In 2012 as a senior leader at Carey Baptist Grammar School I attended a number of professional development sessions facilitated by Associate Professor Lea Water’s. Lea is one of Australia’s leading academics in the area of Positive Psychology in educational and management settings. She is a registered psychologist and holds a PHD in Organisational Psychology and is the Director of the Masters in School Leadership program at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.
Her sessions with the senior Staff covered a wide variety of open-ended topics and she challenged the staff and indeed myself to think about ways in which you can lead in a more positive, life giving way. She spoke about leadership being a process of influencing people and cultivating organizations so that personal, team and organizational objectives are achieved.
Lea also introduced us to Professor Martin Seligman’s PERMA Model (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment)
According to Seligman PERMA makes up five important building blocks of well-being and happiness:
Positive emotions – feeling good
Engagement – being completely absorbed in activities
Relationships – being authentically connected to others
Meaning – purposeful existence
Achievement – a sense of accomplishment and success
Her sessions with the senior Staff covered a wide variety of open-ended topics and she challenged the staff and indeed myself to think about ways in which you can lead in a more positive, life giving way. She spoke about leadership being a process of influencing people and cultivating organizations so that personal, team and organizational objectives are achieved.
Lea also introduced us to Professor Martin Seligman’s PERMA Model (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment)
According to Seligman PERMA makes up five important building blocks of well-being and happiness:
Positive emotions – feeling good
Engagement – being completely absorbed in activities
Relationships – being authentically connected to others
Meaning – purposeful existence
Achievement – a sense of accomplishment and success
Each of these elements is essential to our well-being and satisfaction with life. Together, they form the solid foundation upon which we can build a happy and flourishing life.
Each of these elements will be analyzed in depth in a later entry.
At the end of the 30 hours of professional development our Principal Philip Grutzner set the senior leaders a homework task! The task is to share our training is a “useful way, thus supporting our commitment to successfully infusing a positive education culture at Carey”.
By the end of this year we will need to:-
1. Outline an initiative that each of us led in our school section which involved Positive Education and in particular one or more aspects of the PERMA model.
2. Provide a photograph of an example of positive education at work in our school section.
3. Provide a story of an example of positive education at work in our school section.
At the end of Term 1 we were required to submit a proposal outlining what we intended to do, how the initiative reflects the PERMA model, the timeline for the activity and who will be involved. The next post will outline my proposal.
Each of these elements will be analyzed in depth in a later entry.
At the end of the 30 hours of professional development our Principal Philip Grutzner set the senior leaders a homework task! The task is to share our training is a “useful way, thus supporting our commitment to successfully infusing a positive education culture at Carey”.
By the end of this year we will need to:-
1. Outline an initiative that each of us led in our school section which involved Positive Education and in particular one or more aspects of the PERMA model.
2. Provide a photograph of an example of positive education at work in our school section.
3. Provide a story of an example of positive education at work in our school section.
At the end of Term 1 we were required to submit a proposal outlining what we intended to do, how the initiative reflects the PERMA model, the timeline for the activity and who will be involved. The next post will outline my proposal.
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