Wellbeing
During our most recent Professional Development training at the beginning of the term the staff completed the final day of training with Berry St. The day addressed the 5th and final domain; Character.
The day focussed on;
- helping students articulate their own values
- finding personal meaning in those values and extending that meaning to include others
- understanding self and others in the context of culture and community
- identifying personal strengths and practising those strengths
- exploring strengths through stories, narratives, metaphors and heroes/paragons of particular strengths
- cultivating attunement through tolerance and respect for others' character strengths
- understanding and employing character strengths for future pathways
Evidence-based research in the field of positive psychology emphasises the importance of identifying and using individual strengths. Social and emotional learning programs that use strength-based approaches promote student wellbeing, positive behaviour and academic achievement.
Over the past few weeks throughout the school students have been learning about character strengths, what their own are and how to recognize and acknowledge them in others. Talking to the students about their own personal strengths is a great way to build confidence and to remind them that being themselves is really important. In everyday life and especially in school settings we can see students compare themselves to others. Our students need to be aware that they all bring amazing character strengths into this world and we encourage them to continue to sharpen those, while developing and improving other areas.
If you would like to learn more about your own character strengths you can visit the website below and take a survey that asks you to reflect upon what's important to you and how you react to situations in your everyday life . Also attached below is a poster listing each of the universal 24 character strengths that you may wish to use as a discussion point at home.
https://www.viacharacter.org/survey/account/register