Highlighting our strengths
Our busy, happy school in Letterkenny, County Donegal has over 400 girls and boys from Junior Infants to Sixth Class, four classes for pupils on the autism spectrum, and two classes for children with speech and language difficulties.
In 2019/20, we developed our Strengths Tree initiative. This is based on the idea, from Positive Psychology, that there are 24 character strengths. Research shows that, if children and adults use their top five strengths regularly, this can have a very positive impact on their wellbeing.
With this in mind, we decided to help our children explore and recognise the different character strengths.
So far, we have focussed on the strengths of kindness, creativity and perseverance. We help the children recognise the strengths through videos and age-appropriate storybooks. Then, if a member of staff spots a pupil displaying that strength, they are given a leaf to decorate. They or the teacher can write on the back how they showed this strength.
On Friday afternoons, children with leaves come to the beautifully painted Strengths Tree in the hall and are greeted by a teacher or the principal. They tell the staff member all about their leaf and they get to put it on the tree. A photo of the pupils adding their leaves to the tree goes on the school website weekly, so parents can be involved too!
Promoting inclusivity
The tree has also created an opportunity for older and younger pupils to meet more. It's lovely to see the Sixth Class pupils making a fuss of the younger children whilst they explain how they got their leaf.
The tree has become a strong visual symbol of wellbeing in our school. Children have started spotting character strengths in their peers, teachers and Special Needs Assistants now too! The older pupils have started creating imaginative ways to explain different strengths to the younger children. It's been lovely to watch and has had an excellent impact on the overall wellbeing of our school family.
Continuing on
It may take some imagination to work out how best to do this in the COVID-19 era, but we’re determined to find a way, as it's been so successful and positive for the school.
And the next character strength we are focussing on? We think it might need to be TEAMWORK!
