Positive Education in Autahi

 This week we held the pleasure of sharing our Positive Education bedrock with our school community. While this has been a part of our schools kaupapa for many years it is always great to reflect and share the 'why' behind it all.

So this weeks blog will give an overview of the 'why' and show how we approach some of the big concepts with the learners in Autahi.

In a nutshell, Positive Education is an embedded programme that teaches a variety of tools and skills to equip people to flourish and weather challenges that they may face. All of this is backed by science and research that support this approach. Think of it as tools for resilience and growth, something we always wish we had more of I'm sure. 

These tools support our learners, teachers and community to think optimistically, bounce forward (not just back) from setbacks and learn from our mistakes.  

One area of Pos Ed is character strengths. Each of us have our own strengths and being able to identify them and use them effectively is important. Knowing when we are overusing them is just as important too.

You hopefully will have seen these around our school, either on posters on walls our scattered in key locations in the playground. More importantly you will hear them being talked about around the school and in our community. Even better you might have heard the around the dinner table.

These are just a selection of strengths that we focus on and serve as a guide for us to help navigate different situations. In Autahi we have been learning about a few of these strengths that have helped us so far. Things like Bravery, Perseverance and Curiosity are key for those first few weeks of school. We dial up our Bravery when we say goodbye to our whanau in the morning and we dial up our Perseverance when we are trying to write the words we want to make a story.

We unpack what each of the strengths represent.

And what the strengths might sound like around our community.

As well as picture ourselves when we use the strength.

There is so much more to Positive Education and we have only just scratched the surface. Our school website has more information as do our classroom blogs. We will share more over the year with some examples of the learning going on in Autahi.

If you have any questions then we encourage you to come and talk with one of our amazing staff. We would be happy to help and chat about our Pos Ed programme.