Project Spark Ignites a Focus on Staff Health & Happiness
posted February 16, 2021
As you may have seen, a new happiness program for students called Project Orange is coming soon to Cardinal CSD. A similar program has been in place since 2010 (more formally since 2015) for our staff called Project Spark. Both programs are based on The Happiness Advantage and The Orange Frog by New York Times bestselling author Shawn Achor.
Achor’s guiding principle is that “happiness is not the belief that everything is great, happiness is the belief that change is possible.”
The program was implemented for Cardinal CSD staff after a Pennsylvania State University study revealed high levels of stress amongst teachers, how that stress negatively affects students and gave suggestions on how to combat the growing issue.
“Project Spark was started because of a huge concern for the mental well-being of my teachers, faculty and staff, knowing that education is a very stressful job,” Superintendent Joel Pedersen explains.
The Project Spark program focuses on four areas of health: emotional, physical, financial, and spiritual. It implements strategies from Achor’s books to foster positivity such as utilizing gratitudes, meditation, and making conscious acts of kindness.
“We identified that we need to do little things to increase happiness in our faculty and staff,” Mr. Pedersen says. “There are people that are struggling with emotional health, financial health, physical health, or spiritual health.”
In order to support staff in all four of those areas, Cardinal has staff members break up into growth groups that match their interests and beliefs. The groups take part in different activities that support the different areas of health such as yoga classes, family events, financial classes, and more.
Some of these activities are even led by staff members who are experienced in the activity and happy to share with co-workers.
“Our growth group through Project Spark opened the opportunity for faith-based conversations within our staff and provided a community for members to ask for support and prayer,” says Taylor Torres, third grade Cardinal teacher and spiritual health coach. “The deeper relationships we formed allowed us to come alongside each other to work through personal struggles and future goals with a spiritual lens.”
Aimee Sivak, at risk coordinator and director of the Cardinal Before and After School Daycare program, has found a similar sense of community by partaking in Cardinal’s yoga classes.
“The community of staff who bought into the idea of yoga at work supported me to keep going; to keep attending,” Ms. Sivak says. “Poor posture from screen time, long commute time, demands of the job left me needing an outlet. I appreciated yoga at work because it left me feeling physically and mentally refreshed.”
This year, due to COVID-19, growth groups and classes have been through virtual means, but it’s made their effect and impact more evident as staff members ask, “when can yoga come back?”
We hope it and other classes can return soon, but in the meantime, we are determined to keep up Project Spark’s positivity and feeling of community with virtual cooking classes, trivia nights, and other safe activities. We know the mental and physical health of our staff is more important than ever during these times.
It is our goal for this program to increase the happiness and satisfaction our staff members receive from their jobs and that they utilize the program’s strategies for positivity and health in all areas of their lives.
Voted a top workplace in Iowa two years in a row, we hope that this is proof that our program is helping our staff members release stress, find community, and choose positivity. We are excited to see what Project Orange will do for our students as they embark on a similar program, coming soon.
