Affirming/Developing the StrengthsFinder Themes of Your Students

[Mark Pogue]

Have you developed startegies for helping students affirm, develop and apply their strengths? Help us create a bank of action items and hints for each of the 34 themes.

If you've read "Now Discover Your Strengths", you'll remember that the action items were written for the manager, helping them develop strategies to "manage" direct reports with each of the 34 themes.

Wouldn't it be great if a resource existed that provided those suggestions to educators.

Maybe you've had some successes you can share...or maybe you have suggestions on your own Top Five.

[C. Nana Derby]

Dear Mark,

I must admit I haven't been able to integrate the strengthsfinder program in many of my classes...and well, it's never too late to start.

In the spring semester, I spent much of the time talking about the strengthsfinder program in class and getting some students to take the test or to visit my office for follow-up advisement. Next semester, I look forward to administering the test to the entire freshman class with my colleague Pathways Fellows.

I am currently teaching a sociology of marriage and family class. To integrate this program in the class, the students had to take the test as a requirement, and we've been having various presentations that require students to critically assess any form of marriage and family related problems, and to identify practical solutions to them using their strengths.

The first group was made up of a male and a female student who were lovers. The boy was supposedly stationed in Iraq, while the girl studied at Virginia State University. They had emotional issues, trust and financial problems. The student- girlfriend mismanaged her finances, while her boyfriend had issues with trust because of activities on her facebook page. They identified three strengths they used to solve the problems, and these are the boy’s strategic, responsibility, and restorative strengths, and the girl’s communication strength. This group demonstrated a satisfactory ability to use their strengths in that context.

The second group was a family of three: mother, father and son. They were supposedly rich, but quite dysfunctional as a family. The son was in college, but performed poorly partly because of girls, partying and care free lifestyles. The mother did not work, but spent much of her time gossiping and shopping. The man also spent his spare time drinking and going to the club. One day, he called a meeting and put his feet down to stop his son’s poor performance in school, and to cut down his wife’s frivolous expenditure. The son’s strengths are maximizer, achiever, includer, strategic and positivity. The father’s strengths are responsibility, individualization, strategic, competition, and significance, while the mother has communication, competition, activator, positivity and includer. I applauded them for their creativity, but emphasized the important talents each strength contains, and pointed out that while we are not expected to be perfect in our choices, it is possible with these strengths, they may not allow the family to become so dysfunctional. For example, the student with maximizer, achiever, strategic and positivity themes may not choose womanizing and partying over excellent academic performance and to behave in the manner they portrayed in the skit. I urged them to take a look at their strengths again, and to come back for us to talk about their talents and the related action items.

These skits provided the platform for me to reiterate the essence of our strengths over our weaknesses, and hope to find similar strategies to get students to talk about their natural talents.

Regards, Nana

[Mark Pogue]

Nana,

I loved the creative use of the skits to set the stage for a discussion of strengths. I seen educators use movie clips, characters in books, but the skits get students involved from the beginning...nice touch!

For clarity did the students play their role with their own top five or did you assign themes too?

Mark

[C. Nana Derby]

Dear Mark,

I am glad you think this worked...I was so hesitant to write about it :-).

The students were required to use their own strengths....unfortunately, the second group didn't quite understand their themes as I pointed out in my primary post. I was, however, pleased with their creativity and the opportunity to explain the themes again.

Regards, Nana

[Mark Pogue]

Using their own themes was the right approach...they were best students to represent those themes. Even the students that didn't quite understand their themes probably figure out how helpful they could have been in a real world situtation.

[Tim Hall]

I was wondering if any one else uses experiential education to get across the strength based themes? I do about every day. Now granted, we have a different curriculum that allows us to have flexibility with what we teach. (I have a great principal and assistant principals that allow us to try stuff.) I'm getting a head so let me give you a little back ground.
I am a teacher in central Arkansas. We have about 2200 students 9-12. We just had 604 freshmen start school in August. One of the largest classes ever. The class I teach is called Keystone. Because of what studies and data show, our district started a class that is geared directly to freshmen. We use a curriculum that focuses on personal victories and public victories. We talk about setting goals, thinking about how you want your life to turn out, teamwork, communication, problem solving, and personal responsibility. As I like to say to parents and others, I am teaching 9th graders to be human. Yes, it's a joke but it does have some truth to it.
We use extensive activities to promote these concepts. To give you an example, I was reading Sherrill-Ann Mason's post and immediately thought of land mines. She gave a wonderful idea and this can't take it's place but may be used to get the kids moving and throw another paradigm in the discussion. What you do is set a space with boundaries. Use an old rope, desks, sticks, what ever you may have. Next, throw down a lot of silly things, such as dog toys, old shoes, cheap toys from the dollar store, what ever you have. I use things such as dinosaurs (they represent some thing from your past that keeps popping up and giving you trouble.), a rubber chicken, any squeaky toy you have. I have killer dolphin. Don't remember where I got it but it's very cool and brings about a lot of discussion. Just like the rubber chicken.
Now, throw all of them down with in the boundaries. Just scatter them around. Have the students pair up with a partner. One is blind and must close their eyes. The other must stand on the outside of the boundaries and verbally give them instructions on how to get through the land mines of life. If they step on one, have some one pick it up, metaphor it and have a fun discussion.
This little activity is will be great for those who have students who have certain strengths as futuristic or individualization. And many more. Please take a look at our schools ning at www.bryantclassof2013.ning.com and let us know what you think.
Also, does any one know how we can get our students to take the strength finders test? I know that our district doesn't have a lot of money but if it's at the right price, I can ask.
Thanks and have a great day. Oh, by the way, that's not me in the picture. It's a picture of a near perfect grandchild. Ha!

[Christy Khan]

Great ideas, Tim! You can send a message to Melissa Hinrichs for information about pricing for student codes. She's on Strengths School and works for Gallup.

[Fursey Gotuaco]

It sounds like you and your school are onto some great things!
I completely agree with the combination of Strengths and experiential learning. We are in our 4th year of working with Strengths and student leadership and a huge part of our work is done through low ROPES activities as well as some of the activities from Boomerang's LINK Crew.

During one or our day long trainings I divide the kids into teams based on their SF themes and challenge them to utilize the themes of their teamates to accomplish tasks - similiar to the one you describe above. I think the most important step is the debriefing after each activity which gives the kids time to reflect and consider what they have learned both intellectually and viscerally.

Most recently I have been focusing on my AVID students and combining teambuilding activities and college planning. I think Strengths are an absolutely critical part of our effort to get this kids a solid foundation in their preparation for college.

[Jenifer Fox]

I wrote a book called Your Child's Strengths, a guide for Parents and Teachers. There is a workbook in the book that offers all kinds of activities and projects etc for teachers to use with kids. You can get it on Amazon. Or email me and I'll send you a free copy [e-mail]. No kidding, there's a lot of ideas in it and I'm happy to share.