Fostering Positive Education and Well-Being: Insights with Katrina Mankani

In this episode, Katrina Mankani, Director of Jumeirah International Nurseries, Board Member of Fortes Education, and Director of Innovation and Positive Education at Fortes Education, shares her remarkable journey from teaching assistant to educational leader. 

She reveals how implementing positive education and the PERMA model has transformed her school's culture, improving the well-being of both students and staff. Katrina offers practical insights on balancing innovation with stability, from embracing AI to fostering gratitude, while sharing actionable strategies for educational leaders navigating today's rapidly evolving landscape.

Teach Middle East Magazine is the premier platform for educators and the entire education sector in the Middle East and beyond. Our vision is to equip educators with the materials and tools they need, to function optimally in and out of the classroom. We provide a space for educators to connect and find inspiration, resources, and forums to enhance their teaching techniques, methodologies, and personal development. We connect education suppliers and service providers to the people who make the buying decisions in schools.

Visit our website https://linktr.ee/teachmiddleeast.

Tweet us: https://twitter.com/teachmiddleeast

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teachmiddleeast/.

Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson

Connect with Leisa Grace:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/leisagrace

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leisagrace/

Chapters

• 0:33 Positive Education in School Leadership
• 11:32 Promoting Well-Being in Schools Through Purpose
• 19:02 Navigating Innovation and Empowerment in Education

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

You are listening to the Teach Middle East podcast connecting, developing and empowering educators.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Hi everyone. This is Lisa Grace coming to you with another episode of the Teach Middle East podcast. I was just offline talking to Katrina working out her many hats, but I'm happy to have Katrina Mankani on the podcast with me today and I'm going to make my best attempt at introducing the lady that wears many hats. So she is the director of Jumeirah International Nurseries, but she's also a board member of Fortis Education. She is also see, I told you there are several hats here she's also the Director of Positive Education and Innovation at Fortis Education. Did I nail them all, katrina?

Speaker 3: 1:24

You did. Lisa, thank you very much, and it's such a pleasure to be with you today on the podcast. I'm sure you're the lady that wears even more hats and definitely knows how to get the best out of the people that come from her podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:38

I try. The listeners know I try because I love a good chat, and I love a good chat about education, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you today about innovations in educational leadership. Wow, what a mouthful. Let me start with a little bit of history, though, katrina. What got you into education? What's your leading into this role? Where did it start?

Speaker 3: 2:02

First of all, it was the passion to do something good, and it sounds very hallmarky, but that was all it was about. I actually got my master's in public administration. I wanted to work in the government, but the life brought me far away from my country of birth and I ended up here in Dubai, and at a very young age I came across the Jumeirah International Nursery, where I have actually walked my way up from a teaching assistant to a teacher, to a nursery manager and then, from 2015, I'm the managing director, and so that was my journey. Meanwhile, I also studied a lot about students well-being, mental health and value-based education, and that helped me to grow. The in the beginning was called education and human values in one of our schools, in Region International School, and then it all graduated into positive education, which is now the ethos of Fortis Education.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Talk to me a little bit about positive education and why we ought to be paying attention to that at the moment.

Speaker 3: 3:04

There are many reasons. So, first of all, positive education. What is it? You can define it in different ways. The way we define it at our schools is that it's a science of education at its best, and it's when you put the well-being of the child at the heart of education. So we, as teachers, need to remember we don't teach math or science or English. We teach a student, and that student needs to be taught holistically. So first you need to build a rapport with them, you need to understand their predicament, you need to know how to react to their successes and failures in a way that build more resilience and trust rather than just mere compliance. So positive education is about like this parallel stream of extra attention that teachers and leaders need to pay to.

Speaker 2: 3:52

Yeah, I'm actually quite interested in understanding the effects that you have seen in your schools with the implementation of positive education. Where have you seen the biggest changes?

Speaker 3: 4:06

The changes are massive. Actually. An interesting thing is that the changes are fast and slow at the same time. They're small and incrementally big at the same time as well. So let me just give you examples. So first of all, all ford's education teachers have to go through positive education training, all our school teachers. When they arrive to our schools for three days, they spend their time during induction with me and my team and we tell them take your teacher's hat off, let's talk about you as people. So first let's see how can you implement PERMA.

Speaker 3: 4:42

You know basically the theory of well-being into your life. How do you build positive emotions in your life? How do you build relationship? What is your engagement level? You know what is your accomplishment and how you promote it in your life. How do you build relationship? What is your engagement level? You know what is your accomplishment and how you promote it in your life. What's your meaning and purpose? And then, when we make them think about themselves, we basically say now how do you bring it into your classroom?

Speaker 3: 5:03

And we have seen the change, first of all in the people that come to us when this is the first interaction that they have with the school. That makes them feel very comfortable about their choice of a workplace and then, as they enter into the day-to-day work, there is an atmosphere of support of everybody in striving towards this right. So that's in terms of teachers. And yes, sometimes we do it right, sometimes we do it wrong. And let's just face it, everybody comes with a different baseline. Somebody is just by nature more grateful than others, somebody is more loving than others, and that's just fine. And the key here is just to accept that we are all different and build on each other's strengths rather than weaknesses. And I guess one of the benefits of this mindset in our school that we constantly talk about strengths what's your strengths, what's my strengths? Let's build on each other's strengths rather than focus on what we are doing wrong. Let's correct what we are doing wrong and remind ourselves that failure is a first attempt in learning. It's not the end.

Speaker 3: 6:06

And with the students, we've seen a lot of things. First of all, because we start teaching them about this from a very young age, we tend to have children who are more self-aware. We have students at the age of five and six who can explain to you what self-control is and what perseverance is, which is great. Now, as they grow. Of course they go through their own turbulations and turbulence and they're changing. They're growing into teenagers, but overall we have a very positive, supportive environment in the school.

Speaker 3: 6:38

We don't have behavior policy. We have restorative justice policy and that policy is underpinned not by the school rules but by our code of character and conduct, which was actually written by students themselves and which answers the question if we were all to live the happy life which has positive emotions, accomplishment, engagement, relationship, meaning and purpose and health, how would it look, feel and sound in school? And the students themselves wrote this. So for good relationship, we need to treat others as we want to be treated. We need to blah, blah, blah and so all of this they've written and this is all over the school. It's our code of character that everybody pledges to abide to. However, this atmosphere is very it's intangible, so it needs constant reinforcement. So you know, if we talk about leadership, leaders must reinforce it through their everyday interaction with everybody, with their teams and with students, with parents. So it's a lot of work actually to keep this afloat.

Speaker 2: 7:43

So let me get practical with you, then, katrina, because, let's say, a student's behavior is not up to scratch. How does this restorative justice practice come into play? Like? What does it look like if a child is persistently misbehaving? What happens?

Speaker 3: 7:59

Okay.

Speaker 3: 8:00

So, first of all, persistent misbehavior has various reasons. So we always say that if somebody is persistently showing the behavior that is deviating from the norm, we need to ask ourselves as teachers, where is the need or where is the strength? So there must be one of two. It's either the strength is not met right let's say the student is bored in class or there must be different reasons for this. There can be a strength here or there is a need the student feels unsupported. So we need to address one of the two. If it's not the need of the strengths, or if the misbehavior is not happening in the school, like in the classroom environment, but let's say, in the break with another student and there is a constant fight, right, then we need to again go back to okay, how do we teach this young adults if we're talking about teenagers to actually reconcile their differences? So, practically, let me tell you how it works in practice. So restorative justice is built on four R's respect, responsibility, repair and reintegration. So of course we teach them to respect each other and we talk a lot about it. Of course we tell them that for every disrespect becomes responsibility that is causing effect. But the key for restorative justice is the reparation, and the reparation is basically the punishment. So there is no punishment per se, there is a reparation. And let's say simply, if the student broke a table, it's very easy, you repair a table, but if they if they broke relationship, what do they repair? That's where the restorative conversations come in. So I'll give you an example. So let's talk about I.

Speaker 3: 9:41

I had a case last year with two girls that were actually troubling each other for the past one and a half years and that all started in primary. Now they're're in secondary, it's year seven, it's September, and it started again. So myself and a head of here met them and there was a whole restorative conversation plan that was built on taking their differences onto a third story. So I'll give you an example of what I did. I said ladies, it looks like there's a problem that both of you are facing and that problem is your common misunderstanding. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 3: 10:17

So you bring them to a common problem because both of them don't like what's happening, and then you ask each one of them to describe what they're facing and how they're feeling. And it's very interesting because when one of them was describing and when she does this is how I feel the other one was looking and almost in surprise and in disbelief because she didn't think that's how she was feeling. And each one was given a word and then each one that was given the chance to suggest the reparation and the future steps and what they've agreed to each other that the most repairing thing for them would be to just avoid each other. All right, and how to avoid each other. They literally we were going through examples. So if you meet each other in the corridor, how are you going to avoid each other? If somebody invites you to the same party, how are you?

Speaker 3: 11:05

going to avoid each other and I was asking them this to answer these questions and decide together. So in the end they walked in and, though they went other separate ways, they worked out through a solution together.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Yeah, I like that. I was thinking how are they avoiding each other in the same school, like a separate entrance or like what was going on there? But I love the fact that they came up with the solutions themselves and, yeah, thank you so much. That was a really good example. I want to talk a little bit about the well-being piece to your role. Well-being is such a how do I put this without offending all the well-being warriors? It's such a hairy fairy concept when it comes to schools, because there's such a misunderstanding in the space as to what schools can do to help to increase well-being, especially among staff. Some think it's chocolates and donuts, which I'm like you're giving them sugar. That is just not it. Some think it's all these little notes in my cubbyhole periphery. What are your thoughts on what drives well-being in schools?

Speaker 3: 12:12

I'm actually with you on this. I don't think that donut makes anybody feel better. They just get some heartburn after that and guilt feeling. We need to go back to again the science of well-being. What really gives people the well-being? First of all, understanding your meaning and purpose. What are you here for? What do you wake up every morning for? Why do you come to school?

Speaker 3: 12:35

When we do the training with the teachers, I ask them to think through their life journey, get the strengths from all the crucibles they had on the way, like basically the moments that made them stronger and then write their mission statement and then compare it to the mission statement of Fortress Education and say do they meet? And if they meet, if you're in the right place, you're in the right place. You just need to continue leaving your mission statement inside our school and inside the mission statement and remind yourself every time about this. Whenever you wake up and you don't know why you need to go to work, you remind yourself about your mission statement. So, mission and purpose. Next, relationship how do we promote relationship between each other? So the people in their department are they supporting each other? The line managers are they supporting? Do teachers know who to lean in, do they know who to go and talk to when they need help, right? Next accomplishment we don't have to all become the best teacher of the year in Dubai to feel accomplished. How do we make each other feel accomplished, right? How do we celebrate? So those notes they can work when they actually are on point right, so they are for something. So you can create a gratitude wall, you can create a certain mechanism where you know, like what we have in school, we have like a gratitude service, if you feel that somebody has done something that you want to celebrate, and you put it on that survey and you actually or we have a culture actually where people by themselves decide to post a gratitude message to the whole school, so I want to say that today that person helped me so much, blah, blah, blah. And it happens in the culture Then.

Speaker 3: 14:18

So engagement, how? What is engagement actually? So by you know, mihi chicks and mihi flow theory says that engage. People go into the engagement channel, the flow channel, when the challenge is a little bit higher than the skill, just a little bit. So if the challenge is so high that people are very anxious, but when the challenge is too low, then they become bored. So it's the same thing in the classroom. It's differentiation. So how do we as leaders, you know, if we talk about innovative leaders, how do we as leaders understand? How do we differentiate? Who do we give more support than others?

Speaker 3: 14:54

And then we go to the last one, the positive emotions. You know Barbara Fredrickson talks about broad and build. So broaden your understanding of what is a positive emotion and what kind of makes you feel good, and then build the frequency of it. So maybe it's not about donuts, but it's about some kind of fun. So what I noticed is that when in St Mark's school we started switching on music on Fridays after the students like, while the students were going home, people were dancing in the corridors. Small thing, but it builds the frequency of your positive emotions. And then we started changing the songs so that people would be like, oh, what's the song today? And then we asked people to suggest their songs. So small things can create a massive difference if we look at the science of what makes people happy, but it's definitely not just Donald's.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yeah, and I also think an atmosphere of safety to say what one thinks safety, to know that they are being heard, and also the respect of one's time, where they know someone will not infringe on their personal time or space. These things lead people to feel well. If I know that I will not be bombarded at 5pm on a Friday with crazy emails from school, I will feel better. That helps my well-being. So things of that nature.

Speaker 3: 16:16

You know, lisa, this is a very interesting topic for me because we use Microsoft Teams and what we have learned that we have to put the responsibility for not being bombarded to the person who doesn't want to be bombarded. Because let me give you an example there are some teachers who have additional responsibilities in the school or who have children and da-da-da-da-da and they prefer actually to work at 8 o'clock in the evening. Right Now. Microsoft Teams just recently had a function where you can delay the message. Just recently, and email had it before. So that was an etiquette, that if you're sending an email, choose the time when you want it to be delivered With the Teams you can do it before. So that was an etiquette, that if you're sending an email, choose the time when you want it to be delivered With the Teams. You can do it now.

Speaker 3: 17:02

But before we used to say that if you don't want to be bombarded after 5 pm, microsoft Teams has a setting that says after 5 pm, switch off the notification. But you as an individual, you switch off notification because it suits your work rules. But I cannot prescribe the rules of work to those people who want to work after hours because they feel less anxious next morning when they actually open their computer at eight o'clock while they're drinking night cup. Right, so that helps with. So what I'm saying is it helps to put the responsibility on each individual for their own well-being rather than make it everybody's responsibility.

Speaker 2: 17:46

Yes, I like that, but also, I just think, institutional parameters and expectations, because I might turn off my notifications and go in the next morning and someone says to me in a stern voice did you not see the email I sent to you at 7.55 pm?

Speaker 3: 18:02

You are absolutely right, Lisa. So what we are doing is that we have many years ago we said that culture that don't expect to receive a reply after 5 pm actually, after 4.30 for teachers, after 5 for leaders. Don't expect to receive, at least unless it's something urgent. And if it's something urgent, don't do it on Teams, do it on WhatsApp. That's our culture. But if it's not urgent, you can send it. But you, if you receive it at 7 pm, don't be offended that it came to you at 7 pm because you're not expected to check.

Speaker 2: 18:34

Yeah, ok, awesome. I'm a very I'm sticklish for little things like that, because when people talk to me about wellbeing, because I taught for so long and I've worked in so many schools and I've led schools, I know that the theory of wellbeing and the practice thereof are far apart in many cases. So I'm very kind of sticklish. I hope you understand. Let's put your innovation hat on now, katrina, and let's talk leadership and innovation. Innovation is very messy. How do we maintain a stable learning environment while still looking to innovate and make those changes that are needed, especially when it comes to things like education technology or new methodologies? How do we maintain stability and innovation that crazy balance.

Speaker 3: 19:24

It goes back to setting the stage for your ethos again from the very beginning. Hey, we're an innovative school, we're a learning school. We learn and we get into learning pit, and that's also normal. And we are going to step into this vulnerability of sitting in the pit and not knowing how to do it, and it will be messy, but then we will prototype, we will ideate, we will prototype, we will fail and then we will come up with the final version that we may need to reiterate again after some time, but it's all normal. So I guess normalizing that innovation is messy and it's never ending, and we feel it now very much with AI.

Speaker 3: 20:09

The way we went around it is that we took a lot of our leaders from various phases and departments and even from head office and we send them for a very long AI in-person training and then after that we said, ok, now we tinker with this and we tinker in our smaller groups and let's see where we go with it, and so we ended up with a pretty good structure. After one year of tinkering and being in this mess of innovation, we are now in a validation state and then we will reiterate how it works. But the world is moving so fast and unfortunately, education is always behind. Teachers today know less about AI than the students. We need to catch up if we want to be relevant and if we really want to prepare our students to some degree, yeah, as much as we try to be at the cutting edge, is moving faster than I think we can.

Speaker 2: 21:03

I think, just because education has historically been a little bit latent in how it responds to change, we are going to have to double down our efforts, especially in this AI age, to be able to be even on par, let alone ahead, of our students. In your experience, though, what are some of the most effective strategies leaders can adopt to empower their staff to take ownership of their roles in driving innovation in school? It's a mouthful, but I want to know how can leaders take that empowerment to their staff to allow them to feel safe and to take ownership of driving that innovation, because it can't go anywhere unless the staff drive it.

Speaker 3: 21:52

I always say think about what is in it for them. Will this innovation make their work faster, more efficient or more clunky and slower? If it's more clunky and slower, don't expect them to innovate in this or use it. They will just kill it, and that's normal. That's human nature. So how do we make it? How do we sell it to them so that it is beneficial for them? So either you remove something else and say, okay, if you do this kind of system, then you don't need to do that kind of system. And even if, for some time, you are running two different systems, it's fine. And we did that many years ago when I don't know if you're aware about CenturyTech. It was a very nice AI system. So when we were testing it, we just said to some teachers you don't need to evaluate students based on our normal system if you use CenturyTech and you do your evaluation there. Right. And then slowly we built our evaluation differently. But that is how we engage the first adopters and those who were testing it and bringing their feedback to us.

Speaker 2: 22:59

Yeah, I think when we think about empowering our staff as well, I often wonder how much autonomy the staff have on choosing their own learning opportunities, because a lot of it tends to sometimes in some schools be very prescriptive. You will take this course, you will go to this event, rather than the staff coming and going.

Speaker 2: 23:22

I would like to take this course because it fits with my mission and vision and who I am and my purpose as an educator. Or I'd like to attend this conference because there are these presenters and I would love to hear their viewpoints on X or Y. And so I wonder, especially in your schools, what opportunities are there for staff to choose their own learning opportunities?

Speaker 3: 23:44

Yeah, so in both St Mark School and Region International School, we do both. We of course prescribe certain trainings that everybody needs to be aware of, but there is also an opportunity for internal CPD, which is by choice, you know, and we run parallel streams and then we do send people for the other training, the outside training, which is again by their choice. They just need to. It depends on where, but there is an opportunity to choose. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 24:13

Yeah, and what's the advantage of doing both? What's the advantage of having that internal stuff and that external stuff in your estimation?

Speaker 3: 24:21

Every school, I'm sure, has its own way right, its own way of learning and managing. Learning and managing many things. For us, for example, it's positive education, so we need to update people in our ways. Learning and managing many things. For us, for example, it's positive education, so we need to update people in our ways, so they need to know how we do things. So it's in all the non-negotiables. And then, of course, everybody is on a different path in terms of a different stage of their learning. So whatever makes sense for them and whatever their interest is also respected, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:54

So we've talked innovation, we've talked well-being, we've talked leadership. Let's talk about you for a second. What are you excited about right now in education?

Speaker 3: 25:03

Oh, I'm actually excited and scared at the same time, because I wonder how our world is going to change in a very short period of time. What's going to happen in five years Before I could at least draw an outline? Now I don't know, and what I question myself as an educator, what skills really matter in school. So I think I'm in a more privileged position here, because for many years I've been a promoter of positive education and I still think that this is one of the most valuable skills that we can teach children how to take care of their well-being and how to understand themselves as humans. That is going to stay. So the resilience, the adaptability, so all the personal skills that we're teaching in our schools, they will stay even if everything else fails. But what else? How quick will the exam boards respond to the current situation? How will the university admission change? So that is things that keep me up at night.

Speaker 2: 26:07

I don't want them to keep you up, I want to know it. I hope they're not making you lack sleep.

Speaker 3: 26:12

No, I tell you, lisa, I was last week, I was in Harvard. I was at Harvard doing the program in perils and promise of technology, and the whole course was just about AI, and what I understood in the end of the week is just one simple thing Even the Harvard professors don't know what's going to happen in five years, so we all can just put very fair predictions. So we just see how it unfolds.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Wow, what are you reading currently? That's my last question. I love to ask this question because when I talk to smart people, I want to know what they're reading.

Speaker 3: 26:48

I'm one of those people that reads multiple books at the same time based on my mood, and recently I'm actually deep into podcasts. I find them super interesting. I just finished Elon Musk's biography the last one. It's fascinating how one human can bring so much innovation in the world, fascinating and actually what it takes. You know all the hard work and, yes, he's a Merrick, but wow, what he created is incredible. And the other book that I have finished recently was Untethered Soul by Michael Singer Awesome.

Speaker 2: 27:25

Thank you for being on the podcast, katrina, thank you.

Speaker 3: 27:28

Thank you so much. It's been really wonderful to talk to you and thank you for all your thought provoking questions. You're welcome.

Speaker 1: 27:38

Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmiddleeastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.