The tiny nation of Bhutan doesn't measure its success by economic prosperity but rather by the happiness of its citizens. For more than 30 years, the Gross National Happiness Index has tracked progress toward the goal of a 100 percent happy population (in 2015, 91 percent of Bhutanese reported being happy).
If every classroom put a premium on happiness like this model nation, the outcome could be profound. A 2014 study led by British economic researcher Richard Layard found that emotional health in childhood is the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction in adulthood.
An Inside Job
So can happiness be taught? Not exactly, says Vicki Zakrzewski, education director for the Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California-Berkley. "You can teach skills that lead to happiness and create conditions that cultivate happiness, but you can't actually teach students happiness."
"Happiness is an inside job," adds Patty O'Grady, associate professor of education at the University of Tampa. "Teachers can only facilitate it and create the maximum potential for it."
To preface this work, educators must first delve into what it means to be happy. Contrary to popular belief, "happiness is not that super high that you get from experiencing positive emotions," explains Zakrzewski. "There's something deeper to it."
In The How of Happiness, positive psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky defines happiness as "the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one's life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile."
Happiness is complex and nuanced, admits O'Grady, but when we teach children how to live engaged and meaningful lives that enable them to be successful, "happiness is the byproduct."
Plan for Positive Learning
To put it into practical terms, "You can set the [stage] for happiness in your classroom by exploring and understanding emotions, facilitating and nurturing friendships, and ensuring that students understand the personal meaning—or create meaning for themselves—in lessons," explains O'Grady, who authored Positive Psychology in the Elementary School Classroom.
One way is to be mindful of the "emotional content" in the curriculum, she says. "Talk about the feelings around a particular task, especially if it's difficult or frustrating." Zakrzewski suggests prefacing lessons with a short discussion about the social skills the class wants to practice. "What happens if somebody says something that makes you upset? How can you work in those particular moments?"
This gives students a social-emotional lens "so there isn't just a launch into academics," says O'Grady.
While lesson planning, intentionally seek ways to tie content to students' experiences. "When we think we're doing something that has no meaning for us, we usually react in a very frustrated and unmotivated way," notes O'Grady. "But if we feel that we're doing something that benefits ourselves, and even more importantly benefits others, it has a self-generating motivation."
"Part of happiness is having a sense of meaning and purpose," adds Zakrzewski. "If students read a particular book, [encourage them to] empathize with the character and understand the character's emotional life, social life, and decisions that they made." Then have them reflect by considering, "What does this mean for me? Have I ever had a situation like this in my life?"
Teachers may need to guide these discussions at first, but "after a while, students become agile at being able to see how [the content] relates to their lives and the world around them."
Rooted in PERMA
As a high school student, Chase Mielke felt lost, experiencing depression and frustration. When he picked up The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, he became fascinated by "how people view their circumstances."
Now an English teacher at Plainwell High School in Michigan, Mielke pitched the idea of creating a positive psychology course to teach students the "qualities, habits, and practices that create a happy, meaningful life."
He developed a curriculum rooted in Martin Seligman's PERMA model, which outlines five essential elements of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishment. Anchoring lessons within these elements is "more servable" in a classroom than trying to focus on the broader term, happiness, Mielke contends.
During a unit on accomplishment, for instance, students learn how to develop optimistic self-talk. Mielke starts with an exercise on learned helplessness that involves distributing envelopes with anagrams. Some students are given easy puzzles to solve, while others are left with nearly impossible ones.
"The students go through this process where they're seeing some peers doing well and some not doing so well," he says.
Students then jot down what was running through their minds during the exercise (and hear its objective). They critique, as a class, whether those thoughts were optimistic or pessimistic, internal or external, universal or specific. So if a student said, "I'm terrible at English," the class discussed how the statement might be reframed as, "This lesson is challenging."
Coaching self-talk helps kids "start to build a habit of recognizing [challenges] as temporary or specific," says Mielke. As they grow in self-awareness, they strengthen their ability to manage their emotions and handle conflict appropriately.
These skills are especially advantageous for the 10 at-risk sophomores who are placed into the course each year. As part of a mentorship program, students who "struggle with behavioral issues, low academics, or a negative self-image" are hand-selected to participate by a team of counselors and administrators.
These students take positive psychology during the first trimester, and then reinforce those concepts in two subsequent English classes with Mielke. "We might use mindful meditation before a test or writing an essay, or make connections between what we're reading in transcendental literature and the ideas of meaning and purpose."
The program has dramatically transformed their school experiences, Mielke explains. "The at-risk students consistently see their failure rates diminish and their GPAs increase, and they're not getting suspended as often."
Then there's the anecdotal evidence. "It's cliché," says Mielke, "but a lot of students have said that the class changed their world."
The Kindness-Happiness Loop
At the Field School in Washington, D.C., Susan Greenspan's students spent an entire year "deconstructing happiness" in an honors elective.
The 11th and 12th graders analyzed research, watched TED Talks, learned about the cultural nuances of happiness, and reflected on their own definitions of happiness (e.g., "feeling at peace" or "feeling confident"). They met with parent and faculty experts in meditation, music, positive psychology, and neuroscience. They also read excerpts from Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, debriefing with the author when she visited their school.
The first semester focused on spreading happiness within the Field community, says Greenspan. Students put thank-you notes in teachers' mailboxes, performed kind acts for entire grade levels, cleaned up different areas of the campus, and gave out small gifts to random students on Fridays.
Research, in fact, shows a strong correlation between kindness and happiness. "When you are kind to someone, it actually releases feel-good hormones, endorphins," states O'Grady.
Plus, being kind has a cyclical effect: A 2016 study from Lyubomirsky about factors that trigger prosocial effort uncovered a "positive feedback loop between positive activities, kindness, and well-being." In another study, "Kindness Counts," the researcher found that 9- to 11-year-olds who practiced acts of kindness "not only got happier but [also] became more popular with their peers."
Forward Progress
During the second semester, Greenspan's students tackled their own happiness projects. They identified obstacles to happiness within their own lives and set a plan with realistic goals for overcoming them. One student was disappointed that he wasn't spending enough time with his family, and when he did, their conversations revolved around college planning. So he initiated family game nights.
Every week, students journaled about their progress and debriefed with the class. "At times, students had to admit they were falling short and come up with a new plan, and we would hash it out together." They also had partners to keep them on track.
Remarkably, the course generated a desire to "pay it forward" as much as it encouraged happiness, says Greenspan. "I observed [students] trying to sort of change other people. Trying to pass their messages along, or trying to get someone to buy into meditation, or [trying to talk peers] into attending the college that's going to make them the happiest versus the one that their parents think they should go to."
One student, an accomplished track athlete, battled anxiety as she approached the starting line before each race. So she led relaxation techniques for teammates who experienced similar angst.
Students changed their mindsets together, notes Greenspan, and in the end, they were happier in that environment.
Happiness Unmasked
There are caveats to cultivating happiness in the classroom, cautions Zakrzewski. "It's fine to bring the language of happiness into the classroom, but you don't want to make it seem that happiness is imposed upon students—that you have to be happy."
"That's a huge issue in our culture," she clarifies. "That we have to be happy all the time and if we're not, then there's something wrong with us."
"Cultivate those things in your life that naturally lead to happiness, but don't make happiness your goal," says Zakrzewski. Research has shown that overemphasizing happiness can actually backfire, leading to more anxiety and depression.
That's partly why Mielke campaigns for—and shows—a healthy range of emotions. "I'm very upfront with students that I'm not always going to be the most happy, positive person because that's just not realistic—and they need to know that."
"It's just as important to model not being happy, or being frustrated, or being pessimistic," he says. "Give yourself permission [as a teacher] to have bad days but also be ready to talk about how you're going to pull yourself out of it."
Moving the Meter
Improving your classroom's happiness index boils down to "creating positive experiences" by reducing students' stress, generating meaning, and being mindful of the emotional content in the curriculum, says O'Grady. "Focus on strengths and not weaknesses; use language to encourage and not discourage; and reduce fear—fear of failure, fear of criticism, and fear of embarrassment."
"All the [tools] we apply, the scaffolding support, the differentiation, all those academic strategies have to be equally applied" to students' social and emotional health.
"By the end of the class, not everyone is going to have this Pollyanna [outlook]," admits Mielke. "Our goal is to try to move the meter up a little bit."
Happiness Teaching Resources
Authentic Happiness Website from the University of Pennsylvania
Learn about positive psychology and its application in the classroom through videos, research, and other free resources. Students can take the Authentic Happiness Inventory and additional questionnaires on grit, optimism, meaning in life, and more.
Learn about positive psychology and its application in the classroom through videos, research, and other free resources. Students can take the Authentic Happiness Inventory and additional questionnaires on grit, optimism, meaning in life, and more.
Greater Good in Action
Find 48 science-based practices for building a meaningful life from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California-Berkeley. The practices are broken down by categories, including "happiness," "gratitude," and "kindness," and are rated by difficulty, frequency, and duration.
Find 48 science-based practices for building a meaningful life from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California-Berkeley. The practices are broken down by categories, including "happiness," "gratitude," and "kindness," and are rated by difficulty, frequency, and duration.
Positive Psychology in the Classroom
This blog series, written by Patty O'Grady, author of Positive Psychology in the Elementary Classroom, explores different measures of well-being and how they can be applied in the classroom.
This blog series, written by Patty O'Grady, author of Positive Psychology in the Elementary Classroom, explores different measures of well-being and how they can be applied in the classroom.
"What's Step 1 for Teaching Happiness? Identifying the 23 Ingredients"
Teacher Chase Mielke shares 23 practices for fostering happiness in the classroom, which are anchored in Martin Seligman's PERMA model.
Teacher Chase Mielke shares 23 practices for fostering happiness in the classroom, which are anchored in Martin Seligman's PERMA model.