Jolanta Burke

4 results

Members of the wellbeing committee at St Wolstan’s Community School in Celbridge, Co Kildare. They are teachers Laura Gerraghty and Margaret Bennett, and pupils Rosaleen Byrne (15), Codi Long (15), Swati Joshi (14) and Beth Corry (17). Photograph: Aidan Crawley
New study reveals ‘killjoy’ impact of progressing through secondary school

The wellbeing of Irish secondary school students decreases steadily from first year through to sixth, with girls suffering more of a decline than boys(...)

Happy days: children enjoy the adventure of going away and having their parents to themselves for seven days
Pack your bags to give children ‘happiness anchors’

When one of my teenage sons started rhapsodising at the dinner table one dark winter’s evening about how that summer’s holiday had been “one of the be(...)

People who have been bullied at school tend to be more optimistic than their peers when they face negative situations in the future. Illustration: iStockphoto
Moderate adversity can make you a happier person

School’s out and, for some, leaving school behind also means leaving bullying behind. They carry the scars – but it’s not all bad news. As you might e(...)

Jolanta Burke, positive psychologist and PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin, says that the kind of feedback you give a child is crucial.Photograph: Eric Luke
‘We’ll fix it’ parents do their children no favours

We all want our children to be happy and the temptation, in this era of “over-parenting”, is to rush in to try to fix their problems. A child down (...)