Imagine yourself working on something at your favorite place surrounded by your supportive friends. How does it feel? Happy? Encouraged? Sunshine and roses? You name it. People tend to be more productive and driven when they feel certain positive emotions because such emotion is reinforcing. This applies too to children. As stated by Dorman, Aldridge, & Fraser (2006), students learn better when they picture the learning environment as positive. In apositive environment, students feel a sense of belonging, trust others, and feel encouraged to tackle challenges, take risks, and ask questions (Bucholz & Sheffler, 2009).Therefore, as one of the crucial factors, classroom environment plays an important role in student’s learning process. When student continually feels the positive experience in class, learning tends to be more engaging and lessons learned are glued as well as long-lasting.
Using Positive Psychology approach, we will learn how to create a positive classroom environment by focusing on eliciting positive emotions. The specific objectives are that participants will be able to:
- Get to know the use of positive psychology in everyday practice, especially in the classroom
- Learn how to elicit positive emotions within self, students and in classroom settings.
- Practice some tools that can be used in establishing a positive classroom
- Be a positive teacher!
