffolds are given to the student, it leads to frustration with the task. Thus, flow is the state when the student actively works on achieving a goal: it is not a goal that will take a minute; it is not a goal that will take a week: it is a goal which will take a couple hours of concentrated effort and the student
(1) is interested in achieving the goal, a sense of control, and involvement in the task.
(2) has the necessary supports to achieve it, which including receiving feedback
(3) feels confidant that his skills can meet the challenge

As the complexity of the task increases, then according to flow, the learner's skill should also increase, keeping him engaged in the process and time becoming immaterial. Students in state of flow have little awareness of the time passing, are intrinsically motivated to complete their work and are completely involved in it. The self-direction also leads to more energy. Thus, the state of flow happens when challenge is encountered that tests our skills and it is possible for us to use the skills we have to meet the challenge.

Flow and effective teaching

Mihaly (2014) emphasizes that the role of the educator should be to direct students' energy towards productive goals. By putting ourselves in the shoes of the students, the learners, we can become better equipped to make our students see why something is important. He suggests the following characteristics that all teachers should keep in mind to facilitate flow:

1. Bring the curriculum alive in the studies by showing its importance, relation to real life and application in the now: The teachers students remember the longest are those who take notice of the student, that is, they are attentive to their needs and interests, and enjoy what they do, showcasing enthusiasm and excitement for learning.

2. Teach the students to be able to give feedback to themselves: Feedback is an important aspect of flow. While playing a game of Mario Kart, for example, the game gives constant feedback in the form of my position with respect to others, seeing the other players being left behind or being taken over by them - all these situations in the environment lead me to change my strategy according - I can target players in front using objects from the mystery box; I should avoid muddy areas because my vehicle will slow down.

A Math teacher I know designs his worksheets such that there are four levels of difficulty of questions: low, medium, high and advanced. The students are given the choice to start at any level they are comfortable with and move up. The advanced questions are most challenging and are optional because they go beyond the curriculum. The teacher does not have answers for them and often he works with interested students to find solutions.

3. Let the students become the teachers: This allows for matching skills of the students and letting them lead groups and the class at certain times. Often explaining a concept to someone can be exciting and engaging because it gets us thinking about how we learned it ourselves.

4. Minimize distractions: All students want to be accepted. Learning happens in safe environments. By reducing distractions, such as avoiding actions that make students uncomfortable or threatened, focusing on the process of learning and working steadily towards clear well-defined goals, teachers will be able to create an environment where flow is possible.

By Eva-Lotta Lamm. Accessed at Flickr.

As teachers, when we teach our students to monitor their own learning and to identify when they are ready for more challenging problems, whether they are satisfied with their solutions or not, they become independent.

How can we make learning irresistible?

Games and gamification: Students engage in games, whether on a digital device or physically. Games have been found to offer this fine equilibrium between challenge and skills (Chen, 2007). Thus, gamification or using game elements such as score boards and quests in the classroom, or game-based learning, using an actual video game to teach the curriculum, are some ways in which teachers can help students attain the state of flow.

In an interview with Edutopia, Mihaly describes The Key Learning Community, a school that has succeeded in promoting flow. This is achieved by having a "Flow Room" where students spend at least a hour a week to explore and be involved in what they are interested in, and teachers actively try to translate their content matter into clear goals and challenges that match the students' abilities. Students are involved by relating the curriculum to their interests. This is similar to the Genius Hour idea that many classes are adopting now where the students spend 20% of their class time creating things they are passionate about.

Genius Hour: Students can work on whatever they want in class time.

Differentiated instruction: The point above leads well into this one. Differentiated instruction is a proactive planning process that expresses the material in multiple ways and also allows learning to be showcased in multiple ways. It allows for the use of group work, individual work as well as whole class work as opportunities arise. As a student centred approach, it focuses on three characteristics of the student , and aligned with the (objectives of the syllabus the class time is dedicated to), the (the activity that the students will do and class discussions), and the (the worksheet for the day or any artifact that needs to be handed in to show the progress through the lesson). By relating the curriculum to the student's interests, in particular, the state of flow can be achieved.

Group objects and extracurricular activities: In the interview mentioned above, Mihaly builds a hierarchy of school activities that led to state of flow. Extracurricular like band, music, athletics, school newspaper are activities in which most students find state of flow. Note that these are generally chosen by the student and as a result, they have some interest in it. In band, for example, the student would have selected the instrument they play. Team work in classes also leads to state of work. Next comes working individually while listening to lectures and audio and videos is least likely to lead to flow.

The following are some practical ideas:

Maker movement can be added to this section too because it allows students to use their skills to solve a problem using the material at hand. In my previous experiences in Maker movement workshops, participants often forget time because of their engagement in the problem. There is constant feedback in the form of the design being unstable, breaking down often, for example.

John Spencer provides a fantastic infographic for ways in which teachers can boost student engagement using the flow theory. These link to most of the points I mentioned above. I highly recommend his detailed post for more ideas.

Conclusion

In his book, From Master Teacher to Master Learner (2015), Will Richardson asks the reader to answer this question: "What circumstances surrounded those moments when you found yourself truly immersed in the learning?" The thousands of teachers he has talked to have mentioned the state of flow as a condition that leads to powerful learning. Thus, if we integrate flow into our classroom by creating opportunities for students to challenge their skills and develop their interests further, it would lead to powerful, engaging learning.

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We have all been 'in the zone' or lost track of time at some point in our lives. Maybe we were reading a book, having a conversation with a friend or playing a game, when we became so absorbed that...

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1. Home

2. Academics

3. Pedagogy of Play

About

Much is known about the importance of play in children's development, yet little research has explored what it might mean to put play at the heart of schooling. In 2015, the Pedagogy of Play (PoP) research project began exploring just that.

Paradoxes

Perhaps the simplest way to understand PoP is through these paradoxes of playful learning. ISB is a school and, therefore, must be safe and orderly. At the same time, we want our students - and teachers - to take risks, make messes, and get lost in the moment. How to put more PLAY in SCHOOL: that is the driving question behind PoP.

Indicators

At ISB, we want learning to be playful. But how do we know when we're succeeding? One of the first developments to come out of PoP was the "indicators of playful learning," a graphic overview of what we're hoping to see (and feel) in the classroom. It's the basis for almost everything we do.

Practices

If the indicators are the what of playful learning, then the practices are the how. Developed through years of research and experimentation, these are practical strategies for promoting playful learning in schools. Check out our What if booklet for inspiration and examples of how we're putting these practices into action at ISB.

Empower learners to lead their own learning (see how we do it)

Build a culture of collaborative learning

Promote experimentation and risk taking

Encourage imaginative thinking

Welcome all emotions generated through play (see how we do it)

Teacher toolbox

These tools for playful practitioners have been created by ISB teachers. We also use a variety of other tools for reflection, documentation, and discussion, created by our friends at Project Zero. You can find them here.

Pictures of Practice

These case studies offer in-depth illustrations of what a pedagogy of play looks like in action, from the classroom to the playground, to school-wide rituals, and the adult learning community.

Blog

Popatplay is a mental playground (aka blog) administered by Project Zero, highlighting some of the current thinking around the Pedagogy of Play project. As the blog grows, you'll find posts written by Project Zero researchers, ISB staff and teachers, and researchers and teachers at some of the other schools collaborating with PoP, for example in South Africa.

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Pedagogy of Play - PoP - International School of Billund

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Home Academics Pedagogy of Play Much is known about the importance of play in children's development, yet little research has explored what it might mean to put play at the heart of schooling. In 2015, the Pedagogy of Play (PoP) research project began exploring just that.

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How a pedagogy of play can enliven the classroom, for students of all ages.

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There is a wealth of material out there about happiness.

Perhaps your 'taste-buds' have been tempted by reading about happiness - either on this website, in your practice, or forming research. You would have found that there are some fantastic books on what is a very broad topic. But it can be hard to decide which to read.

The purpose of this article is to provide a summary of fifteen of the most popular and best happiness books that have been written on this topic. Hopefully, by knowing more about what each of these books are about, and (in some cases) by reading a few short reviews of the books, you can decide which ones may take your fancy.

The books have been written from authors including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, to renowned professors of psychology, and even an economist. They explore topics from a wide variety of perspectives, some you may enjoy learning about. It is hoped that you can use this article as a resource to guide your decision as to which happiness book to read. I hope it is helpful!

1. The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler

This book was actually written by a psychiatrist, Dr. Cutler, based on interviews conducted over a period of one week with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is renowned for his personal sense of peace and in this book, readers can learn what they can do to discover this same serenity.

In ' The Art of Happiness ', Howard C. Cutler puts forward a "western" (i.e. science-based) view of the Dalai Lama's (a Buddhist monk, also known as Tenzin Gyatso) teachings. It provides an overview of Tibetan Buddhism and the messages from its' leader the Dalia Lama.

A key feature of the book is the direct quotations from the Dalai Lama. So, what are the Dalai Lama's teachings about happiness?

Happiness is, according to this book, the purpose of life. Once a person's basic needs are met, happiness is more the result of the mind rather than events, external conditions, and circumstances.

This book explains that we each hold the key to our own happiness. It argues that, by training our hearts and minds, and by actively working on our attitudes and outlook, we can all achieve happiness.

How does the Dalai Lama suggest we find happiness? Well, he advises readers to pay attention to the things that make us happy and to eliminate the things that make us suffer. Further, by achieving peace of mind in this way, the Dalai Lama says this means we can move away from material goods and to seek contentment and an inner sense of worth.

According to the teachings, all people have the potential to do this. It also presents the idea that compassion is a state of mind whereby a person is not violent, harming, or aggressive. The Dalai Lama says we should show compassion to everybody, and that universal compassion towards the right of other people to be free some suffering is important. He explains that showing empathy can help to generate and foster compassion.

Whilst this book clearly explores spiritual teachings, the Dalai Lama contends that all religions should be accepted and that spirituality is about benefitting oneself through a sense of being calm and feeling happy.

Furthermore, ' The Art of Happiness ' suggests that happiness can be achieved by 'systematical training of our hearts and minds'.

Available from Amazon as a hardcover book, audiobook or for Kindle.

2. Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman

' Authentic Happiness ' was published in 2004, written by Martin Seligman.

Seligman, a psychologist and best-selling author puts forward the idea that happiness is not due to 'having the right genes' or 'being lucky'. Rather, according to Seligman, true, enduring happiness (i.e. 'authentic happiness') is the result of paying attention to one's personal strengths rather than focusing on perceived weaknesses.

Seligman, who has been described as the father of positive psychology, applies psychological research that has been developing over a long period of time. He shares what he proposes to be the 24 strengths and virtues that make up our psyche. He then explains how to look into the strengths and virtues that each person has. He calls these 'signature strengths'.

Seligman's book suggests that authentic happiness is achieved when an individual is able to use their personal strengths in order to improve every area of their life. Seligman has developed resources, including a series of practical exercises, short tests, and a dynamic website program.

Taking these resources, Seligman - an esteemed author - demonstrates to readers how to become aware of their highest virtues and act in accordance with them in a new way.

This book describes how by using their 'signature strengths', a person can create a buffering effect against ill fate and negative emotions. However, as well, using one's signature strengths enables individuals to also make the world around them a better place.

According to ' Authentic Happiness ', discovering authentic can lead to new, sustainable joy, meaning, and contentment in aspects of life such as work, relationships, and parenting. This book, described as groundbreaking, heart-lifting and extremely useful, explains that happiness can be learned, or, in other words 'cultivated'.

Amazon has declared that ' Authentic Happiness' is the most powerful work of popular psychology in years. Daniel Goleman (author of Emotional Intelligence) calls ' Authentic Happiness ' "a practical map for a flourishing life".

' Authentic Happiness' can be purchased from Amazon.

3. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

This book, written by Professor Daniel Gilbert, was the winner of the Royal Society of Science Prize in 2007. It has been described as very interesting, and funny. Gilbert demonstrates that most of us don't know how to make ourselves happy, and he explains why this is the case. All of us wish to be happy, but how do we do so?

According to Professor Gilbert, people don't know how to predict what will please our future selves. ' Stumbling on Happiness ' sees Gilbert explain how our brains predict the future and explore whether the brain is able to imagine what it will enjoy.

Prof. Gilbert draws upon the fields of psychology, neuroscience, economics, and philosophy. Gilbert, who is a pre-eminent psychologist, explores another area in this book - human motivation.

Within ' Stumbling on Happiness ', the author reveals the so-called secrets of motivation. He explores some interesting questions, including: why people order different meals when eating with others, rather than instead selecting what they want; why shoppers who can't get refunds are happier; and, why even though couples claim their children are a source of joy, they are less satisfied after having their children.

Professor Daniel Gilbert (born in 1957) is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has previously won a number of awards for teaching and research.

Get this great read from Amazon.

4. The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living by Russ Harris

Dr. Russ Harris is a medical practitioner with particular expertise in stress management and he trains coaches, psychologists, doctors and other health professionals in the use of mindfulness. This is an easy-to-read self-help book that was published in 2013.

' The Happiness Trap ', which has been described as empowering and practical, introduces ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). ACT is a relatively recent approach to psychotherapy that has been developed out of leading research in behavioral psychology.

ACT is centered on a mindfulness-based program designed to decrease stress, conquer fears and find fulfillment. Harris' book is an international best-seller that has been published in more than 30 countries and in 22 different languages.

In it, Harris explains the myths about happiness and popular ideas about it and suggests that these myths are misleading and inaccurate, and even that in part they cause the widespread experiences of stress, anxiety, and depression. He says that many current psychology programs are, in fact, making things worse.

The title (The Happiness Trap) encapsulates the main argument of the book - that the more people try and achieve happiness, the more they actually suffer in the long-term. Therefore, ACT is suggested as a way to escape ' The Happiness Trap '. ACT is an innovative new method based on mindfulness.

According to this book, by making one's values clear and practicing being mindful (in other words, focus on living fully in the present moment), ACT can enable readers to leave the happiness trap behind and discover meaning and satisfaction in their lives.

Mindfulness skills can be learned easily, and are quick ways proven to decrease stress, improve performance, effectively deal with emotions, enhance health, improve vitality and - overall - really improve quality of life!

Harris' book employs scientifically proven techniques for developing a meaningful, fulfilling life, and can be purchased from Amazon.

5. The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

The author, Shawn Achor, is a lecturer at Harvard University and he co-designed Harvard's 'Happiness' course. He presents over 150 lectures each year on the science of happiness and human potential. He conducted the largest ever study on happiness and human potential, surveying more than 1600 students.

Based on this study, Achor reveals the 7 core principles of positive psychology that every person can practice to enhance our performance, improve our careers and achieve success at work.

Most people are hoping to be more successful and everyone wants to be happy. Generally, it is believed that, if you work hard, this will lead to being more successful and that becoming more successful will lead to being happy. Achor dispels the myth that we will feel happy if, and when, we become successful.

Positive Psychology suggests that the proposition that we will feel happy if, and when, we become successful is not true. In fact, as Achor explains in ' The Happiness Advantage ', happiness actually drives performance and success.

When you stop and think about it, this makes sense! I am sure that if we reflect on a time when we felt happy, we will notice that when we are more positive, we are also more engaged, more creative, more able to cope with stress, and more productive.

' The Happiness Advantage ' is a useful book for those seeking practical advice on the ways to become happier, and also more successful.

To attain that success, visit Amazon for this excellent book.

6. Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life by Sylvia Boorstein

Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D., is a practicing psychotherapist and co-founding teacher at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. She frequently presents at psychology conferences and training seminars, and has written bestselling books - including 'Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake', 'It's Easier Than You think', ' Don't Just Do Something, Sit There', and ' That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist '.

Boorstein considered the following questions when starting to write ' Happiness Is an Inside Job ':

How is it possible to remain engaged with life day after day?

How can we keep our minds in a happy mood, and continue loving, when life itself is complicated, challenging and frequently disappointing?

In this inspiring book, Boorstein details advice that offers warmth and wisdom. She explores how, in spite of the odds being against us, that we can still feel a sense of happiness. From her work over three decades, Boorstein has noticed that the 'secret' to happiness is to develop and connect with kindness.

She suggests that happiness is found by being - not only to our friends, family, and colleagues, but also towards , others who we don't know well, and even people we don't really like!

Boorstein introduces some key lessons from Buddhism - Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Concentration. She reveals how engaging with these teachings can move us from feeling angry, anxious, or confused and rather find a state of calmness, clarity, and enjoying living in the present moment.

By developing these qualities, according to Boorstein, we are able to deal with all that we encounter with a sense of balance and intelligence. This, according to the author, helps us have a grounded sense of true contentment.

Boorstein shares her knowledge as a psychotherapist, a spiritual teacher, and her role as a grandmother, to deliver a book that has been described as beautiful and comforting. Her engaging stories will draw in the reader's hearts and minds. The book also features straightforward activities that can be done whilst the book is being read.

The take-home message from ' Happiness is an Inside Job ' is that, in reality, we all share this journey - life - that, deep down we all seek to console and love one another and, finally, that the best way to live is to live happily.

Available for Kindle or as an affordable hardcover on Amazon.

7. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

More than one million of Rubin's book have been sold! This book was written by best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. Rubin has a weekly podcast called "Happier with Gretchen Rubin".

She has written on a broad range of topics, including biographies of Sir Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Rubin is a graduate of Yale Law School.

' The Happiness Project' details Gretchen Rubin's year-long investigation into what truly leads to a state of contentment. Fellow author, Sonja Lyubomirsky, who is an expert in the topic of happiness, described The Happiness Project as " a cross between the Dalai Lama's 'The Art of Happiness' and Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Eat, Pray, Love ".

This book ties in up-to-the-minute science along with classical philosophy and real-world applicability. Rubin's book has been described as a compelling, completely related tale of transformation.

The structure of this book is interesting. The book is divided into one chapter per month, and each month Rubin chooses to focus on a different topic. Then, in exploring each month's topic (for example, February: Improve marriage), she sets a few goals to work on - 'monthly resolutions'.

' The Happiness Project ' has been described as relatable and funny, and that it provides motivation to focus on, and work on, goals. It shares a very personal and honest story.

Visit Amazon to purchase this very popular book.

8. The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt (+ Summary)

Jonathan Haidt is a psychology teacher at the University of Virginia. This book is his first for a general audience.

Society relies on so-called truths derived from folk wisdom that has been passed down for generations. This unique book draws from inspiration coming from both science and philosophy. Psychologist, Haidt, exposes the messages that have arrived as being 'common sense' because our grandparents and THEIR grandparents have handed them down...

Think of messages such as "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", "do unto others as you would have done unto you" and "happiness comes from within".

Whilst we rarely question these truisms, most of us hold onto the idea that we will feel truly happy when we earn more money, or find love, or discover success. ' The Happiness Hypothesis ' examines traditional wisdom by looking to modern science.

Haidt exposes somewhat provocative ideas such as that virtue in and of itself is not actually rewarding, that extroverts are indeed happier than their introverted counterparts, and that conscious thought is nowhere near as important as we may believe.

'The Happiness Hypothesis' has been described as remarkable and original - "ancient wisdom in our time".

You can purchase ' The Happiness Hypothesis' on Amazon.

9. The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha

Susan Cain, the author of QUIET, described this book as "a two-hour ticket to changing your life". Pasricha is a New York Times best-selling author of a series called ' Book of Awesome '. He was awarded an MBA from Harvard, is eminently popular as a TED presenter, and he also founded the Institute for Global Happiness.

' The Happiness Equation ' reveals the nine secrets of happiness, and shows readers that to 'have everything' one should want nothing and do anything! Described as counterintuitive, this book is also somewhat controversial.

In exploring the secrets to happiness, Pasricha turns a common ideal upside down and presents the ideal in a whole new light. The author then gives step-by-step guidelines and even handwritten notes that detail how to put each secret into place in order to find a happier life.

Pasricha demonstrates some apparently contradictory teachings, such as why success isn't the path to happiness and how to make more money than a Harvard MBA.

Furthermore, he dispels multi-tasking as a myth and describes how we actually find more choice is we eliminate options. The author acknowledges that even successful people have negative thoughts and that it is not wrong to have such thoughts.

This book combines humor with wise, practical advice. It introduces the concept that a 'Culture of Enough' will lead to more happiness than a 'Culture of More'. It emphasizes that the choices/decisions we make every day contribute to our happiness and that we should prioritize our happiness.

It includes some interesting quotes from esteemed authors, such as:

'If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are the only one who becomes unhappy. All you have done is hurt yourself. If you want to stop hurting yourself, you must get rid of your anger and become loving instead'.

' The Happiness Equation ' argues that external rewards are actually demotivating in the long run, and suggests that happiness can be derived by random acts of kindness, regular walks, and owning and accepting who you are as a person.

For hours of happy reading, purchase this inspiring book on Amazon.

10. Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life by Paul Dolan

Happiness expert, Daniel Kahneman, described ' Happiness by Design ', which is a Sunday Times bestseller, as 'bold and original'. This is Paul Dolan's debut book.

He is a Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. He looks at how to influence behavior in order to improve well-being.

This book answers the question of how we can make it easier to be happy. Dolan argues, by applying recent, significant research that well-being is a result of what we do rather than how we think.

The title refers to 're-designing' our lives in order to maximize happiness. How? Well, according to Dolan, it is about our decisions. He argues that by making informed, deliberate choices without thinking too hard about maximizing happiness, we can discover a life that is characterized by meaning and pleasure.

Jenni Russell (from the Sunday Times) is quoted as saying that 'few books change one's life; in 48 hours this has improved mine.'

This book is available on Amazon as a book or Audio CD.

11. The Happiness Factor: How to Be Happy No Matter What! by Kirk Wilkinson

This book, said to be practical and rooted in the real world, was published in 2008. On p. 33, Wilkinson says: " change the way you look at things...and the things you look at change ".

' The Happiness Factor ' provides a perspective on how to cope with adversity and overcome it in order to discover true, lasting happiness. It explains that we are not defined by our circumstances or our problems.

Wilkinson suggests that every person has the capacity to overcome the set of issues that they are dealing with and to be happy.

Wilkinson uses the acronym P-E-A-S-E-F-U-L to describe an approach to discovering happiness using an unforgettable group of principles that are applicable universally. This approach ameliorates the deleterious effects of stress and other such barriers to happiness.

Therefore, it is proposed that the key to lifelong happiness is overall well-being, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

Purchase this practical book on Amazon.

12. The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Lyubomirsky, Ph.D. is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. A research psychologist, a feature of this book is that it is solidly grounded in scientific research. It is comprehensive but easy-to-follow.

The book provides a guide for us to find happiness in our lives in the short and long term.

' The How of Happiness ' reveals what happiness is (and isn't!), and what we can do to approach the happy life we imagine for ourselves. It explains the notion of the 'Happiness Set Point' - i.e. the biological determinants that explain 50% of our happiness.

Further, Lyubomirsky explains that 10% of our happiness can be determined by life circumstances/situations SO, actually, 40% of our happiness is within our own ability to change.

Lyubomirsky reveals more than a dozen "happiness strategies" that are mindful, intentional activities to engage in that can result in a happier life - including exercises in behaving and thinking optimistically when imagining the future, a guide of how to savor the pleasures of life in the moment, and an explanation of remaining active in order to be happy.

' The How of Happiness ' provides an overview of the multiple barriers to happiness, and how to utilize one's own unique strengths to overcome such obstacles.

The book includes a quiz that helps readers to identify the actions that will be most helpful to them. Almost all of the factual statements include a citation, and the book also incorporates an evaluation designed to be used to check in with in order to determine whether the happiness strategies. It has been said by some readers that the book is slightly repetitive.

The 12 'hows' to being happy are:

1. Expressing gratitude

2. Cultivating optimism

3. Avoiding overthinking and social comparison

4. Practicing acts of kindness

5. Nurturing social relationships

6. Developing strategies for coping

7. Forgive

8. Increasing flow experiences

9. Savoring life's joys

10. Committing to your goals

11. Practicing religion and spirituality

12. Taking care of your body

According to Lyubomirsky, by following these twelve strategies, we can find happiness. To read more about it, you can get this book from Amazon.

13. Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening by Gary Weber

Weber has lived a full, successful 'worldly' life; however, he has also sought to fully understand life and achieve a sense of enlightenment. Incorporating Zen Buddhist teachings with current brain research, Weber provides a set of yoga practices that are designed for practitioners looking for a path to enlightenment.

The practices (asana, pranayama, chanting, and meditation) are designed to provide readers with a practical path to awakening. They are simple and easy to follow, developed from Weber's pursuit of knowledge with Ramana Maharshi - his primary teacher.

Weber shares his ongoing pursuit of Zen meditation practice and the things he has learned about bettering one's life from the laboratory... which is actually his yoga mat!

To access these enlightening practices, visit Amazon.

14. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard and Baron Layard

Richard Layard is a leading economist. He believes that the income of a society does not determine happiness. His research into happiness is drawn from the disciplines of psychology, neuroscience, economics, sociology, and philosophy. His best-known studies have looked at unemployment and inequality.

' Happiness: Lessons from a New Science ' is noted to be the key book in 'happiness studies'. It puts forward Layard's argument - that, despite people wanting more money that, paradoxically, income does not lead to happiness.

As society has developed, people have not become happier despite the fact that, on average, incomes have more than doubled over the last fifty years.

Scientific research has shown this paradox in Britain, the US, Continental Europe, and Japan. In fact, compared to fifty years ago, the First World has seen increases in depression, crime, and alcoholism. Layard actually published the second edition of this book in 2011 to adequately reflect the developments since the first publication.

' Happiness: Lessons from a New Science ' explores the reasons that determine how we make decisions. Rather than the pursuit of happiness, many personal decisions are reflected as economics, on the level of society. This book promotes re-considering our reasons for making decisions by refocusing on goals.

Make the right decision and purchase this book from Amazon.

15. Happiness for Dummies

This book is promoted as " Your hands-on guide to reducing stress, being happier, and living a more fulfilling life ". It was written by W. Doyle Gentry, Ph.D., who is a clinical psychologist, a Distinguished Fellow in the American Psychological Association, and he was the founding editor of the Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

' Happiness for Dummies ' claims to provide the way to live a life that is meaningful, healthy and productive regardless of life circumstances. It incorporates strategies to alter one's behavior in order to develop good habits and act in accordance with one's surroundings.

Doyle Gentry's book also describes how to determine one's current capacity for happiness, to live one's desired life, to overcome barriers to happiness, and look into one's unique strengths and virtues.

It aims to outline the meaning of happiness at each stage of self-actualization and provide readers with an understanding of why cultivating positive emotions can lead to better health and well-being.

The author aims to dispel the common misunderstanding in the construal of happiness in terms of modern valued outcomes such as wealth, power and success.

This book also promises to its' audience that by pursuing what they truly wish to, seizing the day, and finding the 'silver lining' in everyday challenges, they can improve their spiritual and emotional life and discover meaningful social relationships, as well as learning to appreciate being alone.

' Happiness for Dummies ' also provides lists of 10 tips of how to raise a happy child, a discussion of common barriers to happiness, and a guide as to which personal habits help to develop happiness.

' Happiness for Dummies' can be bought from Amazon.

A Take Home Message

With such a vast array of self-help and psychology books about happiness on the market, it can be a challenge to try and work out which ones to invest time in. Hopefully, this summary of 'happiness books' can act as a guide to the content of these books to help you make a (slightly!) more informed decision!

The books have a variety of foci, from spiritual studies to positive psychology, and even economics. I hope you have found this article to be helpful in summarising the main happiness books out there.

I am very interested in your thoughts... have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think? Would you recommend any to someone with a bit of time on their hands? Please comment below!

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15 Best Happiness Books and Are They Worth Your Time?

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There is a wealth of material out there about happiness. Perhaps your 'taste-buds' have been tempted by reading about happiness - either on this website, in your practice, or forming research. You would have found that there are some fantastic books on what is a very broad topic.

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The Case for Joy in Learning: Teacher and Students' Perceptions
of Flow Experiences in Upper Elementary Classrooms

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I've been thinking recently yet again about how important joy is to classroom life and learning. My ten-year-old niece got me started down this path when she returned from visiting a school her parents were considering for her next year. When my sister picked her up, my niece breathlessly told her, "Mom, they don't do any work at that school, except for a little math."

My sister, naturally, was curious about what exactly had gone on that day. After probing a little more, she learned that during one period, my niece had imagined what kind of superpowers she would like to have if she could be a superhero and had written a story about what that would be like. Then, in the computer lab, she'd designed a brochure about herself while the rest of the class continued work on brochures for a social studies project. As details like these came out about the whole day, my sister saw that, of course, the students had done a great deal of "work." It was just that their teacher had managed to imbue so much joy and engagement into their assignments that my niece, who rarely leaves school quite so happy, didn't realize she was "working."

That sense of joy and engagement is important for our studentsand for us. But, as I've been out and about visiting schools lately, I've been noticing how much pressure teachers are under and thinking about how hard it is to bring joy to teaching when under so much stress.

In many schools, spring is testing season, and more than ever, teachers judge their efficacy as teachers according to how well their students do on these tests. In addition, modern technology brings convenience but also its own stresseswho among us hasn't received an upsetting email from a parent, colleague or administratoror one that, without the context of a face-to-face conversation, is impossible to interpret? In many parts of the country, teachers are also worried about possible layoffs or increasing class sizes for next year. We have many reasons not to feel joy.

But, without at least some joy and fun, how can we truly connect with our students, relax ourselves, or fully enjoy our work? And, if we don't enjoy our work, how likely is it that students will be able to relax, take risks, and engage with their learning? Instead, they often seem to feel the same pressure and sense of drudgery that we do.

To counteract that, I want to offer a few small ways to bring some joy, fun and laughter into your classrooms this spring:

Smile more. I know it seems simplistic, but sometimes just forcing yourself to smile at and with children can make you relax and lighten the mood. It really works. (Of course, laughing helps, too.)

Read your class some jokes or short poems. Many jokes or poems can be read in less than two minutes, and even if you're under tremendous time pressure, that's enough time for a quick joke or a funny or moving poem to bring smiles.

Add some choice to your lessons. When students have the power to choose which book to read, what topic to study, or even which of two worksheets to complete, they are more engaged and motivated. They feel more joy.

Play a game. Playing a noncompetitive, fun game is a great way to build community and a sense of joy and playfulness among your students. Games can build social skills, provide quick reviews of academic content, or be a mix of both.

Go outside a little more . . . with your class. As the weather gets warmer, flowers bloom, birds return, and the sky is bluer, spending even just a little time outside will lighten your mood and that of your students. Take a quick walk outside, play a game, or find a way to do some observation of nature or science.

Do something kind for your students or a colleague. Write students quick notes about something positive you've noticed. Or, write a card, note or email to a colleague just to compliment that person on some aspect of his or her teaching.

I'd love to hear some ways you keep the joy in your classroom!

Read " Our Passion for Teaching," a follow-up to this post.
Margaret Berry Wilson is the author of several books, including: The Language of Learning, Doing Science in Morning Meeting (co-authored with Lara Webb), Interactive Modeling, and Teasing, Tattling, Defiance & More.
Tags: Joyful Classrooms

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The Importance of Joy | Responsive Classroom

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I've been thinking recently yet again about how important joy is to classroom life and learning. My ten-year-old niece got me started down this path when she returned from visiting a school her parents were considering for her next year.

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AMLE - Association for Middle Level Education

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As societal pressures intensify and expectations push educators to improve achievement rates, create emotionally healthy environments, and make safety a priority, there is an increasing need to infuse joy into the classroom. Reflecting on these concerns throughout my 29 years in education, I am prompted to consider joy and its relationship to my life and work.

Joy, defined as a noun, is an expression of emotion, display of great delight or keen pleasure. I recognize and feel great joy when I am out in nature, when I engage in activities and laughter with family, when I accomplish a task, and when I see others experience delight. Thinking about joy in these contexts inspires me to ask: when do I feel, experience, and share joy in my own classroom?

Recent brain research reveals that the brain is increasingly open to learning when learning is joyful. When we feel delight, we release endorphins that produce a joy-filled response (Costa & Kallick, 2014). A positive classroom climate is built through everyday teacher and student connections and interactions (Badley, 2012). These moments are not just brief warm fuzzies; they reap positive results on an individual's health, both physically and psychologically (Costa & Kallick, 2014).

Reflecting on joy has revealed three areas of joy in my classroom: the first is when students have that light-bulb or "ah-ha" moment. My heart actually races faster when I see a student discover and grasp a new concept, complete a project, and "get it!" I am filled with immense joy when an engaged student asks a thoughtful question; furthermore, when joy emerges, student curiosity grows.

In addition to the "ah-ha" moment, I am filled with immeasurable joy when I hear laughter in the classroom. When a student says something funny, I can choose to stop and pause, to laugh with or laugh alongside the student. I find that I also need to pause and laugh at myself when teaching. When I am tongue-tied or when I make a mistake delivering instruction, the space is optimal for me to pause and laugh a little. Laughter can diffuse an awkward situation and increase the level of classroom joy.

Additionally, when I am able to laugh at myself, I am able to reveal a playful side of my personality to students. Research suggests that playfulness and creativity elicit joy that positively impacts student and teacher attitudes in the classroom (Sherman, 2013; Silver, Berckemeyer, & Baenen, 2015). I find that when there is laughter in my classroom-my students and I laugh together-joy multiplies! Classroom laughter fosters joyful space, for both students and teacher, to learn and grow.

Another avenue for joy is when I observe students working together. I am filled with joy and satisfaction when a lesson clicks and learning happens. When students engage in meaningful work, it is joyful to observe (Sherman, 2013; Silver, Berckemeyer, & Baenen, 2015, p. 93). When students collaborate and progress together in academic goals, they become eager sponges engaging in joyful learning.

Practically speaking, I offer three suggestions for infusing joy into your classroom:

Invite joy into the classroom! When you feel joy, dive into it, embrace it, and welcome it. An invitation is a literal request and summons for participation. Teachers can invite students to embrace joy in the classroom to build community and create ownership. Students will cling to joy and this can alter your classroom ethos.

Build on the student-teacher relationship! When a teacher intentionally builds trust and rapport with students, she creates a safe place and space for joy to emerge. Birky (2012) writes of modeling joy in the classroom to create joyful results. When a teacher creates assignments where students can share ideas and infuse laughter, joy multiplies.

Be joyfully intentional! Carefully consider what elicits joy in your teacher-self: name it, repeat it, and practice it. With great intention, capitalize on joyful moments. Joy is contagious. Infusing joy with purpose can decrease student and teacher stress, foster community, and help students feel a greater sense of belonging. A teacher can actively create moments for joy and rejoicing in the classroom; by doing so, the teacher shares the gift of herself with her students (Wineberg, 2012).

As classroom responsibilities, pressures, and expectations grow, teachers can make an increased effort to invite joy into the classroom, build on the student and teacher relationship, and purposefully share joy. Tomlinson suggests that when hard working teachers embrace creativity in their personal and professional lives, they seek joy and opportunities for laughter and learning (2016, p. 93).

Will you intentionally cultivate joy in your classroom? Will you allow joy to emerge into your work and lessons? Will you make an effort to demonstrate joy? Let's commit to lean into joy and watch our classrooms fill with joy!

References

Badley, K. (2012). Metaphors and models of faith learning integration. In Badley, K. & Van Brummelen, H.V., (Eds.), Metaphors we teach and live by, how metaphors shape what we do in classrooms, (p. 139-157). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Birky, G. D. (2012). Joy. In Dee, A. L. & Tiffin, G., (Eds.), Faithful education, these and values for teaching, learning and leading, (p. 19-41). Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publication.

Costa, A. L. & Kallick, B. (2014). Dispositions: Reframing teaching and learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Silver, D., Berckemeyer, J. C., & Baenen, J. (2015). Deliberate optimism, reclaiming the joy in education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Sherman, S. M. (2013). Let's lighten up! Play and important roles in learning. Virginia Journal of Education, 4, 13-15.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2016). Caring for teachers. Educational Leadership, 73(8), p. 92-3.

Wineberg, T. (2012). Metaphors for teaching and learning. In Badley, K. & Van Brummelen, H., (Eds.), Metaphors we teach by, how metaphors shape what we do in Classrooms, (p. 32-51). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Michelle C. Hughes, Ed.D. is associate professor of education at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. She teaches and supervises pre-service teachers and is a former junior high school teacher and high school administrator. Published October 2018.

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Three Ideas for Infusing Joy in the Classroom

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As societal pressures intensify and expectations push educators to improve achievement rates, create emotionally healthy environments, and make safety a priority, there is an increasing need to infuse joy into the classroom. Reflecting on these concerns throughout my 29 years in education, I am prompted to consider joy and its relationship to my life and work.

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There are some objects which just bring a sense of joy with them. It might be their colour or their shape or the reminder of a happy moment. We can bring these things - or things inspired by them - into the classroom with us.I have a collection of bells which bring me happiness - one was bought on a holiday with friends, another has a unique sound, the third was given to me by a student. They were perfect for my desk in the classroom and brought joy whenever I saw them or rang them. You might have a framed photo of family or friends, an image of an amazing place you've been or would like to go or special pens, pencils or highlighters which make you happy.

You might take it further and decorate your whole classroom to make it a happy place. You might fill it with rainbows or images of plants, you might include happy quotes or use your favourite colour as a background on a notice board.

What if you don't have a dedicated classroom space? Bring some joy with you! It might be a beautiful lanyard or a lovely pencil case. You might like to buy a special planner ( like this one from Mrs Strawberry, these planning sheets from Green Grubs, this library planner from Little Library Learners, or this planner from Oceanview Resources); a planner cover or decor like these beautiful options for New Zealand teachers from Green Grubs or binder covers like these from Jewel's School Gems. Use beautiful pictures as your computer background or screen saver. Buy some nice folders to hold your items or add lovely labels to your cart.

2. Reframe the mundane

A lot of teaching is repetitive . . . and a little bit boring. And while we can make some of it fun, some of it has to just be what it is.

But we can make it a little more joyful by reframing what's happening in our heads. We can look for the little pieces of joy and remind ourselves that they're there.

Staff meetings are a perfect example of this. The workplace health and safety officer might be going through the fire drill process for the 10th time in the year - but that means all teachers will be better prepared if there is a fire. And isn't it great that they take their job seriously - it might really save a life or prevent and injury one day.

Marking can also seem endless, but look for those moments where students have shown improvement or really taken on something you've taught in class. Find those little pieces of joy in their work and celebrate them.

3. Work in the Affirmative

I love using affirmations - they've been part of my life since I was young and my mother used them with us. I use them quite a lot, these days - as motivation, for calming, for reflecting on what I'm doing and what I'd like to be doing.

Affirmations can definitely be used to bring joy into the classroom. It might be in the form of a lovely quote or poster which you hang in your classroom, or you might like to take a few moments to write your own at the beginning of the day or week. You can keep them in your teacher diary or on your desk or use them as part of a display at home or school.

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5 Ways to Find Joy in Your Classroom and Teaching - Galarious Goods

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Teaching can be really hard. So much is expected of teachers in so little time and with so few resources. Sometimes we find ourselves facing problems which we just can't unravel, no matter how hard we try. And there are days when we ask ourselves why we persist.

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Kim Thomas has taught math for more than two decades. Most recently, she joined the staff at Woodruff Alternative School in Peoria, Illinois, where she's been for the last four years. Woodruff serves students who have been expelled from their former school, and many of them, Kim says, face challenging life circumstances outside the classroom.

Kim sees each student as worthy of love and respect, and nothing matters more than inspiring a joy of learning when they're in her classroom. She lives by it.

Here is Kim, in her own words, on the 8 keys to her teaching philosophy - and how she brings a positive parabola to students' faces every day.

Come into the classroom each year like it's your first.
You have to be that excited every day. I really have a hard time sleeping before the first day of school. I'm so excited to meet the kids that I'm going to have and the things I thought of to do with them. I absolutely love it.

Happiness above all.
Students have to be happy before they're ever going to learn anything. If I see a kid who looks upset, I ask, "What can I do to make you happy?" Because if you say, "What's wrong with you?" then you're assuming something's wrong with them. "What can I do to make you happy?" really turns them around.

Play to the student's interests.
It's so important to keep up with the trends of what kids like because then they will pay attention. If you can't make it valuable and interesting, it's not going to work.

Make it fun.
I know sometimes lessons aren't the most fun. But I also think it's about how things are presented. I'll say, "OMG, you guys, here's the truth about triangles. You're not going to believe it." And they're very interested. I call them my "mathttention getters." I have my kids for 10 x 9 minutes. That's a long time. They've got to have that fun.

Make it relevant.
Everybody is going to have to deal with money and budgeting. I always try to bring in real world examples of how they might use math: ordering a pizza, using coupons at the grocery store, etc. Basic stuff that I feel sometimes falls through the cracks in teaching at school.

Embrace mistakes.
I make mistakes every day, and I'll say, "I'm sorry." It's okay for students to make mistakes in my room. You're learning when you do that. You shouldn't know this material yet.

Love hard.
Everybody deserves to be loved, even the toughest kids. No matter how tough a kid is, they deserve to feel loved.

Give second chances.
That's what our school is for. I believe in those second chances. Everybody deserves them. I'm here to help my kids figure out how to be successful when they go back to their other school. I always tell them, "This isn't your ending. This is your beginning."
This is the final installment of a four-part series on the mathemagical teacher Kim Thomas, Illinois' 2016 Teacher of the Year. Read Part 1:

Jennifer Anderson is the director of Teacher Programs and Communications at NWEA, where she focuses on supporting and empowering teachers as they support and empower students. She has a diverse background in communications and marketing, business development, and product management. Her passion for education and supporting the heroic efforts of educators are what drew her to NWEA in 2005. Born and raised in Sitka, Alaska, Jennifer has a heart for the Northwest and has made Portland, Oregon, her home for over 25 years.

Mathematics Month: The Contagiousness of Kim Thomas' Mathilicious Teaching; Part 2: Mathematics Month: 5 Practical Ways to Mathivate Kids; Part 3: Celebrating Teachers: Why I Love Being a Math Mom.

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8 Keys to Inspiring Joy in the Classroom - Teach. Learn. Grow.

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Kim Thomas has taught math for more than two decades. Most recently, she joined the staff at Woodruff Alternative School in Peoria, Illinois, where she's been for the last four years. Woodruff serves students who have been expelled from their former school, and many of them, Kim says, face challenging life circumstances outside the classroom.

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Emjoy is a non-profit organization that aims to promote the exchange of ideas among teachers in different countries, to combine them and to inspire teachers to embrace joy in education, no matter where they are.

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Working in the educational system can be as challenging and exhausting as it can be meaningful and rewarding. For those engaged in teaching children and youth, finding ways to nourish ourselves is essential.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite places to spend time was in the limbs of a great, old White Pine near my grandmother's house. I'd climb high into the tree's arms-as high as her branches would support me. Near the top, I would wrap one arm around her trunk and rest there, looking out over the landscape. When the wind picked up, the great old tree would sway gently from side to side, rocking me in her arms. Her sticky sap would often remain glued to my skin for a few days, an indelible imprint of having touched that quiet, vast space near the sky.

As human beings, we need more than food, air, water and shelter. In each of us lies a powerful need for the heart to be nourished. Just as a plant will wither without adequate water, so too our hearts can lose a certain quality of buoyancy, moisture, and brightness without adequate nourishment.

To do any kind of work-and especially the demanding work of education and service-requires both external and internal resources. We need resilience and strength to persevere through challenges. And there's nothing quite like joy to bring resilience and strength to the heart.

The Entrance to Joy
There are countless ways to access and experience joy. It's one of the gifts of being alive that we can take delight in so many different ways! Yet all of them seem to rest on one basic capacity: the ability to receive. To feel joy, we must be willing to let things in, to allow ourselves to be touched by life. (Even the joy we feel in an act of giving depends on our ability to receive the beauty of contributing, the gratitude of the recipient, or the kindness in our own heart).

This receiving is characterized by qualities of openness and connection. It's not so much something we do as something that happens naturally when we slow down and give ourselves time and space to be -like looking across the land from high up in that old, great pine tree. It's the quality that emerges when you stop and close your eyes to feel the sun on your face; or the inner quiet that comes as you gently shut your eyes and lean in close to smell the fragrance of a flower. It's the feeling of ease we experience when spending time with a good friend.

How many gifts and moments of joy do we miss in life because we're moving too quickly, too busy to actually receive and allow joy to arise? How often do we slow down enough to linger and allow ourselves to receive the goodness of our lives?

Mindfulness as Receiving
The way it's often taught, mindfulness can become overly associated with a tremendous amount of "doing." Yet the practice includes both active and receptive elements. The proactive aspect of mindfulness is the part that helps us to direct our attention and connect with the object of our meditation (the breath, the body, etc.) The receptive aspect of mindfulness is about lingering and tasting the flavor of that experience. We sustain our attention by sensing, with a spirit of curiosity, "How's this feel?"

More often than not, this receptive quality can become overshadowed by the focus of directed attention. The part that says " What is this?" overpowers and crowds out the part that listens and receives, " How is this?"

And it's that receiving, that listening, that opens the heart to joy. The more we learn to sustain a felt connection to what's happening, the more deeply we can experience joy.

The great strength of this joy is that it isn't dependent on getting what we want or experiencing pleasant things. It's an inner happiness that comes from simply being connected to our experience, be is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. It's an innate quality of joyful interest that arises when the heart/mind touches felt experience directly. When sustained, this can give way to a deep and pervasive satisfaction.

Reconnecting with Joy
It takes practice to find the good, to let things in, and to remember joy. I have a dear friend and fellow teacher with whom I take a walk through one of the local parks every few weeks. We always begin our walk by taking turns sharing "celebrations"-bits of our lives that are going well, small successes that we appreciate or want to celebrate. It's a wonderful practice to train the attention to notice and drink in the good.

These days, I find joy in many things. My partner and I often take walks in the evening together after work, holding hands and talking about our days. I enjoy sitting quietly and practicing mindfulness, breathing in and breathing out.

What brings you joy?
Mindful Schools transforms school communities from the inside out. Founded in 2007, Mindful Schools' graduates have impacted over 750,000 children worldwide. You can learn more about our online course offerings, Mindfulness Fundamentals and Mindful Educator Essentials.

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Working in the educational system can be as challenging and exhausting as it can be meaningful and rewarding. For those engaged in teaching children and youth, finding ways to nourish ourselves is essential. When I was a kid, one of my favorite places to spend time was in the limbs of a great, old White Pine near my grandmother's house.

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Teaching is a stressful job, but these simple steps can help build happiness in the profession.

Hero Images Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo

Somewhere between "School starts next week, but the entire county is piloting a new literacy program," and "I'm sorry. We tried to cap your classes at 28 but now you have 35 students," your teacher joy can become depleted. A few key strategies can help steal back your joy.

Maximize Time

Slowing down and reflecting can help not only to restore joy but also to benefit classroom culture. When students struggle to understand a topic, look at it as a way of honing your craft. How can you improve the lesson, break it down, and reteach it in the next class? While a slower pace can cause anxiety about covering all the material, thorough comprehension is an outcome worth the patience it requires.

For example, writing an effective thesis statement is difficult for many students. As an English teacher, I know they have practiced writing these for years, but when they come into my class, many admit feeling insecure about their abilities. Instead of moving directly to essay writing, I check for understanding and scaffold their thesis statement writing until they can demonstrate mastery. It is time-consuming at the outset, but it saves time down the road because their essays are much more effective.

Build Relationships

Take a break from the bell work for relationship-building activities. We often do these icebreakers at the beginning of the year, but then we stop. Embedding them weekly into your plans lets students continue to get to know each other. When teachers participate, it gives an opportunity for relationship building.

Deliberately investing time in each student yields big dividends. Write positive, encouraging, specific feedback on their papers, using their names and acknowledging their effort. This type of personalized attention shows students that you care about their individual well-being. I also share that same feedback with their parents or guardians via email.

A power struggle with a student can lead to feelings of anxiety and tension, for both the teacher and the student. Setting clear, fair policies and implementing them with love demonstrates a belief that every student is capable. Developing a student's intrinsic motivation starts with establishing the belief that everyone matters. If they know educators are coming from a place of love, they may be less likely to challenge rules and expectations.

I explicitly tell my students about my approach. This year I implemented a no-cell-phone policy rule in my classroom. During the first two weeks of school, there was pushback from some students, but I reminded them that I wasn't trying to control them-I was trying to set some healthy boundaries so that we could learn and build relationships. They trusted me, and face-to-face conversations replaced texting and posting. Being explicit about my motivations helped students to understand my intentions.

Find Support

Our colleagues are some of our best resources. Seek out the guidance of others-a school counselor, other teachers, colleagues. One of my colleagues is very logical and pragmatic, whereas I tend to be a big-picture thinker. Sometimes, when I'm lost in my own entertaining though hazy imagination, she can decipher exactly what I need to do in a quick, between-classes debrief. Colleagues with different perspectives can be important assets in regaining our joy. Colleagues can also remind us why we became teachers in the first place. It is encouraging to hear that while we all struggle, there are others who are committed and passionate even on difficult days.

Keep It Simple

Rekindling our joy may be found in simple solutions for daily aggravations. For the student who is frequently without a pencil, Velcro one to his desk. For the student who likes throwing things, plan a review game where the kids get to shoot baskets in the trash for every right answer. Create an environment where students feel valued, where they take risks, where they aren't afraid to fail, and where they know they are loved. Within the walls of my classroom, when I see kindness, empathy, and compassion, I know I am doing more than just teaching thesis statements and reading-comprehension strategies.

For stressed, overwhelmed, or demanding parents or guardians, collaborate on strategies to help their child. Ask them what helps their child at home and what has helped in the past. As a parent, I see how each of my children struggles in different ways and finds successes in different ways. Like my children, my students are all different and unique but seek the same validation, acceptance, encouragement, and permission to be their true, authentic selves. Steal back your joy. Bring it with you into the classroom. Give it to your students, their parents, and your colleagues.

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Teaching is a stressful job, but these simple steps can help build happiness in the profession. Hero Images Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo Somewhere between "School starts next week, but the entire county is piloting a new literacy program," and "I'm sorry.

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In the novel, Squeers is hell-bent on making sure that his students leave school with the knowledge they need to be "serviceable" in the adult world. It's not so different today. Everyone is worried about whether kids are "learning what they need" to get into college, finding good jobs, getting along in a big company, and learning new trades. The country's whole school system seems geared toward solving large-scale economic woes and producing future workers. It's most definitely not geared toward children. In fact, the prevailing view is that if teachers focus too much on students' pleasure they will somehow be encouraging wanton self-indulgence and dangerous hedonism.

A look at what goes on in most classrooms these days makes it abundantly clear that when people think about education, they are not thinking about what it feels like to be a child, or what makes childhood an important and valuable stage of life in its own right. This may explain why so many schools that I visit seem more like something out of a Dickens novel than anything else.

I'm a mother of three, a teacher, and a developmental psychologist. So I've watched a lot of children-talking, playing, arguing, eating, studying, and being, well, young. Here's what I've come to understand. The thing that sets children apart from adults is not their ignorance, nor their lack of skills. It's their enormous capacity for joy. Think of a 3-year-old lost in the pleasures of finding out what he can and cannot sink in the bathtub, a 5-year-old beside herself with the thrill of putting together strings of nonsensical words with her best friends, or an 11-year-old completely immersed in a riveting comic strip. A child's ability to become deeply absorbed in something, and derive intense pleasure from that absorption, is something adults spend the rest of their lives trying to return to.

A friend told me the following story. One day, when he went to get his 7-year-old son from soccer practice, his kid greeted him with a downcast face and a despondent voice. The coach had chastised him for not paying attention and not focusing on his soccer drills. The little boy walked out of the school with his head drooping downwards, shoulders slumped, dragging his way towards the car. He seemed wrapped in sadness. But just before he reached the car door, he suddenly stopped, crouching down to peer at something on the sidewalk. His face went down lower and lower, and then, with complete ebullience he called out, "Dad. C'mere. This is the most amazing bug I've ever seen. It has, like, a million legs. Look at this. It's awesome." He looked up at his father, his features brimming with energy and delight. "Can't we stay here for just a minute? I want to find out what he does with all those legs. This is the coolest ever."

The traditional view of such moments is that they constitute a charming but irrelevant byproduct of youth-something to be pushed aside to make room for more important qualities, like perseverance, obligation, and practicality. Yet moments like this one are just the kind of intense absorption and pleasure adults spend the rest of their lives seeking. In his masterpiece essay, Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud described childhood as a period of trying to balance primal urges to find pleasure and avoid pain with the growing need to be part of a group. Every piece of research since that essay has shown that Freud was right. Human lives are governed by the desire to experience joy. Becoming educated should not require giving up joy but rather lead to finding joy in new kinds of things: reading novels instead of playing with small figures, conducting experiments instead of sinking cups in the bathtub, and debating serious issues rather than stringing together nonsense words, for example. In some cases, schools should help children find new, more grown-up ways of doing the same things that are perennial sources of joy: making art, making friends, making decisions.

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In the novel, Squeers is hell-bent on making sure that his students leave school with the knowledge they need to be "serviceable" in the adult world. It's not so different today. Everyone is worried about whether kids are "learning what they need" to get into college, finding good jobs, getting along in a big company, and learning new trades.

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September 2008 | Volume 66 | Number 1
The Positive Classroom Pages 8-15

Steven Wolk

So what can schools and teachers do to bring some joy into children's formal education? Children typically spend from six to seven hours each day in school for nearly 10 months each year. During the school year, children generally spend more time interacting with their teachers than with their parents. What happens inside schools has a deep and lasting effect on the mind-sets that children develop toward lifelong learning.

Dewey's point about the destructive power of our schools should make us ask ourselves some fundamental questions: What is the purpose of school? What dispositions about learning, reading, school, the world, and the self do we want to cultivate? Ask young adults why they go to school. You will hear nothing about joy.

I am not using the word joy as a synonym for fun. For many children, having fun is hanging out at the mall, watching TV, text-messaging their friends, or zipping down a roller-coaster. Having fun certainly brings us joy, but students don't need to be having fun in school to experience joy. According to my Random House dictionary, joy means, "The emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something good or satisfying." Surely our schools can do some of that. Joy and learning-including school content-are not mutually exclusive. Many of our greatest joys in life are related to our learning. Unfortunately, most of that joyful learning takes place outside school.

As educators, we have the responsibility to educate and inspire the whole child-mind, heart, and soul. By focusing on the following essentials, we can put more joy into students' experience of going to school and get more joy out of working inside one.

JOY 1: Find the Pleasure in Learning

Why do people learn? I don't mean inside school-I mean learning as a part of life. Surely a large part of our learning is necessary for survival and a basic quality of life.

But there is another, entirely different, reason to learn. Learning gives us pleasure. This kind of learning is often (but not always) motivated from within, and no outside forces or coercions are needed. We also don't mind the possible difficulties in this learning. We often expect the challenges we encounter; we tend to see them as a natural part of the learning process, so we are far more open to taking risks. Some love to learn about cars, others love to learn about history, and some find great joy in learning how to dance. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990), such learning is an example of flow, which he defines as

the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it at even great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. (p. 4)

If we want students to experience more flow in school-if we want them to see school and learning as joyful-we need to rethink how and what we teach. No longer can schooling be primarily about creating workers and test takers, but rather about nurturing human beings (Wolk, 2007). By helping students find the pleasure in learning, we can make that learning infinitely more successful.

JOY 2: Give Students Choice

Outside of school, children are free to pursue their interests, and they do so with gusto. They learn how to play baseball or the drums; they learn how to ice skate or play video games; they read comic books, graphic novels, skateboard magazines, and Harry Potter.

But during a typical six-hour school day, how much ownership do students have of their learning? Practically none. It's not surprising that their interest in learning dissipates and that teachers complain of unmotivated students.

Joy in learning usually requires some ownership on the part of the learner. Students can own some of their school learning in several ways. They can choose the books they want to read through independent reading. In writing workshop, we can inspire them to be real writers and choose for themselves what genres to write in. During units in math, science, art, and social studies, they can choose specific subtopics to study; then, as "experts," they can share their learning with the class. Students can also choose which products they want to create to demonstrate their learning. What brings more joy-studying the civil rights movement in the United States through a textbook and lectures or creating comic books, writing and performing plays, interviewing people to create podcasts, and proposing your own ideas? Which would you rather do?

I advocate giving students one hour each day to study topics of their choice in what I call "Exploratory" (Wolk, 2001). In Exploratory, teachers collaborate with students to help shape student-initiated ideas into purposeful, inquiry-based investigations. During this time, students are scattered around the room, absorbed in an endless variety of topics that matter to them. While one student is studying the life of ants, a second is researching the workings of the FBI, and a third is exploring the life of Frida Kahlo. While two students work together to investigate the history of soccer, another is engrossed in surveying adults on their opinions of video games. Exploratory can teach students that school can be a place that nurtures curiosity, inspires them to ask questions, and helps them find the joy in learning.

JOY 3: Let Students Create Things

People like to make stuff. Having control of our work and using our minds and hands to create something original give us a tremendous sense of agency. There is a special pride in bringing an original idea to fruition. It empowers us and encourages us; it helps us appreciate the demanding process of creating something from nothing.

The list of what students can create across the curriculum is virtually limitless: newspapers and magazines, brochures, stories, picture books, posters, murals, Web sites, podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, interviews, oral histories, models, diagrams, blueprints and floor plans, plays and role-plays, mock trials, photographs, paintings, songs, surveys, graphs, documentary videos-the list goes on and on. At its best, school should help and inspire students to bring their own ideas and creations to life.

JOY 4: Show Off Student Work

Our schools and classrooms should be brimming with wonderful, original student work. School spaces that are devoid of student work perpetuate a sterile and joyless environment. I tell my teacher education students that the walls of their classrooms should speak to people; they should say exactly what goes on in that space throughout the school day. I can tell what teachers value by simply walking into their classrooms and looking at the walls.

The same is true for a school building. My son, Max, is in 4th grade, and his school, Augustus H. Burley School in Chicago, is a joyous place to visit. The hallways and classrooms are filled with remarkable student work, and there is rarely a worksheet in sight. The teachers also show off the students themselves. There are photographs of students next to their favorite books, above their posted work from writing workshop, and next to the doors of some classrooms.

JOY 5: Take Time to Tinker

Gever Tulley has started a unique summer school in California called the Tinkering School. His blog describes it this way:

The Tinkering School offers an exploratory curriculum designed to help kids-ages 7 to 17-learn how to build things. By providing a collaborative environment in which to explore basic and advanced building techniques and principles, we strive to create a school where we all learn by fooling around. All activities are hands-on, supervised, and at least partly improvisational. Grand schemes, wild ideas, crazy notions, and intuitive leaps of imagination are, of course, encouraged and fertilized. (Tulley, 2005)

At Tinkering School, students are allowed to dream. They come up with their own ideas for an object, and the faculty and staff help them sketch, design, and build it. When have you seen a public school that encouraged students to come up with "grand schemes, wild ideas, crazy notions, and intuitive leaps of imagination"? In fact, schools actually work to prevent this from happening.

Our school days are too planned, leaving no room for spontaneity and happenstance. Kindergarten is the last refuge in school for letting kids tinker. Once they enter 1st grade, students must banish the joy of "fooling around" with objects and ideas and, instead, sit at their desks most of the day listening to lectures, reading textbooks, and filling out worksheets.

Sometimes the best ideas come from tinkering-and teachers, not just students, should be doing more of it. We must push beyond the teacher-proof curriculum the textbook industry has created, which tries to plan every subject for every hour of the day. Far from being think tanks or workshops, our schools continue to be assembly lines. We need to free teachers to take risks, experiment, play with the art of pedagogy, and feel the joy that comes from tinkering with their teaching.

JOY 6: Make School Spaces Inviting

Why do classrooms need to look so much like, well, classrooms, with desks in rows or arranged in groups, with a chalkboard or whiteboard at the front? When I walk into a classroom in my son's school, I usually see a space that looks a lot like a family room. There's a large rug, a class library with the best in children's and young adult literature, bean bags, couches, comfortable chairs, pillows, colorful curtains, fabric hung over the ceiling lights, and lamps scattered about the classroom. In fact, sometimes the ceiling lights are off, and the lamps warmly light the room.

And what about the public spaces inside and outside the school-the hallways, foyers, meeting areas, and school grounds? Anyone who has spent time at a university knows how integral these spaces are to the learning and social dynamics of the campus. The same can be true for a school. Why not transform these often unused and sterile spots into places for small groups of students to work or cozy nooks for kids to read or write? How about filling a foyer with plants and flowers? Why not give a large wall to the students to create and paint a mural? One colorful mural can transform a barren hallway or entrance into a vibrant and joyful sight. And schools can turn outdoor spaces into gardens, sculpture parks, walking paths, and quiet reading areas.

JOY 7: Get Outside

I am bewildered by how much time students spend inside schools. I don't mean that the school day should be shorter; I mean that more of the school day should be outside. We adults know all too well how much we like to get outside for a respite during the workday, and the same applies to students and teachers in school. They need a break from being confined inside a classroom all day. Fresh air, trees, and a sunny day can do miracles for the human spirit.

Interacting with nature brings a unique joy. Gavin Pretor-Pinney (2006) writes, "I have always loved looking at clouds. Nothing in nature rivals their variety and drama; nothing matches their sublime, ephemeral beauty" (p. 9). Naturalist and artist David Carroll (2004) describes his childhood enthrallment of seeking out turtles as he walked the ponds and marshes:

The sheer joy of being there, of simply bearing witness, continued to be paramount. I went out neither to heal my heartbreaks nor to celebrate my happiness, but to be in nature and outside myself. Turtles, spotted turtles most significantly, were a living text moving upon an endless turning of the pages of the natural world. (p. 27)

The easiest way to get students outside is simply to have recess. There is a special joy in standing amidst the students as they burst from the school and spread out like a swarm of hungry ants. Kids say that recess is their favorite time in school. Recess was also one of my favorite times of the day as a teacher because I was outside and surrounded by children having fun. Tragically, recess has become a rare sight, which may say more about our schools today than anything else. Why do so many schools find it so difficult to allow children 20 minutes each day to play?

As a teacher, I would often take my students outside to read, write, or have a class meeting. It is delightful for a student to sit under a tree and read or for a class to sit in a circle on the grass and talk. Much of our science curriculums could directly include the outdoors. A school does not have to be near a forest or the ocean for students and teachers to explore nature. Ecosystems are all around us. Have students dig a hole in a patch of dirt, and they will witness the flourishing life in the soil beneath their feet. Don't underestimate the power of sheer joy that children-and adults-can experience from tipping over a large rock and seeing the ground teeming with life.

JOY 8: Read Good Books

Everyone loves a good story. We all know that if you have a 5-year-old sitting on your lap and a good book in your hands, you will soon experience the magic of stories. And what amazing stories there are! We are living in an astonishing time of children's and young adult literature. Immerse students in a culture of good books, and you surround them with joy.

For the past few years, I've been working on a grant with a Chicago public school, in part to help teachers make literature an important feature of their classrooms. I have brought loads of good books into the school. As I did book talks in 4th and 8th grade classrooms about dozens of new titles we ordered, the room was abuzz with students who could not wait to get their hands on the books. When I walk into a classroom now, I am met with the excited voices of the students telling me what books they're reading.

Of course, if we want joy in schools, then sometimes students should read books that aren't so "serious." I believe that books with important themes can make a better world, but we must also sometimes allow-even encourage-students to experience books for sheer pleasure. Have 3rd graders read Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants (Scholastic, 2000). Have 5th graders read Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Amulet, 2007). Have young adults read Sherman Alexie's very funny (and serious) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Little Brown, 2007). Encourage students to read thrillers; romance novels; action-adventure books; stories about sports, animals, and pop culture; graphic novels and manga; and nonfiction on topics they love. You will see plenty of joy.

JOY 9: Offer More Gym and Arts Classes

In recent years, with our zeal for increasing test scores, "specials" in school have become nearly as rare as recess. It is not uncommon, especially in more impoverished schools, for students to have no art, music, and drama at all, and gym only once or twice a week. In my son's previous school in Chicago, he did not have gym until January.

With his work on multiple intelligences, Howard Gardner has helped us better appreciate the uniqueness of children and has spoken to the need to give students opportunities to use their varied strengths and interests in school. For the legions of children who have a special affinity for the visual arts, theater, music, or sports, classes in these subjects are golden times for them to experience joy in school. But how much joy can they experience when it's limited to 45 minutes each week?

JOY 10: Transform Assessment

When I was a kid, I dreaded report card time. When I was a teacher, many of my students were anxious about their grades. For far too many students, assessment in its dominant forms-tests, quizzes, letter grades, number grades, and standardized tests-is a dark cloud that never seems to leave. Must it be this way?

The idea of assessment in school is not inherently bad; children assess themselves all the time. When they're busy doing something they love outside school, such as tae kwon do, baking, or playing the saxophone-when they're experiencing flow -they don't mind assessment at all. In fact, they see it as an important part of the process. But for most students, assessment in school is the enemy.

We can, however, make it a more positive experience. We need to help students understand the value of assessment. We also need to rethink "failure." Our schools see failure as a bad thing. But adults know that failure is a vital part of learning. Portraying failure as a bad thing teaches a child to avoid risk taking and bold ideas. Imagine if we graded toddlers on their walking skills. We would be living in a nation of crawlers.

We should limit how we use quantitative assessments and make more use of narrative assessments and report cards, portfolios of authentic work, and student presentations and performances. In addition, parent conferences should not only include students, but also encourage the students to do much of the talking, using the conference as an opportunity to present their work and discuss their strengths and areas to focus on for growth.

As a teacher, I had my students regularly do self-assessments. This gave them some real power over the process. They assessed most of their schoolwork before I did my own assessment. And during report card time, I passed out photocopies of a blank report card and had my students complete it, for both grades and behavior, before I filled it out. I don't recall a student ever abusing this opportunity. At another school in which I taught, I redesigned our report card to include space for a photograph of the student inside; the cover was left blank so students could either draw a picture or write something meaningful there.

JOY 11: Have Some Fun Together

Recently, when I was visiting a school, I was standing in the hallway talking to a teacher when a tall 8th grade boy from another classroom exuberantly walked up to that teacher. They began some good-natured ribbing. Back and forth it went for a few minutes with smiles and laughter. What was this about? The teacher-student basketball game held earlier that week. Here were two people-an 8th grader and his teacher-having a joyous good time.

Schools need to find ways for students, teachers, and administrators to take a break from the sometimes emotional, tense, and serious school day and have some fun together. Sporting events, outdoor field days, movie nights, school sleep-ins, potluck meals, visits to restaurants, schoolwide T-shirt days, and talent shows can help everyone get to know one another better, tear down the personal walls that often get built inside schools, form more caring relationships, and simply have a wonderful time together.

Teaching As a Joyful Experience

Recently, I visited a former graduate student in her classroom. It is her third year as a teacher, and I was excited to see her creative and thoughtful teaching. But she said to me, "I never imagined this job would be so hard. I'm tired all the time."

Yes, teaching is hard. John Dewey's quote-about school sapping our souls-can be as true for teachers as it is for students. Considering the staggering turnover of new teachers in urban schools, it is in everyone's interest to help teachers find joy in their work. So teachers must strive in whatever ways they can to own their teaching so that each morning they can enter their classrooms knowing there will be golden opportunities for them-as well as for their students-to experience the joy in school.

References

Carroll, D. (2004). Self-portrait with turtles. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow. New York: Harper Perennial.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier.

Goodlad, J. (1984). A place called school. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Pretor-Pinney, G. (2006). The cloudspotter's guide. New York: Perigee.

Tulley, G. (2005, May 4). About. Tinkering School. Available: www.tinkeringschool.com/blog/?p=11

Wolk, S. (2001). The benefits of exploratory time. Educational Leadership, 59(2), 56-59.

Wolk, S. (2007). Why go to school? Phi Delta Kappan, 88(9), 648-658.

Steven Wolk is Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave., Chicago, IL 60625; s-wolk@neiu.edu.

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September 2008 | Volume 66 | Number 1 The Positive Classroom Pages 8-15 Steven Wolk So what can schools and teachers do to bring some joy into children's formal education? Children typically spend from six to seven hours each day in school for nearly 10 months each year.

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Eight simple, quick strategies for easing the stress of teaching and remembering to take pleasure in the work.

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Reading Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms, by educator Timothy Walker, taught me a lot about blending joy and learning in the classroom. It's absolutely a resource I think teachers should have at their disposal. Here's what I think is the best the book had to offer.

Taking a Page out of Finland's Book

Finnish students consistently score high on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This intrigues other countries' teachers because education in Finland looks very different from the systems they're used to-the school days are short, students have very little homework, and there's almost no standardized testing!

Walker, an American teacher who moved to Finland, sought to uncover the strategies that make Finnish schools so successful. He breaks the elements of education in Finland into five categories: well-being, belonging, autonomy, mastery, and mind-set. The following are my favorite strategies from each category.
Well-Being
Schedule Brain Breaks. Most American students go all day with few breaks; in Finnish schools, students take a 15-minute break for every 45 minutes of instruction. This may not be possible for teachers in the U.S. to emulate, but they can schedule blocks of time to promote independence and creativity.
Further reading: 5 Tips to Help You Survive the Holiday Season
In my classroom, I balance instruction, discussion, collaboration, and reflection each period. Additionally, because my students must dock their phones at the start of class, I give them a five-minute tech break at the end. As a result, they're more engaged during class, and they don't seem as stressed out.

Recharge After School. Almost every teacher I know works long hours after school (and on weekends) planning lessons, grading papers, and creating assessments. Walker points out that teachers need to "start pushing back on this unhelpful ideology, which tells us to assess ourselves based on how much we work."

It's essential to set work-life boundaries and keep them. While this may be difficult for most U.S. teachers to do, it's important to say no to some of that extra committee work, those online discussion boards, and volunteer work. Disconnecting and recharging will, in the long run, help us create joyful classrooms.

Belonging

Know Each Child. Walker reminds us of research revealing that belonging is a major component of happiness. Building strong teacher-student relationships is critical. Try greeting each student by name at the door, inquiring about a sporting event or co-curricular activity, and cultivating personal connections-this signals that you see your students as individuals. Deepening those relationships ultimately contributes to the student's sense of belonging and their overall classroom contentment.

Pursue a Class Dream. A class dream may be attending a performance of Hamlet after reading the play or fundraising to help hurricane victims. It may be exploring an interdisciplinary unit on Vietnam by interviewing Vietnam veterans. For one of my sophomore classes, it was taking a trip to New York City if they showed sufficient performance growth on the state exam. Whatever your dream, it's important to make this decision as a class. Then discuss class roles, create time lines, and plan actionable steps. Make sure the vision of the class dream involves every student.

Autonomy

Offer Choices. Providing students with choices helps them become independent learners. Walker urges teachers to "get to know students' passions, make curricular connections, and offer interesting choices to them."

When a student suggested an elective on The Walking Dead, I initially laughed. But I realized the series would help students learn about everything from business and ethics to sociology and psychology. It's become one of my most popular classes, where I've seen some of the best writing, critical thinking, and problem-solving of my career.

Mastery

Prove the Learning. Though Finnish schools have minimal standardized testing, they still test their students. Walker believes the "simple practice of getting students to prove their learning by justifying their answers" helps them think critically and creatively. Create assignments that ask students to give evidence of why they would vote for a political candidate, for example, or explain how the media competes for an audience. This shows true understanding.

Discuss the Grades. With the advent of computer software like PowerSchool, we can share and discuss grades with students. This allows them to reflect and gives us a chance to support their journey toward academic mastery.

Mind-Set

Have a Thicker Skin. This truly resonated with me-sometimes it seems like everyone who went to school has an opinion on how teachers should run classrooms. But this isn't carte blanche to ignore any given feedback; it simply means you should be confident in your expertise. "As teachers," Walker writes, "it's not a matter of if we'll face issues in the workplace; it's a matter of when. Having a tough skin . . . helps protect the joy of teaching."

Vacate on Vacation. Teachers have a hard time shutting off during vacations. We take classes, participate in committees, and even present at conferences. In Finland, teachers consciously leave school problems, issues, and paperwork behind. They shut off email and phone calls to concentrate on enjoyment. Research supports that taking adequate time off bolsters performance -teachers need to hear that.
Further reading: Learn How to Say No
Don't Forget Joy. In the age of test-based accountability, it's hard to prioritize joy in our classroom. But Walker believes joy is largely responsible for the success of education in Finland. So, bring joy back into your classroom. Take time to build relationships with your students, get outside, incorporate music into lessons, brush off unhelpful criticism, and recharge. I bet you'll find that your classroom is a lot more joyful after doing so.

While it's true that Finland lacks the diversity seen in U.S. schools, and has a lower child poverty rate, I believe Walker's strategies can create joyful, successful classroom no matter where they're used.

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Building a Joyful Classroom: Top 10 Strategies Based on Education in Finland

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Reading Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms , by educator Timothy Walker, taught me a lot about blending joy and learning in the classroom. It's absolutely a resource I think teachers should have at their disposal. Here's what I think is the best the book had to offer.