Growing with Gratitude

THE FUTURE IS NOW

In 2015, teachers Desy Pantelos and Teresa Marshall attended a four-day positive education training session facilitated by Geelong Grammar in Victoria. With many learnings and light-bulb moments over the four days, Desy and Teresa returned to Kidman Park Primary School in South Australia enthused and with an innovative vision. They were on a mission, bustling through the school gates, desperate to get to Principal John Clarke's office to pitch him their idea.

Desy pretty much knocked down John's door, yelling ‘John, we must make positive education a specialist lesson!’

Prior to his days as school principal, John worked in correctional services and remains keenly involved in scouts. This experience led him on the path to understand the importance of social and emotional learning. So, John was all ears.

Desy and Teresa's idea was to make positive education a specialist lesson, like physical education, music, art and languages are. This would involve setting up a positive education classroom, and each class in the school would come to Desy once a week for a positive education lesson. Their plan was to also support classroom teachers with resources that they could use to implement wellbeing in their classroom. Desy bought buckets for each class that she filled regularly with resources (some are also shared digitally).

Desy explains:

Providing additional resources for class teachers reinforces what the students are learning in my lessons and it provides more opportunities ...