INTRODUCTION
Thank you for allowing International Thought Leader Network and our partner Shawn Achor to propose an integrated social and emotional learning solution that encompasses staff, students and families, as well as the local community.
It is our experience and philosophy that to best implement social and emotional learning, staff engagement utilizing the core principles of positive psychology is the “game-changer ’in that adults are primed to establish and support the culture, communication and social scripts needed to make SEL come to life in the classroom and school community.
Only an interconnected approach to the school environment, SEL, and performance yield the highest rates of return on our investment. A positive outlook is a key to academic and emotional success. Happiness and mental well-being are precursors to greater success rates.
Over two decades of research documented in The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential continually bears out the same conclusion: Happiness significantly raises memory, attention, productive energy, social connection, trust, intelligence, creativity, and shields against depression and anxiety.
More important, happiness isn’t preordained –people aren’t just born that way. Happiness is a choice that can be cultivated if we cultivate the belief that change is possible; apply specific intention, and combine that with a commitment to daily habit change.
We created the Orange Frog program and related offerings to teach this approach to students and staff members at schools around the country.
We also believe that for full staff buy-in and engagement, teachers and instructional designers should be sufficiently involved in the development and design of the SEL curriculum and embed this into PLC’s (including design, training, implementation and ongoing review.) This is crucial to the success of your SEL foundation and philosophy.
Lastly, we are a proponent of involving students and families simultaneously to create a common language at home, which supports the buy-in, and monitoring of SEL to ensure student success and family connection and reinforcement.
The Happiness Advantage │Orange Frog Program(HAOF) for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) has at its roots the most popular course ever taught at HarvardUniversity, “The Science of Happiness,” by positive psychology expert and best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage, Big Potential and The Orange Frog, Shawn Achor*.
The son of two educators, Shawn spent 12 years at Harvard, where he won over a dozen distinguished teaching awards and has since become one of the world’s leading experts on the connections between happiness, success, and potential.
Shawn has now worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, and with places like the NFL, the Pentagon, the U.S. Treasury, and the White House. He has traveled to over 50 countries, speaking to farmers in Zimbabwe, CEOs in China, doctors in Dubai and school children in South Africa.