Nurturing ‘Schools’ as Ecosystems for Collective Flourishing Among Children
摘要
Schools are vivacious spaces as they prepare young children to develop their unique individual façades, nurture and instill human qualities while also preparing them for the labour market. Schooling is considered crucial to children’s happiness due to the synergy that exists between happiness and learning. If children are happy at school, enjoy what they learn, appreciate their relationships with peers and teachers; they are likely to flourish and enact their unique potentials in an optimal way. The current chapter commences by locating schools as ecosystems for flourishing of children and adolescents and the role of schools in creating an enabling environment for promoting the credos of positivity. It expounds the components of positive schooling viz. care, trust, hope, motivation, inclusion, diversity that are indeed optimal for their continued and holistic development by providing them a platform for self-exploration to enable them to evolve into adult citizens engaged in meaningful, altruistic relationships based on individual and collective humanistic values. Contextualizing the post pandemic scenario of school education, the chapter further elucidates the contemporary risk factors for the well-being of school going children at multiple levels viz. school students, teachers, school administration and parents. All these risk factors compound to augmented stress among school students, decreased social connection that may lead to increased isolation, experience of mental health challenges which get further blemished by a multitude of inequitable practices within the school system. The chapter concludes by explicating multifaceted strategies for creating healthy school contexts that nurture flourishing of students. Fostering vigorous partnerships with teachers and parents, it divulges strengths-based pathways for various stakeholders that aim at creating a culture of appreciation in schools that rewards bonding, promotes altruistic self-identities, instills hope and builds/strengthens social, emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and moral competencies among children.