

Like not winning in a contest or getting bad grades on a past test.

This may sound similar to Positive Reframing but that is when you can’t change the incident. Instead of focusing on the bad, teach students to focus primarily on thoughts and events that lead to action-oriented solutions. As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. You can reframe any failure or unpleasant event as a positive. Seize the opportunity by promoting the perspective that they did well in the other subjects and participating in the competition is actually great preparation for better future performance. A student who received bad grades for a certain subject or did not win a recent competition may feel let down. Teachers can challenge students to seek positive ways of evaluating an event. Promoting optimism includes encouraging positive self-talk, encouraging your students to try out something new, teaching them to help others and appreciate them, and seeking joy even if they feel they can’t find it. You and your fellow teachers can do this. Promoting realistic optimism in the classroom helps them to have positive role models. Helping your students to be optimistic helps them to conquer obstacles and face any challenges in the future. Now that schools have been operating normally again, it is more important now than ever for school leaders to ensure the welfare of their students. Schools have been under enormous pressure to ensure that education for the students had as little disruption as possible when the Covid-19 outbreak began. Sometimes we can’t help but focus on the negative even when they are insignificant compared to other positive instances. Why don’t we focus on having optimism? You are not alone, it’s our nature to fixate on bad news, a phenomenon known to psychologists as negativity bias. As human beings, we tend to give more importance to negative experiences than to positive or neutral experiences.
