Helping Children Learn, Thrive, and Become Themselves

Positive psychology and education resources for teachers, educators, and schools who want children/young people to feel well, function well, and grow into their best selves.

Welcome to GrowHumans, a space for teachers, school leaders, and education professionals who believe that school are much more than grades and test scores. Here, we bring together positive psychology and education to support you in developing children and students’ well-being, resilience, character strengths, life-skills, focused attention, and healthy relationships – alongside academic achievement.

Parents are welcome here too, and will find insights they can use at home. But the heart of this website beats in the classroom, staffroom, and school corridors.

What is GrowHumans?

GrowHumans project is a result of a more than 20 years of translating scientific insights from positive psychology into everyday practice in schools.

Our core question is simple: How can we create learning environments where students not only perform well but also feel well – emotionally, socially, and personally?

On this website, you’ll find clear explanations, research-based insights, and practical suggestions designed for real classrooms, real teachers, and real schools.
Read more about GrowHumans ...

GrowHumans project was created for teachers and education professionals, who:

Want children and teenagers to build deep, long-lasting knowledge and real-life skills – not just memorise facts.
Care about their students' mental health, motivation, and character, not only their grades.
Believe schools help shape who young people become, not only what they know.

While the main focus is on education professionals, parents who want to support their children’s resilience, hope, motivation, and emotional well-being, will also find ideas and guidance they can adapt to family life. (Our Aparenttly website is devoted specifically to parenting topics, but parents are very welcome to explore the content here as well.)

Who is this website for?

What you’ll

find on GrowHumans?

Positive Psychology and Positive Education

How can schools integrate well-being and character development with academic learning?

In this section, you’ll find:

An introduction to positive psychology and why it matters.
An introduction to positive education and why it matters.
Key ideas such as strengths, engagement, meaning, relationships, and resilience.
Practical ways to weave these ideas into lessons, classroom culture, and whole-school practices.

Developing Strengths and Life Skills

School is not only a place for learning facts. It is also where children and young people shape who they are becoming. GrowHumans focuses on strengths and life skills that help students thrive in learning and in life, such as:

Well-being. When students feel safe, supported, and valued, they are more open to learning, more motivated, and better able to cope with challenges.
Social skills. Skills like listening, cooperation, and resolving conflicts help create classrooms where students can learn together, not against each other.
Optimism. A realistic, hopeful view of the future encourages students to set goals, persist through difficulty, and see mistakes as part of the learning process.
Emotional intelligence. Recognising, understanding, and managing emotions helps students stay calmer, make wiser choices, and build healthier relationships.
Resilience. The ability to recover from setbacks, adapt to change, and keep going despite obstacles is essential for both academic success and mental health.
Gratitude. Noticing and appreciating what is going well strengthens relationships, supports optimism, and protects against cynicism and burnout.
Focused attention. In a world full of distractions, the capacity to focus, pause, and stay present is a core learning skill that supports understanding and memory.
Critical thinking. Thinking clearly, questioning information, and reflecting on one’s own assumptions helps students navigate a complex world and make responsible decisions.
Other character strengths (such as curiosity, courage, kindness, and a sense of meaning)
These qualities shape how students approach learning, how they treat others, and how they see their place in the world.

All of these strengths can be noticed, encouraged, and developed in everyday school life – through the way we teach, the questions we ask, the feedback we give, and the relationships we build with students.

Articles for Educators

GrowHumans blog articles offers short, readable reflections on themes such as:

encouraging effort over comparison,
teaching goal-setting skills,
nurturing intrinsic motivation,
building hope and gratitude in school life,
shifting from “What’s wrong?” to “What’s strong?” in our view of students.

Each article connects research and practice, helping you translate ideas into small, manageable changes in your classroom or school.

GrowHumans project is created and led by dr. Kristijan Musek Lešnik, psychologist, university teacher, writer, and speaker coming from a long line of teachers. His work focuses on how positive psychology, education, and school practice can come together to help young people flourish.

On this website, he aims to:

make scientific insights clear and accessible,
respect the realities and pressures of school life, and
offer tools that teachers and schools can use to help children and young people grow.