ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Curtis Kelly

Peter Viney

Chris Hunt

Chuck Sandy

Panelists: Marc | Curtis | Peter | Chris | Chuck
Date: June 2005

Topic: "Can we teach our students to be happy? "

Nurturing Happiness

Chuck Sandy

This morning I received an email from a seminar student who told me she had woken up happy for no reason at all. She then went on to say that given this rare occurrence and the brilliance of the day, she'd decided to take the day off to thoroughly enjoy herself. She wrote, "I'm just too happy to come to school today. Sorry!" Sitting in my office, looking out the window at what the day had to offer I knew just what she meant, and so found I could offer no better reply than "make the most of your day and have fun."

“By carefully setting up tasks and projects in a scaffolded way that leads to success, we nurture and produce happiness.”

That's one kind of happiness, the kind that comes unbidden and unwarranted and floats off your shoulders into the very air around you. When it comes, you grab it, shrug your shoulders, raise your hands to embrace it, but take no credit for it. This sort of happiness is a gift, and the very best thing to do is to enjoy it while it lasts.

Though I'm sure, as Marc suggests in his essay, there are ways to nurture this sort of pure happiness and become more aware of the way it works, it is not something we can call up at will or work towards in a class. If, however, we as teachers happen to arrive at school in such a state, that pure happiness is likely to rub off on those who we come in contact with. Such happiness is so infectious, I found that a bit of it entered into me simply from reading my student's joyful message. Afterwards, I walked out of my office and into a class smiling in a way I had not been earlier that morning. This caused the two boys who'd arrived early to smile at me, and that set the tone for the whole class which followed ­ where we worked at another kind of happiness: the kind which comes from being successful at something.

Over the past couple of years, I've moved almost entirely to a project-based curriculum in which students work not at language but towards the successful completion of various extended tasks. These tasks range from the sort of story-telling project I completed with one class today, to the production of a short podcast radio show with segments which students research, write, record and produce. No matter what the project is, when we begin and I show them an example of what they will be doing, they invariably look at me in a way that suggests they feel I'm describing something which is impossible for them to do. Of course, at that very moment, it is impossible, for they still lack the various language tools they'll need to carry it out. Then, however, with the explanation of the steps we'll go through and the language we'll learn, they begin to relax a bit, and once we begin doing the carefully scaffolded activities which, step by step, give them everything they need to complete the final extended task, they see how it all fits together. Then they begin to see how to make their own work their own, and they get at it to produce the best material they are then capable of. Everyone succeeds, though at varying levels, and when they do you can see and feel the happiness it produces.

The story-telling project we concluded today began three classes ago with me telling the group a story about the funniest thing that had ever happened to me. Next, I told them a story about the most terrifying thing I'd ever experienced. Then, I explained that two weeks from that day, they'd one by one stand up in front of another class and tell a story just as I had done. They hardly believed me. I then explained to them, though, that between the beginning and the end of the project they would learn how to put the events of a story in an effective order, learn the grammar they'd need to connect their ideas, discover and practice some story-telling techniques, and have the chance to give each other feedback as they practiced. Then, we got to work in a way that virtually assured everyone would be successful -- and they were.

Anyone interested in learning more about the steps we took and the activities we did over the next three classes is welcome to contact me for the details. Each of those classes had its moments of happiness, but here I'd like to jump ahead to today when each of the students took his or her turn up in the front of the room with another class as the audience. As they told their stories and saw the look of comprehension of those in front of them, they began to glow. When they heard people in the audience laugh at the lines in their stories that were meant to be funny, they glowed even more. When they finished to applause, they lit up in a way that was beautiful to see. Their success at this task made them happy, and they walked away from class today feeling good about themselves and their abilities. That's take-away value worth pursuing.

By carefully setting up tasks and projects in a scaffolded way that leads to success, we nurture and produce happiness. Though I'd like to know how to nurture that unbidden happiness which my seminar student woke up with this morning -- happy for no reason -- I don't imagine I'll ever have the regular ability to do that. Still, as a teacher, knowing how to produce this other kind of happiness which comes with success is more than enough for me.

Panelists: Marc | Curtis | Peter | Chris | Chuck

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Chuck Sandy, Chubu University

Co-author of two series from CUP, Passages and Connect

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