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, You'll find free lesson plans in the Sustainable Happiness and Health Education Teachers Guide.,


Ask them to interview the happiness person they know (provide some guiding questions for them). The idea with this activity is for them to figure out for themselves who strikes them as a happy person. Is it someone who is generous? Or thoughtful? Always supportive? Bubbly? Kind? One of the things you may instruct them ask is "how have challenges in your life helped you to understand happiness?" Also, "what advice would you give for living a happy life?"

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Young students will likely say that their parents and friends (including pets) have helped them to learn about happiness.
Older students are more likely to see their friends and the media as the current influences on their views of happiness.
If students don't readily suggest that they have learned about happiness from Nature, guide them toward this awareness. For example, you could ask them to write in their journal about one of their happiest or most enjoyable experiences in a natural environment.
Introduce students to highlights from research about happiness. There are excellent articles and books on positive psychology.(The Teachers Guide mentioned above also includes these highlights)

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This could include bringing in magazine advertisements, finding products that use the word "happy" in the product name, finding internet advertisements that market products using happiness (e.g. Coca Cola's happiness truck). Encourage students to identify how the ads are associating happiness with material consumption. Are they effective? i.e. persuasive?

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Sustainable happiness reinforces the notion that we are all choice makers and that we can make choices on a daily basis that contribute to, or detract from, happiness and well-being. Therefore, when you are creating lessons, it's ideal to provide choices withing the assignment. Some gratitude activities include:
keeping a gratitude journal for a week (or two); the student lists 3-5 things each day that she/he is grateful for
writing a gratitude letter, and delivering it
creating an appreciation wall (in the classroom or the school)

, The sample above will help you to design a chart.
 (See the video below to learn how to do this)

, This could be someone they know personally, or someone they have read about.


Discuss with the class what the character traits or attributes of a sustainable happiness hero might be. Offer various options for the students to "present" their sustainable happiness hero: a conventional presentation, a poem, a song, through drawing or painting, writing a story, etc.
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They could try having a Buy Nothing Day - they try not to purchase anything for a day
They could try to reduce their consumption of a non-renewable resource
They could try to reduce their waste (e.g. reducing fast food consumption can reduce waste generation)
They could have a "techno fast" - reduce their screen time, particularly cell phone use and see how this makes them feel and what other things they do with their time.
, Work with them to develop projects (individual or group projects) that bring the ideas into action.

Familiarize yourself with the concept of sustainable happiness through reading articles on the topic and completing various activities that help you to understand its relevance to your life, both personally and professionally.
Use existing lesson plans or create your own lessons to help your students explore sustainable happiness for themselves.
Encourage students to discover what happiness means to them.
Help students to explore who, or what, has taught them about happiness.
Develop activities that assist students to develop happiness media literacy, looking at how happiness has become associated with material consumption.
Provide opportunities for students to express gratitude and appreciation.
Have students complete a Sustainable Happiness Footprint Chart for a week.
Guide students in the process of creating an interdependence map.
Have students identify a sustainable happiness hero.
Incorporate activities that help students to develop and appreciate compassion.

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Assign a "shifting consumption" activity that helps students to explore choices for living more sustainably.
Have students identify how sustainable happiness could help to resolve a local or global 'problem'.

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Brainstorm with students about ideas for sharing sustainable happiness with others.
Share your sustainable happiness lessons with other teachers.
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