EdCan Summit
Brochure & Syllabus
Longing for Belonging: Introduction to the Science of Belonging
We created this series of videos to help teachers like you help your students to feel connected to the school community using science-based activities like icebreakers and brain breaks. These videos provide activities and a basic understanding of the factors that are most strongly related to school belonging in each Positive Psychology intervention. Learn activities like The Web We Weave, Togetherness Tracker, Embodied Emotions, and many more to cultivate a powerful sense of community and connection at school.
History
Over 1500 schools positively impacted to date
The Center for Positive Education (formerly PositiveEducator.org) was founded by Emiliya Zhivotovskaya (The Flourishing Center) and Renee Jain (GoZen!). Both of these entrepreneurial psychology pioneers have their Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from UPenn. Emiliya was part of the team who, under Martin Seligman, innovated the science of Positive Education at Geelong Grammar School (GGS). In 2017, after seeing a need to help educators and students be more proactive about their wellbeing, they began certifying educators.
When we came together we recognized that there was a need to create policy and standards for the science and application of Positive Education. With that in mind we have recently launched the Center for Positive Education whose mission will be to educate and certify teachers but on a grander scale, we will offer a designation of “Positive Education Certified School” to schools who meet a standard. This standard in a work in progress- we are creating an advisory board of researchers, experts in each domain of Positive Education as well as flagship schools. Together we will attempt to wrap a North American standard around the recommendations from the World Government Summit on how to implement Positive Education. Their recommendations include:
- Contextual and cultural immersion an understanding
- Multi-stakeholder engagement
- Needs and goals assessment
- Quantitative baseline measurement
- Curricular development and adaptation
- Training of educators
- Curriculum implementation
- Ongoing training and embedding
- Post-intervention measurement and ongoing impact evaluation
- Evidence-based policy design and legal institutional embeddedness
- Large scale policy implementation
- Ongoing evidence-based evaluation adaptation and evolution
Our certifications are one of many ways to meet the 6th criterion. The differentiating factor between our certification and most others is the action plan that answers the question “now what?”. We have heard from many educators who complete a training that they still don’t understand what to do in their classroom. Our goal is to ensure our grads have all the training and tools they need accessible online as well as a tribe of like-minded educators sharing similar goals. We don’t want grads to “reinvent the wheel”. We have worksheets, books and a video library as well as extensive bonus material designed to help a teacher make sure the work is unique for their context and school.
Why You Should Have a Certified Positive Educator on Your Team
- To promote whole-school wellbeing literacy.
- To ensure SEL initiatives are cohesive & integrated.
- To promote character development.
- To provide a foundation for diversity & inclusion.
- To show your community mental health is a priority.
- To transform school stress into resilience.