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 for students to practise. One special lesson a week is great, but it's not enough to build consistency.

Now, to some of you this idea might sound simplistic, and to others it could be completely batty! But Principal John believed social and emotional learning required explicit teaching and a consistent approach, so he was willing to give it a go.

The next step was to get approval from the school's governing council. So Desy and her team pitched the proposal. The presentation included the purpose behind positive education and, most importantly, how it would benefit the students. The governing council were on board. However, to be realistic there had to be a trade-off.

An existing specialist subject needed to be dropped so the timetables didn't become too cramped. The school leadership team decided it would be art. However, as art and creativity are important, Desy committed to including art projects in her positive education lessons. The class teachers also added art to their timetables. Everyone was a winner!

It didn't take long for the governing council to approve the inclusion of positive education as a specialist subject at the school. In fact, the idea was met with a sense of excitement and enthusiasm.

So, in 2015, positive education became a specialist subject at Kidman Park Primary School.

The school even set up a dedicated classroom for the weekly 45-minute lesson. They named it ‘The PEARL Room’:

• P = Positive
• E = Education
• A = Assists
• R = Real
• L = Life Skills.

Naming the room gave the students a sense of community and commonality. Desy shares:

I have former students who are now in high school who come and visit and talk about how they miss coming to the PEARL room. They say, ‘Now I understand what you meant when you taught us things like compassion’.

This reflection from past students is important for us on the forefront of change. You may never really know the impact you have on your students that they take into adulthood. You may not witness the impact of the positive education program immediately. As historian Henry B Adams said, ‘A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops’.

We need to think of the future, and of the future of our next generation.

We need to think of the future, and of the future of our next generation.

The reason why this example in particular is important, and why I share it here at the conclusion of the book, is because if we want to have any hope of helping our next generation become resilient and be able to adapt to all the changes and complexities that life throws at them, we need to come up with innovative solutions that show them the importance of this and also practise what we preach. We need to think of the future, and of the future of our next generation.

Practise what we preach

Wellbeing and resilience are now coming of age in education. This field has the potential to make a significant contribution to how teaching and learning are conceptualised within the next decade to create more resilient, robust and flourishing education systems in which all young people believe they belong.

The 2020 pandemic is a great example of the tumultuous times we now live in. As Professor of Education Leadership Alma Harris argues in a publication titled Wellbeing and Resilience Education about COVID-19 and its Impact on Education:

As the severity of pandemic impact … flows through societies across the world, school leaders and teachers may believe they are returning to a new normal. As … equilibrium returns, we contend that what is unfolding … will mean we are not at the same point in the change cycle.

It's a fair argument to suggest resilience is the future of education. As someone at the forefront of education, it's likely you agree too.

However, to make it happen requires action, like the action that Desy, Teresa and Kidman Park Primary took.

Being an educator, a school leader, a principal or a parent means you now have this amazing opportunity to create an environment that supports our young people to practise adaptable thinking and emotional regulation skills.

You and the staff at your school can achieve this by setting up a strong, robust whole-school approach to positive education and wellbeing, and leaving a legacy for future generations. It's up to us to be proactive. It's up to us to lead and drive the change.

So, while having a positive education program as a specialist subject that is integrated into the whole school might seem like something out of reach or a bit futuristic, the example from Kidman Park Primary shows it can be done. I haven't come across many other schools that do wellbeing this way — yet — but I have mentioned in this book the ones that I have found. For me, these examples are the future of education.

We owe it to ourselves and our children to think ahead.

If you still need a reminder of why we must act now, remember these three things.

• Improved academic achievement

  Research from the Institute of Positive Education at Geelong Grammar suggests that social and emotional practices in schools can increase academic achievement, particularly when practices focus on building skills that lead to greater resilience, such as gratitude, empathy and kindness.

  In addition, recent research from the Australian National University of 3400 15-year-olds found that self-reported levels of depression had a large, negative effect on their National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results months later.

• Increased resilience

  Through consistent practice of social and emotional skills, we are helping young people to develop their resilience muscle by building up their inner strength to work through stress and challenges that may arise.

• Better emotional regulation/reframing skills

  Students learn how to use their self-talk to see a negative situation from a more positive perspective. This isn't an easy skill to learn, but through consistent practice and modelling it's one of the most useful and important skills a human being can possess.

And don't just take my word for it. I'd like to leave you with some reflections from real students from Kidman Park Primary School that aptly show what we're setting up our future for.

Every day of my life I was grateful about everything. My life was perfect because I have a roof over my head, and loving and good supportive friends. Then on the third of April 2016 everything changed.

My mum and dad took me to the hospital because I had symptoms of type 1 diabetes, and when the doctors tested my blood it was confirmed. When I asked them if there was a cure they said there was no cure at all and I have to live with it for the rest of my life.

After that, the nurses said I have to take insulin injections three or four times a day with five blood tests. I had to stay in hospital for one week and I felt like I didn't want to live anymore because of all the needles and blood tests every single day, and the first thing I have to do when I wake up was an injection and even before I sleep.

My first few injections at the hospital hurt so much and I felt upset that every night I had tears going down my eyes. When I returned to school I wasn't my cheerful self anymore, but on every Thursday in between recess and lunch we have PEARL and Mrs Pantelos teaches us how to meditate and how to have gratitude. If it wasn't for these lessons, Mrs Pantelos and my family I wouldn't have been happy.

Kidman Park, Year 7 student

For most of my life, there's always been bad moments. Like when dad left when I was not even a year old, I could just walk. My mum has been in hospital lots of times. Sometimes I'd wait for her for a week, sometimes even 3 months. There would mainly be arguments in the family, and I would end up in my room, door locked and blinded by tears.

For all these years I had no solution for how to be calm and more positive, and to me, the only people that were positive a lot of the time were my mum and aunties, this was before me and my friends matured. That was until the teachers were talking about how art would be replaced with Positive ED.

At first I never tried the new subject. My first lesson of PEARL came and I felt a little better. As the lessons carried on I began to feel better. Bad things still commonly happen, but I am still on my feet. And for that … that is why I've continued to study, keep up with my work, and still kept friends. Heck, I still have a friend from Kindergarten. PEARL, to me, is probably my favourite thing to do at school. Whenever I come into the classroom and I see that it's Thursday, a little voice in my head is cheering, and I know that it will be the highlight to my day.

Kidman Park, Year 7 student