Everyone has their own path into positive psychology. For me, my journey of learning and teaching about leadership at my high school led me to positive psychology, and eventually, the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania. After working with students inside and out of the classroom to help them develop as leaders over my career as an educator, I increasingly saw the need to expand my work by helping students use the tools positive psychology has to offer, not only as leaders, but in their personal lives as well. Almost as soon as I was accepted into MAPP, I knew that one of the first actions I wanted to take was to create a positive psychology course at my school. While I want to continue expanding my work in positive education and using positive psychology in leadership contexts, the class I now offer my students has proven valuable to them, and also to other educators in spreading these resources and knowledge. 

Constructing the Class

Early on, I had made some decisions about my class: it would be open to any student in my high school (grades 9-12) with no prerequisite requirements, and it would be a semester-long course (so it would meet for 48 minutes a day over 90 days). As an elective, it would be a class that students would need to opt-into. I also had to think about who would be signing up for this class, and I realized that while there would be overlap, there would be two distinct types of students who would enroll. The larger group would be students who would be attracted to the course description of a class that focused on “happiness” and wellbeing and were looking for an enjoyable elective. The second group, smaller but no less important, would be those students with a genuine interest in psychology (indeed, it is not uncommon for me to have several students each semester whose stated reason for taking my class is because they have “already taken every other psychology course offered” at my school). Thus, I needed a class that could cater to both groups.

Perhaps most important, I wanted the students to learn as much as possible about the theory and application of positive psychology. While I wanted a class that all students could be successful in, I also did not want to compromise its rigor. I wanted to ensure my students would leave having been exposed to the major components of positive psychology, not just a watered-down version of that content. My work in teaching leadership has led me to believe that high school students can understand and apply nearly any topic, as long as those topics are presented in a way that is useful and relevant for them. I sometimes use the illustration of an electrical step-down transformer in workshops I run for other educators: Our job as teachers is to take topics presented, in this case at the graduate level, and make them accessible for secondary students without reducing the richness of the content. It can be challenging, but it can also be done. One of my guiding principles was to ensure my students were getting the highest-quality education in positive psychology that I, or any other graduate of our program, could offer them.

Recognizing the need to balance all of these considerations, I started planning the course in earnest in the spring and summer of 2020. Pandemic shutdowns gave me a unique opportunity to both finish my capstone and plan my course.  James Pawelski was kind enough to allow me to view a syllabus he had developed for an undergraduate course in positive psychology he was about to teach. This, along with the repository of syllabi for positive psychology classes housed on the Positive Psychology Center website, proved enormously helpful in constructing the outline of the class. During my year in MAPP, in addition to absorbing the content and applying it in different ways in my life, I was also jotting down potential topics to include in my future curriculum. Ultimately, I settled on seven major units of instruction:

• An introduction to positive psychology, including the history of the field, and all the things that don’t make us happy.

• Positive interventions, including the importance of habits and will in sticking to our goals.

• Character Strengths, including over- and underusing strengths, and the need for wisdom and courage in using our strengths. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is often the unit students report having the most impact on them.

• Emotions: In this unit, in addition to covering positive emotions, we also discuss the need for negative emotions in our lives. A highlight of the course for students is watching Inside Out, which perfectly illustrates this concept. I also include in this section vitality and the impact physical health has on our emotions.

• Relationships: Specifically, all the elements that contribute to healthy relationships, including altruism, gratitude, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, love, and active constructive responding.

• Optimal experiences, under which I include the remaining elements of the PERMA+V framework, including flow, mindfulness, savoring, meaning, and accomplishment.

• Grit, Growth Mindset, and Psychological Capital.

If this seems like a lot, it is! But I recognized from my year in MAPP that everyone takes away something different from positive psychology, based upon our needs as well as who, and where, we are in our lives. The concept of satisficing is one of the best illustrations of this: While not all my students may find the importance of this concept, for a few of them (especially seniors struggling with college decisions) the day this concept is taught is one of the most important days of the semester. As such, while I could choose to go more in-depth on some of these topics, I prefer to give students an exposure to them all, with the realization that while not every topic may resonate with every student, every student will find something that does resonate with them at some point in the semester. For some students, it’s understanding flow, or the connection between meaning and suffering and why the activities they participate in that mean so much for them also cause them the most stress and difficulty. For others, it’s the value of meditation or seeing that their usage of social media is causing them unhappiness.

I once had an administrator who said that in any educational experience, people will find their “piece of driftwood,” or something that sticks out to them and that they will take away from all the content presented. To help my students find that piece of driftwood, I give them a project where they need to describe how they will incorporate elements of positive psychology in a future career field, and also, a final essay where they tell me what we covered that had the biggest impact on them, and why. Similarly, I have students complete a positive intervention each week and reflect on their experience in an online discussion board with their peers (in addition to borrowing his syllabus, I also took away a few pedagogical techniques from James Pawelski as well). As Sonja Lyubomirsky noted, different interventions will have different levels of impact on people, and by giving students a variety of interventions, they can both see which ones work for them and also, have a bank to draw from once they leave the class to help prevent hedonic adaptation.

When it came time to select a textbook, I decided on Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Explorations of Human Strengths. I felt it did the best job of covering the content I wanted to (although I was also admittedly swayed by having Shane Lopez and Rick Snyder as two of the coauthors). Recognizing that my students would also need some more approachable books, I also decided to adopt Shawn Achor’s Happiness Advantage, and after having it recommended to me by Henry Edwards (C’17), U-Thrive, cowritten by Dan Lerner for his course at NYU, as supplemental books. The use of these texts allowed me to keep the class approachable to general students while still providing further information for the most engaged students. Additionally, I have been the beneficiary of wonderful resources from MAPP alumni, faculty, guest speakers, as well as resource guides for educators, including for those of us at the secondary level and who want to help “keep the A in MAPP.” I also benefited from resources put out by the Greater Good Science Center, ReachOut Schools, IPEN, the Positivity Project, “Psychology and the Good Life” from Laurie Santos, as well as Angela Duckworth’s Character Lab and the Authentic Happiness site, whose instruments have proven invaluable to help my students track their wellbeing over the course of the class.

When I first set foot on Penn’s campus for immersion week in September 2019, I did not know that a year later I would be teaching my first positive psychology class during the pandemic. I applied to MAPP partly because I wanted to be part of the solution to mental health concerns that have risen among youth, as have been documented by psychologists and the US government. These issues have only grown in the last two years. I recognize that my class, or any single course, cannot alone alleviate the mental health issues facing students today. However, I do think my course can help move the needle for the students who are enrolled, and by providing students this knowledge, can be part of the solution educators are seeking to help our students. I am proud to say the anonymous survey data I have received from students, their own comments to me, and the high enrollment in my class as it enters its third year show that it is helping to make a difference for my students. It has also helped me, especially in getting through the pandemic, as teaching the class gave me an opportunity to revisit many topics, like resilience and using signature strengths, and my experiences also helped me share resources with other educators on teacher wellbeing.

Expanding the network

For several years prior to teaching my positive psychology course, I taught a general psychology elective at my school. To help me better prepare to teach this course, I joined several online groups run by psychology teachers. Whether in my psychology class, or other classes I teach, such as US History and AP Government, I have always found these online groups to be very helpful in allowing teachers to get questions answered from their peers, and to share ideas and resources. I also have always been impressed by the willingness of educators to share their materials with others to use with their students.

In the psychology groups I belong to, other teachers frequently bring up a desire to incorporate elements of positive psychology in their classes. Spurred by their desire to improve what they are offering their students and knowing that we could harness the collective efforts of the group to help everyone, in November 2021 I launched an online group for teachers who wanted to bring positive psychology to their students. I currently have over 500 educators in this group; mostly from the US but also from Canada, the UK, Australia, Singapore, India, and several other nations. This group provides these teachers not only a place to be able to ask questions and receive support, but also to share and gain resources for their students that are made by other members of the group. While many of the teachers in the group joined as they were looking to include some elements of positive psychology in their existing courses, several members of the group have used what they found to successfully propose their own standalone positive psychology classes at their schools, and I am glad they were able to use this group to gain the resources they needed to start these classes at their school. I have also been fortunate to do some work with Work2BeWell, a group that seeks to empower youth leaders from across the US to help their peers with mental health.

The Future of Positive Education

I want a revolution in world education. All young people need to learn workplace skills, which has been the subject matter of the educational system in place for two hundred years. In addition, we can now teach the skills of well-being – of how to have more positive emotion, more meaning, better relationships, and more positive accomplishment. Schools at every level should teach these skills… (Seligman, 2011, p. 63)

Fineburg & Monk (2015) noted that for many schools, teaching positive psychology can range from a few lessons to a schoolwide integration approach, similar to what Seligman (2011) wrote about at Geelong Grammar School in Australia. While not every high school offers or will offer a course on positive psychology, the teaching of positive psychology in secondary schools may be taking a big leap forward in the next few years. Recently, the College Board released a proposed curriculum framework for AP Psychology that would take effect in the 2023-2024 school year. If adopted, a section on positive psychology would be added to the class. This section would include resilience, positive emotions, joy, gratitude, mindfulness, and character strengths. 

In 2019 over 300,000 high school students took AP Psychology, making it the 5th most popular AP exam with high school students. If the proposed changes take effect, hundreds of thousands of high school students will have the opportunity to learn about positive psychology each year. These changes also coincide with APA’s push to make psychology a science, rather than a social science class, and help students learn how to apply psychological science in everyday life. These changes would ensure far more high school students are exposed to positive psychology. While more can still be done to promote positive education, the response I have gotten from my students and the interest I have found from other educators in offering these materials suggests to me that the desire to further integrate positive psychology in schools will only continue to grow. As an educator I consider it a moral imperative that we provide the knowledge we now have from positive psychology to our students, and my experiences with positive education in the last two years gives me hope for our schools that we will be able to fulfill Marty Seligman’s vision of providing these vital resources to all students.

References:

Fineburg, A. C., & Monk, A. (2015). Different approaches to teaching Positive Psychology. In S. Joseph (ed.) Positive psychology in practice: Promoting human flourishing in work, health, education, and everyday life (2nd ed.), 267-278. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Seligman, M.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. New York, NY: Free Press.

Felix Yerace, Ph.D. (C’20), teaches CHS leadership and applied positive psychology classes in suburban Pittsburgh. He also serves as the Assistant Executive Director for the Pennsylvania Association of Student Councils (PASC) and the Educational and Engagement Coordinator for the National Association for Student Activities. He has worked with NASSP on student leadership programs, including serving as the 2019 National Student Council Conference host advisor and as a member of the NASSP Student Leadership Advisory Committee. He also helped establish a College in High School (CHS) leadership course for high school students through the University of Pittsburgh. Felix also serves on the Executive Board of Pennsylvania ASCD and has been recognized as an ASCD emerging leader in education. In addition to serving as an Associate Editor for MAPP Magazine, Felix is also a peer reviewer for ASCD Press, the International Journal of Servant-Leadership, and Pennsylvania Educational Leadership (PEL) Journal. You can contact him at fyerace@sas.upenn.edu.