Alister Smith explains what research tells us about happiness, how to use the findings to improve your school, and suggests simple steps to enhance the well-being of students and staff. The book begins by looking at what is happening to young people today both in and outside school. The reader is then asked to consider what type of footprint they would like to leave behind them and is encouraged to find their core purpose. With this in mind, the book looks at how happiness involves our heads, hearts and health and how the reader can increase their happiness on a personal level by building on their strengths, broadening what they have learned by using it in different situations and balancing their lives. The same principles are then applied to creating a culture of happiness within the classroom and on a whole school level. The book covers: what research tells us about happiness, how to use the findings to improve your school, and simple steps to enhance the well-being of students and staff. It gives tools for learning how to: enhance the enjoyment of learning in your school, create a positive 'can do' culture, and audit the 'happiness quotient' in classrooms. Combining theory and guidance with practical exercises and tips that readers can immediately implement, this user-friendly and practical book will include cartoons, quotes, 'key points' boxes, and a question to start each chapter that is answered at the end of each one. Readers can either read from start to finish or dip in, as they prefer.

Author Biography

Alistair Smith is the UK's leading trainer in modern learning methods and his techniques are used with startling success by thousands of teachers and parents in the UK and abroad. Alistair is the author of a multitude of books. He works part-time at the Centre for Educational Leadership at Manchester University delivering a range of programmes and teaches on the Master's Course at Liverpool University specialising on the leadership of change. Joanna Kurlbaum taught in three secondary schools and is a governor at an infant school in Gloucestershire. She is a regular contributor to both the Teaching Expertise and Alite websites. She has had articles published in Optimus Publishing's Curriculum Briefing magazine and in the Teach Primary! magazine.