If our aim is long-term flourishing for our students, then we all care about helping kids discover their aspirations, build goals backward from those aspirations, and remain committed to those goals on a regular basis. And yet, the further you get down the list of those skills, the greater the challenge becomes for our kids: Defining the big […]
In case you haven’t heard, Character Lab is now accepting proposals for a new year of the Teacher Innovation Grant (TIG). You can learn more about TIG here, or just read these bulleted highlights: What you need to provide prior to the 11/2/15 deadline: an idea for developing one or more character strengths in your classroom; […]
In “The Character Strengths and Motivation,” I laid out the 4.5 character strengths that I consider motivational in nature, and, at the end of the post, I laid out an example of the kind of “self-experimentation” we can use to learn how to teach our students to develop the “motivational strengths” in themselves (because marshaling one’s […]
With the school year started, it’s time to settle into our work for the year. In this article, I’ll advocate for making that work as focused as humanly possible because, as I wrote in August, far too many of us are stressed to a level that decimates our productivity and effectiveness. The non-freaked out (NFO) framework […]
The past few weeks have provided me several opportunities to reflect on parenting from the teacher’s perspective. Some of the opportunities have been normal — parent/teacher conferences, my interactions with my children — and others have been serendipitous — a conversation with a mentor, repeated run-ins with an intriguing parent. Also, one of the chapters I was […]
Humility isn’t one of the highly predictive character strengths I work on with my students, but the older I get, the more I realize its centrality to a life well-lived. The pursuit of humility, once we properly understand the term, yields better relationships and faster growth. With that said, it makes great sense that we dig […]