St Peter's Prep Schools is a Positive Education Environment
‘But what we can do and what we are ethically called to do as teachers, is to create a space in our schools and classrooms where all students can walk in and for that day or hour, take off the crushing weight of their armour, hang it on a rack and open their heart to truly being seen.’ - Brene Brown
St Peter’s is embarking on an exciting journey to implement positive education lessons into our curriculum in order to ensure that our children feel truly seen, heard and valued for their uniqueness. Of all the heartbreaking effects of Covid-19, the way in which it has impacted our youth has to be its most damaging legacy. This makes the wellbeing of our students more important than ever before. Positive education lessons are not about replacing the everyday pastoral care, coaching and relationships that teachers have with their students. Rather it is an explicit curriculum designed to teach students key concepts that can help them to flourish and live healthy and fulfilling lives. The heart of positive education is about the three legged pot - cultivating and strengthening the relationships between students, teachers and parents - creating a culture of wellbeing throughout the school community.
Having adopted the Bounce Back programme by Toni Noble and Helen McGrath some years ago, positive education is not an entirely new concept to St Peter’s. This was the first positive education programme in the world which sought to provide a series of practical day-to-day school activities to help students feel connected to their peers, school and community. It was created to help develop coping skills, and to boost resilience and confidence in children. Around the same time, St Peter’s also implemented the responsive classroom. This is a student-centered social and emotional learning approach to teaching discipline. It consists of a set of research and evidence-based practices designed to create safe, joyful and engaging classrooms and school communities and most importantly, the children’s voices are valued!
Fast forward a few years to 2022 and we are now ready to implement our School’s wellness programme. Traditionally, positive education is a blend of academic learning with character building and wellbeing at its heart, and our programme is no different. What is fascinating is the strong link between wellbeing and academic progress. An excerpt from an article by Lea Waters states: ‘A school curriculum that incorporates wellbeing will ideally prevent depression, increase life satisfaction, encourage social responsibility, promote creativity, foster learning, and even enhance academic achievement.’ (Waters, 2014)
Aside from Bounce Back and the responsive classroom, there are many things that St Peter’s does well that falls under the umbrella of positive education. Our values system links closely to the character strengths that we will be consciously developing with the boys. These important concepts underpin our positive education curriculum.