Building a Foundation For Well-Being: A Systematic Strengths-Based Approach

The Culver Academies –-rigorous co-educational, college-preparatory boarding schools in Indiana – are committed to integrating a systemic strengths-based approach to broadening and building character strengths and positive emotions in its academic, athletic, wellness, leadership, arts, and spiritual life programs. Providing the best “whole person” education available to its 780 high school students is accomplished through the tireless efforts of a dedicated instructional faculty and support staff that help guide students as they chart their course through adolescence to adulthood. 

With a strong commitment from Culver’s administration and its Board of Trustees, the school has ventured into a multi-year process that gradually instructs and informs students, faculty, staff, administration and parents with sustainable positive psychology strategies. To borrow the title of Robert Quinn’s book on leadership, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It; our “soft-sell” approach helps neutralize the traditional tension between process and performance by building high quality connections that bring out the best in students, faculty, staff and administrators. 

Faculty Training 

Over the past two summers, over one-half of the school’s 110 faculty members have participated in a three-day intensive seminar entitled “Building Strengths and Positive Emotions.” This program has been co-facilitated by John Yeager, Culver’s Director of the Center for Character Excellence, with Sherri Fisher and Dave Shearon.  

Faculty participants have learned

q      ways to broaden and build position emotion in themselves and their students;

q      strategies they can use with their strengths to become more optimistic and resilient; and

q      relationship-building approaches for building high quality connections at school.  

Faculty participants have identified

q      their own and student “signature” strengths, such as hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, responsibility and perseverance and

q      developed strategies to foster a strengths-based approach in the classroom, living unit, visual and performing arts and athletic arenas in the areas of motivation, optimism, resilience and savoring.  

By learning about character strengths and ways to build and apply them, teachers can be guided to acknowledge, own, and apply their own strengths, to value their authentic selves, and to increase both their collective and self-efficacy. This information is very valuable to faculty members who can then also have a better snapshot of individual, peer and student strengths. This is very helpful in working with groups of students in all phases of school life. As one faculty participant so aptly put it, “I now think differently about how I teach.” 

Faculty Performance Review 

Currently, the Culver Academies are developing a strengths-based annual performance review (APR) for faculty. Traditionally, faculty performance evaluation has been akin to “chewing tin foil.” By instead capitalizing on faculty members’ sense of meaning and purpose in what they do at Culver, and explicitly addressing the “engagement” component of their work, faculty and administration can have a more productive discussion about areas of strengths and challenges.  

The process is approached from a “malleable” or “growth” mindset where department chairs (the middle manager evaluators)

q      capitalize on faculty areas of proficiency – through process and product praise; and

q      identify and healthfully respond to patterns of faculty adversity. 

Student Strengths and Academic, Leadership and Wellness/Athletic Programs 

Embedded in Culver’s formal leadership program, student leaders are starting to frame discussions and behavior from a strengths-based perspective by participating in an “appreciative inquiry” process. Also, they are now discussing the power of positive emotions and explanatory styles to better know themselves and others in the quest of building high-quality connections. 

Culver’s progressive and sequential four-year wellness education program provides students with an opportunity to cultivate their optimism and resilience in the areas of 

q      nutrition

q      sleep

q      physical activity and

q      stress management.  

Through the mentorship of some of their coaches, student-athletes compare and contrast their strengths as part of the team-building process.

After being habitually exposed to a strengths-based approach, Culver’s rising seniors are better prepared to  

q      declare their strengths in their college essays and

q      carry those strengths to college and beyond. 

Integrating the principles of positive psychology is helping Culver flourish by focusing on identifying, broadening, and building the unique strengths of the faculty, staff, students, and administrators. We want all Culver stakeholders to be meaning makers and culture keepers by making positive psychology sustainable in all aspects of school life.

The Power of Character Strengths and Emotions in American Literature and Culture

“The American character did not spring full-blown from the Mayflower,” but “it came out of the forests and gained new strength each time it touched a frontier.”

~Frederick Jackson Turner – “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”

               

 What defines the American identity and the American character?  Is it life, liberty and happiness?  Authentic happiness refers to an individual or a group’s acquisition of positive emotions, positive traits, and positive institutions – such as democracy, family.  An approach to character and American Literature and Culture includes an examination of the experiences of well-being, contentment and satisfaction (in the past), hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness in the present.  Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” theory suggests that positive emotions, such as joy, interest, contentment, pride and love, broaden an individual’s attention, creativity, cognition, and scope of possible action.  They also build physical, intellectual and social resources over the long run.

        Nansook Park and Chris Peterson claim that “being able to put a name to what one does well is intriguing and even empowering.”  By identifying their own “signature” strengths, such as hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, responsibility and perseverance, students will not only better understand themselves; they will have a keener insight into the strengths of the various characters in American Literature.  Students may realize why they resonate or are conflicted with certain characters based on their own character and emotional framework.                        

       The well-being of the characters within the plots of American literature taught in high school and college can best be understood through its deconstruction into more distinct pathways to happiness: the pleasurable life, which encompasses positive emotion and pleasure; the engaged life; and the meaningful life. The pursuit of pleasure or the hedonic life involves laughing, smiling and thinking good thoughts.  It is the subjective part of positive affect and is a nutrient for overall flourishing.  Engagement or flow may be categorized as being highly engaged and totally absorbed in an activity.  The meaningful life is defined by having a sense of purpose and connecting with something larger than oneself. By examining books such as the The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, and Jasmine,  a student can see through a different lens, the elations, frustration, allusions, illusions, nuances and residues that emerge from each character and his/her corresponding emotions.          

        This raises some important questions in American Literature.  How have and do American’s carry and exhibit their beliefs and emotions? Why do they do what they do? What are the characteristics that determine the subjective well-being of the array of characters in the various plots and themes?

          There are many themes of hope, optimism and resilience in American literature.  Notice how the positive emotions repertoire plays with the nuances of the authors and their respective characters.  Barbara Fredrickson’s work on “broadening and building” positive emotions is a natural connection to studying literature.  For example: The action tendency of joy brings play; interest brings exploration; contentment yields savoring and integration; pride allows for dreaming big; gratitude is creative giving; elevation supports becoming better; and love yields all of the above action tendencies.        

       However, there are many counter themes of helplessness, hopelessness and despair that supports a negativity bias to a degree in American literature and culture. Although you will read how many characters face fear head on, the negative emotion of fear begets the desire to escape a situation. The tendency of expressing anger is to attack.   When one is disgusted, they tend to want to expel.  The emotion of guilt suggests a character make amends, and sadness promotes thoughts of withdrawal.

For example, here are some leading questions for some commonly used texts in high school level American Literature classes that focus on character, but through a more balanced lens:  

The Gift Outright – Frost

• Character Question:  How does Frost entertain the character strength of Hope?   (Hope includes optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation). Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.  (VIA – Petersen and Seligman)

The Crucible – Miller

• Develop a strengths and shadow side circumplex of the main characters in The Crucible.
• How do the negative emotions of fear, anger, disgust, guilt, shade and sadness influence the power of the “hysteria” that thrives within the culture of Salem?
• Note the juxtaposition of character strengths in Proctor and Hale from the beginning to the end of the book.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Twain  

• Identify and cite actions that represent the character strengths of Huck and Tom Sawyer.  Also, identify the consonance of stregnths among Huck and Jim.
• How does Huck find these “sources of enablement” in his journey?
• Examine Huck’s coming of age through his optimism and resilience:

          ”It was a close place.  I took . . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand.  I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.  I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell” – and tore it up.  It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.  And I let them stay said; and never thought not more about reforming.”  (Chapter 31)

The Lone Ranger and Tonto – Alexie

• What are the character strengths and shadow sides of Victor and Thomas-Builds-the-Fire?
• How do they resonate and conflict with each other?
• Identify optimism and resilience in Victor.
• Victor lives the tension between the old and the new.  Examine his experienced, remembered and anticipated memory in light of the following quote:

            “Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you and your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you . . . Now these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices.  And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they are not necessarily evil, unless you let them be. . . But no matter what  . . . keep walking.”

The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald

• What are the shadow strengths that contribute to the decline of the American Dream
• What positive and negative emotions are portrayed in the narrative tone and the Weather?
• How does Nick’s see the “optimism” in his immediate analysis of Gatsby’s character? (Chapter III).

         ”He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may  come across four of five times in life.  It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant an then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your   favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.” 

Self-Reliance – Emerson

• Comment how Emerson’s notion of Self-reliance has a shadow side. For example:Is there a shadow side to the “hopefulness” and  “zest and vitality” of youth?
• Comment on “their virtues are penances.  I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”

Jasmine – Mukherjee

• “There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself.” Is this a case of learned optimism or learned?
• There are different names accorded to Jasmine by different characters – how do these names reflect her different emotions?
• Deconstruct the following quote and identify Jasmine’s emotions and her compensatory character strengths. 

      “Taylor the Rescuer is on his way here.  He taught me to yank down that window shade.”

• Compare and contrast Emerson and Mukherjee’s conception of Self-Reliance.

      “Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows.  Watch me re-position the stars. I whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove.”

• What is the relationship between duty and desire?
• Does “Manhattan” represent authentic happiness?