Happiness — YES! Magazine

Visual Learning: Walking Slowly by Alyssa Austin Oct 30, 2009: Use this photo to ask your students what they notice and are wondering. Then share the facts behind the image to connect to greater understanding and discovery.
Facing the Future by Jing Fong Oct 30, 2009: Here is a range of lessons from Facing the Future for grades K-12, including some projects for university level students.
Nurturing Creative Thinkers by Jing Fong Oct 30, 2009: In this entertaining talk, Sir Ken Robinson asserts that to get the best out of people, schools need to nurture creative thinkers rather than good workers.
Visual Learning: Art Cars at Burning Man by Alyssa Austin Sep 22, 2009: Images, photos, and pictures stimulate the mind. For the viewer, they offer a chance to connect and question. They also offer potential for play and imagination, and pulling the observer into purposeful messages.
Connect and Engage: Education for the Mind & Soul by Jing Fong Sep 22, 2009: Here's a resource to connect your students' learning with their local community, culture, and environment. Also learn how knowing yourself can translate to being an even better teacher.
Starting with Place: Molokai Students Re-Define their Education by Vicki Newberry Sep 22, 2009: Head of School and teacher Vicki Newberry brought a place-based curriculum to her independent middle school in Molokai, Hawaii. Now Aka`ula School students thrive as they research and create positive solutions for environmental issues affecting their own community.
Anthropology 101: How to Change the World by Tom Murphy Jun 30, 2009: Professor Tom Murphy wanted his students to reconnect with nature. Now, they work beside farmers, fishermen, wastewater technicians, environmental groups, and Native American leaders through an award-winning service learning program.
You Are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring by Paul Hawken May 27, 2009: The Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009
If You Give a Kid a Shovel by Joe Gillespie Mar 11, 2009: Joe Gillespie started his first school garden in 1993 with 50 raised beds. Today, he and his middle school students grow veggies year-round and monitor wind turbines.
New Crop of Farmers Feb 13, 2009: Today’s young farmers are protecting the land and seeds, reclaiming farming traditions, and sharing abundance with family and community. Meet some of these young farmers in our photo essay.
Changing the World: One Story at a Time by Anna Unkovich Jan 16, 2009: For former teacher and Chicken Soup for the Classroom co-author Anna Unkovich, a “nightmare” teaching moment was the key to a more open classroom and sharing stories.
Connect and Engage: Making History by Jing Fong Jan 16, 2009: To teach happiness, be happy. Teachers, in particular, need support to be passionate and content in a challenging profession. The Center for Courage and Renewal's "Courage to Teach" supports this belief with essays, articles, and a retreat program.
Visual Learning: NYC Pillow Fight by Jing Fong Dec 29, 2008: Images, photos, and pictures stimulate the mind. With this YES! lesson plan, you and your students can luxuriate—and pause—to truly understand an image, its message, and why it’s interesting (or not).
Three Cups of Tea Dec 17, 2008: In Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, Greg Mortenson, and journalist David Oliver Relin, take you on a journey that begins with a climber’s failed attempt to scale Pakistan’s K2 and follows with his repaying a poor Pakistani village that nursed him back to health by building them a school.
Happy Teachers :: Reader Comments Dec 17, 2008: The Winter 2009 issue of YES! investigates how to be happy … sustainably. We asked you about happiness in the classroom and beyond. Here is what your colleagues say.