“Oh, you’re a teacher! Which subjects do you
teach?”
A question that makes me introspect my role as a
teacher.
Am I merely a subject teacher? I hope not. I am
sure I inspire, but do I teach beyond academics?
The 21st century demands more
than teaching of English, Maths, Humanities and Science.
A genius is an amalgamation of passion, talent
and hard work. As Martin Seligman wrote, 24 character strengths help people
flourish, the most important ones being grit, self-control, curiosity, social
intelligence, gratitude and help.
If we want our students to accomplish, have good
relationships, work with a meaning and a purpose, develop positive emotion and
engage, we as educators need to work towards strengthening their character
strengths, which will help them, flourish.
While some character strengths like humour and
optimism can be taught, others like integrity, authenticity, zest can’t. They
are self-acquired. As primary teachers we constantly strive to provide
opportunities in various curriculum areas to build these skills explicitly
through various creative thinking activities and discussions. In our daily
conversations with students, I have noticed that reminders which involve humour
bring better results than constant nagging.
One of my students was extremely hungry when he
came into the class early in the morning after an exhausting swimming session
and asked me if he could have his muffin. I allowed him and the next thing I
noticed was a trail of chocolate icing on the floor.
Did I ask him to clean it? No
‘A skilled muffin eater leaves no trace of his
crime’
The next thing I knew, the floor had been wiped
clean.
While humour eases situations, optimism helps us
become less depressed, more resilient, liked and ensures that we try harder to
achieve more. This is an essential character trait we teach through our
curriculum. It also leads to becoming a balanced personality. The emphasis on
growth mindset as opposed to fixed mindset is all about promoting optimism. The
idea is to make character a part of the curriculum as much as academics.
As mentioned in this article previously, there
are some other character strengths which cannot be taught, however as a school
we try and provide multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate the
presence or absence of those strengths, receive feedback and work on building
those strengths. Research shows that the ideal age for building self control is
0-6 years, 3,4 and 5 being particularly important. Grit and self- control
predict success and grit is in completely unrelated to IQ. It is also important
that we teach students to appreciate the role of failure while trying to
succeed and the confusion that goes with it.
To ensure character development is embedded in
our system we need to start using constructive responding and focus on growth
mindset. We need to further work on developing systems or routines that are
designed to teach character. For example - working independently with focus
teaches grit. Character strengths need to be taught in with proactive planning
and needs to be recurring. It needs to be active, i.e students need to
experience these strengths and the activities should be planned in alignment
with character strengths we intend to teach.
Ownership to the students: Since we believe that
students should take ownership of their learning, we need to set up structured
time to help children understand the development in their own character
strengths (PSHE lessons - once every week or once in 10 days). We can use this
time to link behaviours to character strengths where each child decides to work
on certain character strengths. Students should reflect and score themselves on
the character strengths they want to work on. This should be done every term to
establish the importance of character strengths. This time can also be
used to facilitate conversations and to receive feedback on character strength.
The idea is not to track growth over time but to provide a platform for
conversations about growth over time.
