Our intervention programs in schools focus on the well-being of educational staff and pupils. We see teachers as agents of meaningful change and central figures in influencing children and adolescents who are in the midst of the ongoing process of personal, educational, social, and emotional development. Our positive psychology intervention programs are offered in the format of a school-wide continuing education program that extends over two academic years for a group with up to 20 participants. Teachers who participate in the program can earn continuing education credit for 60 semester hours (30 each year). The program takes teachers on a personal and professional journey that begins with creating a space for a pedagogical, personal, and meaningful discussion within their busy daily routine. This space enables the participants to reflect upon the work of educating and teaching, their professional identity as teachers, the well-being of educational staff and pupils, and practices that promote optimal teaching and learning processes derived from the research and application of positive psychology in education. The Maytiv Center’s intervention programs include a research component that investigates the programs’ impact on teachers and pupils. The research is conducted with the participants at the start and end of the program and had been approved by the Israeli Ministry of Education’s chief scientist. Two wide-ranging studies to evaluate the interventions, which were conducted in recent years and published in internationally renowned research journals, show a clear connection between participation in the program and a decrease in symptoms such as anxiety and depression, an increase in positive feelings and optimism, improved self-image, greater sense of self efficacy, a decline in the level of violence at schools, and an improvement in pupils’ achievements that is expressed in a discernible rise in grade point averages.
