How Anna Partridge brings positive psychology into school life

For Australian educator Anna Partridge, IPPA is a place to exchange ideas with the people shaping positive psychology and bring fresh thinking back to school.

Anna Partridge had spent time studying Martin Seligman’s work and considering what it could mean for the students in her care. Then, during an IPPA Clinical Division fireside chat, she had the opportunity to ask him a question herself.

The exchange helped sharpen the direction of her work in schools. For an educator working to make student wellbeing part of everyday school life, that conversation stands out.

Her interest in positive psychology began much closer to home. As a military spouse, Anna wanted to help her children develop resilience as they moved and navigated constant change. In her teaching, she was also seeing students whose mental health difficulties were getting in the way of learning.

These experiences led her to Seligman’s PERMA model and a question that continues to guide her work, particularly:

How could schools help students build wellbeing skills earlier?

Making room for wellbeing in the school day

Today, Anna is Director of Senior School at Canberra Girls Grammar School in Australia and President-Elect of IPPA’s Education Division. Her work involves turning that question into decisions about teaching, pastoral care, and how a school talks about wellbeing.

“Positive psychology allows me to drive the strategic direction of pastoral care in my school to be more proactive than reactive,” she says.

At her school, the approach includes a shared language around PERMAH. Seligman’s PERMA model describes positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. The school includes health through the additional H, bringing exercise, sleep, and nutrition into the conversation.

• PPositive emotion
• EEngagement
• RRelationships
• MMeaning
• AAccomplishment
• HHealth

Students have a dedicated wellbeing skills lesson every two weeks. Alongside those lessons, Anna works with teachers to incorporate positive psychology into their classroom practice. Her ambition is to make the approach part of the school’s culture, with staff and students using a common framework.

“My role is to drive this throughout the school so we build a culture of PERMAH.”

For fellow educators, the useful detail is how these elements fit together. There is time for students to develop skills, support for teachers to apply the ideas, and language that connects the work across the school. It offers a concrete starting point for considering how wellbeing fits into their own setting.

A community to think with

Anna joined IPPA to learn from others working in positive education and contribute her own experience. She describes gaining “an instant network of people I can talk to for resources, to bounce ideas around”.

That network has given her opportunities to participate in several different ways. She has enjoyed hosting Education Division webinars and judging the SIPPA awards, where she encountered students’ work from around the world. “Such an inspiration,” she says of the experience.

As President-Elect, she has also been helping develop regional leads within the Education Division, connecting people with local knowledge who can support initiatives in their own schools and communities. It is a way of connecting an international network to the places where the work happens.

Ask Anna what she might do in another career, and she initially suggests positive psychology or coaching, before acknowledging that she already spends much of her day doing related work with staff and students. Her other choice is travel writing, “so I could have adventures all around the world.”

For now, her international connections are helping her explore a question with very practical consequences at home: what can schools do today to help young people flourish?