Everyone has strengths,
although we often find ourselves focussing on our weaknesses.
Strengths are capacities to think, feel and behave in certain ways.
They represent what is best about us.
Research has shown that identifying and maximizing the use of
our personal strengths,
qualities and attributes can lead to higher levels of health,
happiness and success. Identifying and building on strengths in the
classroom is a great way of creating a challenging learning
environment where all learners are able to achieve and celebrate
their successes.
The Happiness Institute has a
great handout for
working through and identifying your core strengths.
Using + keeping track of your
strengths
Once you know your strengths, you might want to think about
how you can use them more frequently and more effectively in
your life.
Choose some strengths that you'd like to focus on (start out
with three), and brainstorm ways in which you might be able to
concentrate on developing that strength. For example, one strength
you choose to focus on may be gratitude. A way in which you might
focus on this strength is to list 3 things that you are grateful
for each day.
To keep track of how you're going, you might want to keep a
'strengths' diary, where you record your weekly activities to
improve the strengths you've chosen to focus on. Try and do at
least one activity per strength each week.
Once you feel you've made some progress in your use of one
strength, you might decide to focus on another one. It's still
important not to forget the strengths you've already worked on
though, and to come back to them now and then to make sure you're
not neglecting them.
Strengths gym in your classroom
Strengths gym is a time to dedicated in class to focus on
a particular strength, by using a game or activity as a strengths
builder.
As a class create a strengths gym folder with a section for each
core strength. Ask
students for their own ideas of how to use and build on the
different core strengths. Include a range of activities in the
strengths gym folder that take up to five minutes to complete.
You can also get students to make a Strengths gym file for
themselves and provide opportunities in class for students to work
through the 25 strengths over the year, drawing them to the
student's attention, using stories that reflect them and thinking
of strengths builders to help focus on them.
Regularly schedule Strengths Gym sessions into your class time
so that the students are able to take the opportunity to identify
and practise their core strengths.
At the start of ordinary class sessions, you can also explicitly
state which strengths you are looking for. Then you can ask the
students to reflect for themselves at the end of the session on how
they used a particular strength, how they might use it more and how
they noticed their peers using it.
Encouraging students to see one
another in terms of strengths is a powerful way of building a group
of individuals into a positive team who will work together
well.
For more ideas on Using strengths in the classroom check out
this factsheet from The
Happiness Institute.