Positive Psychology in the Classroom: The Secret Doorway to School Success

This project was inspired by the work of Jeanne Shaw and David Bott who conceived the ‘Secrets’ to teaching success for new teachers entering the profession to inspire them to cultivate their best selves from the outset. This capstone represents the positive psychology foundations of the secrets with user-friendly suggestions of how to apply them. The motivation behind this project is our shared passion for supporting the next generation of educators by giving them the advantage of our collective experiences to speed their journey to competence and arm them with the gems of positive psychology. Five robust positive psychology theories supporting the ‘Secrets’ are condensed into succinct and accessible segments to get them started. The aim is to encourage the newest generation of teachers to embrace positive psychology interventions, which we believe will not only make them successful teachers but will also make their jobs easier and more fulfilling. Our hope is this text will empower teachers to further investigate the field of positive psychology to bring more of this powerful new research into education.