“When you’re able to focus on strengths, you’re able to find in yourself ways to get through a challenging situation,” explains Sarah Kremer, Acknowledge Alliance Research & Education Manager. “You’re able to identify the strengths that you have that will move you forward. Focus on what is strong, not what is wrong.”
This summer, Acknowledge Alliance partnered with Palo Alto Unified School District and Palo Alto PTA Council to present a three-part webinar series for PAUSD parents. Sarah led the discussion and shared strategies each week to help build resilience in children, families, and our communities. One of the sessions was dedicated to strengths and challenges.
Character strengths allow us to successfully handle challenges and build our resilience. Strengths are especially important when we’re dealing with anxiety and stressful outcomes that we feel in our body. The VIA Institute on Character created 24 universal character strengths that provide the framework for our social emotional learning lessons on strengths. The character strengths fall under six broad virtue categories: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. Each of us has signature strengths that are most essential to who we are, what we’re good at, and what we like doing. Discovering and channeling our strengths can boost our resilience, mental health, relationships, and happiness.
If students can focus on what they’re doing well, they can use their strengths to bounce back from challenges. As part of Project Resilience, our social emotional learning curriculum for elementary and middle school classrooms, we ask students to identify their own strengths, reflect on ones that are already strong, and build on the strengths that they would like to grow.
Our Collaborative Counseling Program also helps at-risk youth and high school students recognize their strengths, which is especially crucial during this time. These youth face many challenges in their day-to-day lives that can be particularly exacerbated by the current global pandemic, such as: unsolved trauma, a lack of integrated, holistic systems that make it difficult for parental involvement, academic frustrations, and limitations to age-appropriate independence. Additional challenges brought on by the pandemic include: navigating remote learning, crowded homes and a lack of privacy, an economy that is faltering with skyrocketing unemployment, and expenses like rent and food that force many families into food and housing insecurity.
Gladys Gudino, Acknowledge Alliance Transition Therapist, reflects on how telehealth sessions have given her a better understanding of students’ experiences, “I am meeting them in their space. I am welcomed into their home and I experience their home life in some way.” She shares one way she helps them cope,
“ I remind them of their strengths and help them find their own voice in the chaos
that exists. Often, we just need to take a moment to be reminded of who we are.”
As we remind students, educators, and families of their strengths, we’d like to remind you to draw on your strengths too. Take a free test at viacharacter.org to learn more about your strengths. Remember to also remind your loved ones of their strengths. We all have the innate capacity to be resilient, and our strengths can help us overcome challenges, better connect with others, and move forward despite uncertainty.