Teaching Happiness

Discover the good life through resilience, creativity, and community.

Curriculum & Resources: Engaging Student Families, Adoption in the Classroom

posted Feb 06, 2011

Inclusion is one of the best ways to nurture student learners. These two resources offer tips on engaging student families and a positive approach to talking about adoption.

Want Successful Students? Meet the Parents

by Girlie Forman

posted Dec 22, 2010

Girlie Forman shares her personal experience, her sense of humor, and food to connect with her high school students—and their families.

YES! Recommends: Tell Me Your Stories

posted Dec 22, 2010

Tell Me Your Stories connects young and older people through oral history interviews. Curriculum, interview templates, and other tools guide students through the interview process.

Words that Inspire: On Facing Judgment

by Shannon Hayes

posted Dec 22, 2010

Facing judgment is a life skill that teachers can help their students learn, so they may deal with others' opinions—fair or not—with confidence.

Curriculum & Resources: Getting Boys to Read, Story of Food

posted Dec 22, 2010

Two resources that explore how to get boys to be lifelong readers and where our food comes from.

Words that Inspire: Stories that Light Up the Dark

by Sanjay Khanna

posted Oct 13, 2010

The Experiences of Our Ancestors Offer Us Wisdom for Surviving Today's Crises. By: Sanjay Khanna

Words That Inspire: Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande

by Jimmy Santiago Baca

posted Aug 01, 2010

Poetry: Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande, by Jimmy Santiago Baca, with Note to Educators.

Visual Learning: Happiness Is Where You Find It

posted Apr 28, 2010

With this YES! lesson plan, try to truly understand an image, its message, and why it’s interesting (or not). In this case it's all about happiness.

Visual Learning: Walking Slowly

posted 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.

Visual Learning: Art Cars at Burning Man

posted 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: Making History

posted 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.

YES! Recommends: Project Happiness :: 7 Doors Project

posted Jan 16, 2009

Take your students on a journey of self-discovery that will ultimately lead them to understanding not only what is happiness for themselves, but also what is happiness for others. Each door represents a facet of your path to happiness, and hosts a multimedia array of interviews, photos, films, questionnaires, and activities.

Visual Learning: NYC Pillow Fight

posted 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).

Connect and Engage: Happiness

posted Dec 17, 2008

These two top-notch resources offer opportunities for you and your students to truly understand the benefits of giving, and the strengths and virtues that make people and communities thrive.

Happiness in the Classroom and Beyond

posted Dec 17, 2008

Classroom resources from the Sustainable Happiness issue of YES! Magazine.