An exciting new direction in education, building confidence, optimism and success in young people.

In a world first, Geelong Grammar School is setting a new direction in education, with the opening of an innovative $16M Handbury Centre for Wellbeing, and a new approach to teaching and learning using Positive Psychology in collaboration with leading US psychologist Professor Martin Seligman, Fox Professor of Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Geelong Grammar School has recognised that young people today need strategies that will help them deal successfully with modern life. We want to shine light on some of the issues facing young people today: drugs, depression, obesity, alcohol, eating disorders, suicide, bullying and peer group pressure. We want our students to feel confident about discussing these issues openly: to want to seek out information for themselves. We want them to understand how their own responses to modern day stresses impact on their health and wellbeing; how they can learn to recognise the symptoms of those stresses and how they can do something to help themselves.

These exciting developments extend further the educational thinking that led to the construction and development of the School's Timbertop campus more than 50 years ago. The educational principles of Timbertop were based on the work of Kurt Hahn, a German educator who believed that "there is more in you than you think." He believed that if young people were given challenges in their lives and were of service to others, they would themselves be happy.  Over 50 years later, Timbertop has proved this to be true. 

Education at Timbertop is about building self confidence, sensitivity - which includes spirituality and compassion -  service to the School and the wider community and the strengthening of the mind and body. The programme at Timbertop has always been about expanding a student’s inner-self and developing resiliency through physical activity. Generations of students who have experienced Timbertop have discovered their inner strength and abilities that they did not know they had. The Timbertop model has been followed by other schools in Australia and around the world.

For more information on Wellbeing and Positive Psychology at Geelong Grammar School contact positivepsychology@ggs.vic.edu.au