Words by Smiley Team
A seven-lesson course in positive psychology for children has won a Teach Primary 5* Award for wellbeing.
The course was developed by Adrian Bethune, founder of Teachappy, who has been teaching happiness and wellbeing to primary school children and teachers since 2010.
So how did the course come about, and in what ways does it improve children’s wellbeing? We caught up with Adrian to find out more.
Adrian previously worked in the music industry. In 2007, he went through a period of poor mental health with acute anxiety followed by a bout of depression. “I’m naturally optimistic,” he says, “so that period threw me, and I didn’t know what was happening.”
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Thankfully, he had supportive friends and family that helped him. He also saw a counsellor and started to research the science of wellbeing more – not looking at the negative end of the mental health spectrum, but actually looking at the flourishing end, he says.
Adrian started to apply this to his own life first and make some lifestyle changes. During his research, he found volunteering is said to improve happiness. So he volunteered to be a mentor at Chance UK, which provides support to children with behavioural difficulties. He also volunteered to be a school governor. It was these two things that made him want to retrain to be a teacher, which he did in 2010.
“Going into the classroom, I thought, I want to share some of these simple interventions I’ve learned,” he says. Adrian went part-time teaching in 2017, looking after his son two days a week, and it was then he wrote his first book: Wellbeing in the Primary Classroom.
He started to write the Seeds of Happiness course in 2016 – a child-facing mini curriculum, with training for teachers to deliver it. Creating and the Seeds of Happiness was a joint collaboration between Adrian and Yvonne Biggins, who was a co-founder of Young Happy Minds. She taught positive psychology to teenagers but had nothing for primary school aged children.
The pair created the seven-lesson course and tested it in a primary school, tweaked a few materials, and found that the children enjoyed it and got a lot out of it.
Adrian and Yvonne trained teachers to deliver the Seeds of Happiness course in their schools. This was always done in person, but when lockdown hit, it gave them the opportunity to put the training online, which meant teachers all over the world could do the training.
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The seven-lesson course is then delivered by teachers to children, in any way they see fit. “We wanted it to be bitesize,” says Adrian, “so you can do 10-minute modules and make your way through the training.”
Some schools do the whole 7-lesson course at the start of the year, while others will take the lessons and do a focus around one each-half term. It’s aimed at all year groups, and is as broad as possible.
Each week, children learn something about the science of wellbeing and children have a “mission” to carry out to put these ideas into practice. “The idea is to start embedding these practices into daily or weekly teaching practices,” says Adrian, “so when the course is finished, they carry on these healthy habits.”
Adrian applied for the Teach Primary award without any expectation of the course being recognised, so he was overwhelmed to win.
Teachappy is a limited company, but Adrian always wants to give back, so he donates between 10-15% of his profits to Chance UK. “So,” he adds, “when you do the course, you’re improving the wellbeing of children but you’re also helping us to contribute to the charities we believe in.”
Find out more about Teachappy and how it supports children here. You can also learn more about Chance UK, the charity supporting disadvantaged children, and donate here.
