Increasingly, the world’s most forward-looking schools are engaged in creating positive cultures to enhance education. A positive, engaged brain improves performance, pride, and culture, helps retain our best teachers, and deepens student, family, and community relationships.
The Happiness Advantage is for those educational leaders interested in creating a positive culture systemwide, supporting PBIS, ESSA or SEL – or looking for a life-changing PD workshop on positive leadership, to improve educational outcomes or raise engagement within your own staff.
The Happiness Advantage is sparking a positivity in education movement in school districts, classrooms, living rooms and entire communities across the country. In fact, since Shawn Achor’s keynote at the National Conference on Education in 2016, The Happiness Advantage │ Orange Frog Workshop has become the largest and most successful positive psychology training program for educators in the world. The only evidence-based offering which started in the classroom at Harvard, and whose research has now extended to over 50 countries.
We curate a unique PD experience for you, featuring:
Professional Development Workshops
Keynotes and Kickoff Events
School Train the Trainer & Certifications
Sustainability Tools and Resources
Student Workshop Versions (supporting SEL, PBIS and ESSA initiatives)
“If our staff is happy, our outcomes are going to be fueled and I know they are going to do better work in the classroom.”
Andy DuRoss, Superintendent SD54, Schaumburg, IL (Ranked among the top 2% of school districts in student growth by Stanford University)
“The purpose here at Mann Elementary has always been to be more positive. Mindset matters. What The Orange Frog did was provide the steps and skills to connect with this purpose and create the direction for us to all get together. It has helped our teachers communicate understanding to kids that there is a higher purpose to their school and learning.”
Connie Crigger, Principal, Mann Elementary, Boone Co., KY, 2018 Kentucky Administrator of the Year
“The orange frog is that important, it is that transformative, it starts with the teachers to be more positive and then pass that onto the students to transform our communities. It starts with leadership, it will change people in both their personal life and their work lives.”
Vern Burton, Assistant Superintendent, ACCESS Program, Orange County Department of Education
“The Happiness Advantage | Orange Frog, created by Shawn Achor, is a set-apart learning and training program that has positively and deeply impacted me and our school organization.”
Mike Lubelfeld, Superintendent, North Shore School District 112
See the change in action! In a quick 2:33 minute video, witness the remarkable impact of the Happiness Advantage PD on schools, as shared by educators like you. Discover how Shawn Achor's positive psychology can lead to a successful school environment.
Because the results are proven, and the impact is lasting. Educators become:
More positive
Incredibly Optimistic
Part of a Happier Work Culture
The outcomes are undeniable:
Fewer behavioral challenges.
Greater family engagement in education.
Elevated staff morale and academic outcomes.
Stronger unity among students, teachers, and families.
To request additional information, you may either call us at 919-434-6502, or fill our this short form below to have one of our Sales people reach out to you personally.
After spending twelve years at Harvard University, Shawn Achor has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. His research on mindset made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED Talk is one of the most popular of all time with over 22.6 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions. Shawn has lectured or worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, as well as the NFL, the NBA, the Pentagon and the White House.
Shawn is the author of New York Times best-selling books The Happiness Advantage (2010) and Big Potential (2018). He has now lectured in more than 50 countries speaking to CEOs in China, doctors in Dubai, schoolchildren in South Africa, and farmers in Zimbabwe. His Happiness Advantage training is one of the largest and most successful positive psychology corporate training programs in the world.
Shawn’s research has been published in the top psychology journal for work he did at UBS in partnership with Yale University to transform how stress impacts the body, and he recently did a two-hour interview with Oprah at her house to discuss his mission to bring positive psychology to the world.
Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: happiness fuels success, not the other way around.
Caught between two worlds, Spark was exactly like every other frog in his pond with one notable exception. Spark emerges from a tadpole with a slight but noticeable orange spot. And this orange spot makes Spark feel uncomfortably different. What’s more, Spark begins to make a disconcerting observation; when he does things that make him feel better (and produce more positive results) the orange spots increase. Spark is left with a difficult decision; be normal, which makes him less conspicuous, or continue doing those things that make him happier, more productive and… more orange. So begins the parable of The Orange Frog, a disarming tale that serves as the starting point for the workshop Leading Positive Results™.
We have long thought about potential as being a set of individual traits: your creativity, your skills your intelligence. But thanks to exciting new research combining neuroscience and psychology with Big Data, we now know that our potential is not limited by what we alone can achieve. Instead, it is determined by how we complement, contribute to, and benefit from the abilities and achievements of people around us.
The Happiness Advantage | Orange Frog Workshop™ provides a blueprint for increasing staff and student engagement, enhancing SEL, and tapping into people's intrinsic motivations. Based on the works of positive psychology researcher, Shawn Achor, and taught in Harvard’s famed happiness course, this experiential workshop provides a sustainable approach to enhancing productivity and improving culture at the district, school, staff, and classroom levels.
The workshop uses metaphor and narrative as a way to make happiness advantage research come to life. In The Orange Frog, the main character is a frog named Spark who turns “orange” among an island of green frogs. Spark is a positive outlier, adaptive with an optimistic mindset open to change. Spark provides social support for the rest of the team — not causing transformation per se, but through inspiring and influencing it.
After learning to embrace the benefits of The Happiness Advantage, workshop participants are encouraged to share these benefits with others leading to a positive “ripple effect” that spreads throughout the district. Participants develop new positive habits and learn how-to incorporate the practices of resilient leaders, becoming more adaptable and capable of capitalizing on opportunities and growing through challenges and adversity.
Watch: How to Spark Happiness and Increase Positivity in Education
