High Schools & the School Poll

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Comment by DeAnna Murphy on November 12, 2009 at 11:47am

I'm just joining you here, excited at the thought of hooking up with others interested in moving this into high schools. We're working on a $5 million grant to bring this to northern Minnesota right now, and I am jazzed at the idea!

I work primarily in the college arena, but have trained this with youth and LOVE it. I am a certified strengths performance coach and REALLY love having this conversations with youth.

I'd love to throw out a couple of resources, in case anyone is interested. One is http://www.strengthsmovement.com which has some great tools and resources for high school folks interested in strengths.

I'll also share one of my favorite tools for helping students become acquainted with their themes of talent. My discovery is that they really need both a left and right-brain experience in the discovery process. My favorite left brain activity is inviting them to share 2-3 peak experiences where they felt they were exhibiting strengths. If you do this in groups of 3-4, you have others who listen, capture some of the strengths they see/hear that might have come into play. They may or may not use SF 2.0 language. After the student finishes sharing their peak experiences, they get to have 3-5 minutes of feedback from others who were listening for their strengths. Then there is an invitation for the student to draw parallels between the strengths that were shared and their SF 2.0 themes of talents. It's a fun discussion. Of course, you'd make sure that each person would have a chance both to share, and give feedback...

I like to follow that up with a right brain activity where students bring in pictures that describe how each of their themes work and create a collage--which they then have to explain to others. The process of creating and explaining a visual is a very whole-brain activity and tends to really lock in the learning for students.

Anyhow... this strengths stuff is my baby! I love it, and am eager for any ideas, suggestions, and/or discussion about how to take it to the next level!!!

Comment by Jim Larson on July 30, 2009 at 11:45am

I am an assistant principal at Papillion-La Vista South in Nebraska. I have recently been exposed to Strengths and would like to incorporate it into our advisory program and also develop a leadership program using Strengths. Does anyone do this and can you give me any direction for how to implement?

Comment by Amy Fineburg on January 2, 2009 at 5:36pm

Hi, folks! I teach at Spain Park HS in Hoover, AL. I teach psych and chair the social studies department. We are looking for ways to incorporate strengths school-wide, much like you all are doing in Lincoln. I've used the Strengths Finder with my psych students, and the results were very positive! I'd love to hear ways to teach strengths to my students in more active ways.

Comment by Tami Kaiser on January 1, 2009 at 9:58am

Also a Lincoln High School teacher. This is a great process to learn more about myself and the students I work with. I can see it helping students become more focused and successful.

Comment by Malinda Burk on December 25, 2008 at 3:22pm

Like John, I am also from Lincoln High School. I am excited about being able to share stories and successes as we work with kids to help them realize and own their strengths.

Comment by John Heineman on December 16, 2008 at 4:50pm

Greetings from Lincoln High in Lincoln, NE. I hope I'm at the right forum. We are letting all our 9th grade students take the StrengthsFinder in hopes to work with them on teams, in classes and as career prep.

Comment by Connie Rath on December 7, 2008 at 7:38pm

Shane Lopez (the creator of Strengths School) is in the middle of important research about the Hope, Well Being and Engagement of students from fifth grade through college. The trends shows year by year decrease of students' interest in school and satisfaction with their conditions. We are launching the Gallup Student Poll to raise the awareness of the public about the needs of students and what makes a good school. We will be able to compare schools and inform the public about student experience from the students' perspectives.

Comment by Fursey Gotuaco on September 13, 2008 at 11:08am

Hello,
I'm at Richland High School outside of Fort Worth, Texas. We are a fairly large school (2100 students) in a suburb of Fort Worth with a transitioning population. Our district is very involved with StrengthsFinder at the faculty level. Our campus is working to have a school wide Strengths culture. At present our Student Leadership, future teachers, and other small groups are heavily involved. We have also been able to incorporate the students' themes into the electronic gradebook so that their teachers can access this information.

We have a cadre working to put together teacher resources that will empower them to work with the kids according to their top 5 themes. Our next endeavor is to create resources and aids that will help teachers create more engaging lesson plans that better serve our populations.

I was wondering if anybody had any ideas for either of these initiatives?

Phil, I am interested in that SQ workshop that you are planning. It sounds like something I would like to employ.

Comment by Phil Nienhuis on July 8, 2008 at 10:39am

I'm a counselor who works with high school students. I'm also planning on SQ workshops at local high schools this coming year.

I've never heard of School Poll. Please tell me more about it.

Comment by Kevin Halfmann on June 17, 2008 at 11:38am

I will be working on implementation strategies using Strengths ideas and also will be looking to use the School Poll next year. Anyone who has developed tools, lessons, approaches, clever ideas, poems songs or tall tales that would be useful is encouraged to respond. I will plan to post my work thru this website as things develop.