Prelude:
As I retired from my 32yr. career, all at Valleyview Secondary in Kamloops, I was being honoured with an award to be named after me. I was asked to help set the ‘criteria’ that would be associated with the award. I wanted it to recognize a student that exemplified a positive attitude which infectiously influenced others by their willingness to contribute and participate. I attached a quote to the top of the Award, I’m not sure where it came from, but it reads: “Aspire To Inspire, Before You Expire”
I believe that in the pursuit of happiness, one must be willing to give unselfishly, have personal standards, be forgiving, and know what should and must be done.
In your class planning, you need to encourage your students to adopt ‘happiness’ as a skill set, one that is just as important as learning to read. Happiness will give them a foundation to create social and emotional learning for themselves and all they come in contact with, having a ripple affect that becomes immeasurable in its’ worldly impact.
Before pursuing this admirable, yet exciting challenge, I encourage you to read and watch “Project Happiness” and use it as a blueprint, a trampoline, from which you launch and put into play your own personal perspectives and skills.
Here is one how I would approach a series of class lessons to get on the path to helping students be masters of their own happiness. This template can be transferred and used with any of the 54 topics that make up this Whizolosophy Project.
Lesson Objective: These Lessons for exploring “Happiness” have the foundation upon which to build an on-going process to help students understand themselves and therefore move towards being in control of their own happiness and influencing the happiness of others.
Lesson Outcomes: Students will become aware for how they can be Masters of their own Happiness.
Pre-lesson 1-Give these two quotes to your students before they leave you for the day. Ask them to come prepared to discuss the meaning of the quotes to them begin a series of classes focusing on “Happiness”
Lesson 1
As students are getting settled in to class, have the song ‘Happy”, by Pharrell playing.
Bring out the quotes that you referred to last class. Ask questions and engage discussion about their interpretations of the quotes.
Play the song, “Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong.
Have students find 5 quotes about Happiness
Have students find 5 songs about Happiness
Have students find 3 poems about Happiness
Lesson 2
Follow up on last class to ensure to ensure that they have completed their lists.
Have students explain in writing, why they chose the quotes they did. What made them special or meaningful?
Do the same for the Songs choices and the Poem choices.
Before they leave class, ask them to think about the things that make them happy and be ready to express them next class.
Lesson 3
Follow up to ensure that work from the last class has been completed.
Have them reflect on what you asked them to think about-“What makes me Happy?”
Have students do a ‘Web form’ or a Category List of things that make them happy.
Suggest that they look at their total day –what makes you happy in the morning before school, on the weekends, at school in class and at breaks, after school, in the evening, etc? This will get them exploring a wide spectrum of their daily experiences, whether alone or with others.
Have students complete on their time or be prepared to complete the next class.
Lesson 4
Follow up on last lesson, complete and review what they have put into their Happy
Charts/Lists.
Have the students now ‘priotiize’ the things on their list-putting what is the most
important to them at the top, and so on.
If time, start the movie, ‘Hector and The Search For Happiness’.
Lesson 5
Continue the movie.
Let them know that this will be followed up by a real life documentary.
Lesson 6
Discuss what you have collectively done leading up to this point and revisit its’ purpose of creating a Happiness Profile enhancing their self-awareness concerning their own happiness.
Explain that this can now become an on-going, life-long, ever-changing self awareness project.
‘Project Happiness-The Documentary will show us how we can find a way to sustain momentum and determination in find and preserving our own happiness.
After viewing the documentary, ask your students: What should we do now? What are
you going to do now about your own happiness?
Come prepared next class to write about “What Happiness is to Me”
Lesson 7
Have students write an article/essay, a song, a poem that expresses “What Happiness is to Me”
Allow students time to complete in and out of class.
Once you have had a chance to review their completed work, ask them if it is alright to anonymously share the compilation of works amongst the group.
Comments