Watering the Root: Developing A Positive Psychology Well-being Teacher Training Program Applying the Mutual Value Theory

Teacher stress has been a long-term problem in the field of education. A three-year global pandemic has only exacerbated this crisis. Although awareness and implementations have both been raised to address this issue, little effect has been found. This capstone project intends to address this gap by proposing a new well-being teacher training program. Drawing on concepts from the field of positive psychology, using watering the root as an analogy and the mutual value theory as a theoretical framework, I designed a program called Watering the Root Teacher Well-being Training (WR-TWT) Program, which can be implemented in the school settings. The purpose of this program is to increase K-12 teacher well-being and overall quality of life through improving teachers’ well-being skills, abilities, and capacities in eight different areas called the eight roots of life: 1) cognitive, 2) psychological, 3) emotional, 4) social, 5) moral, 6) meaningful, 7) habitual, and 8) spiritual. The WR-TWT program provides educational researchers, educators, and direct k-12 teachers a new lens to understand and improve teacher well-being at work while potentially building well-being skills, capacities, and capabilities. Theoretical framework, detailed program curriculum descriptions, schedules, preparation steps, and implementation guidelines are also provided in this paper.