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SMART Strengths - Building Character, Resilience and Relationships in Youth
Loaded with activities, resources and real-life examples, SMART Strengths is the new gold standard in the field of positive education. The SMART model demonstrates how to change a school system, one person at a time, so that it's not just about bringing positive education to students; it's also about maximizing the strengths of the adults who interact with them in every environment that fosters character and achievement.
368 pages, Paperback
First published May 20, 2011
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March 16, 2012
It's hard for me to give an unbiased review of this book, because one of the authors is a colleague of mine. For that matter, it's hard for me to be unbiased given that a lot of the examples in the book come from my school, referencing quoting and talking about other colleagues of mine.
That said, I do think this is a valuable resource for educators and leaders of any sort--teachers, coaches, parents. Tied to an in-service workshop, I was asked to read three chapters of the book. I found it interesting enough that I couldn't stop before I finished reading the whole book.
The book comes out of the discipline of positive psychology, and central to its method is focusing on strengths. This means identifying what a person does well, either through testing mechanisms (some of them available for free on-line) or through observation (or through a group activity called a Strengths 360 in which the group becomes familiar with a set of strengths and then writes down what they think each group member's primary strength is--then the group discusses each person in terms of the ways they've seen those strengths in action). In any case, it's a form of appreciative inquiry, in which the premise is to start from what's going well or from what a person does well or how a person characteristically approaches situations and work to be successful by understanding how to leverage those strengths. And it's not just about focusing on the positive, but also about building an awareness of "the dark side" of those strengths and the ways that our strengths can interact with other people's strengths, both positively and negatively. There are separate chapters on how an understanding of strengths can be used by parents, teachers, and coaches.
The book also includes chapters on other elements that aren't necessarily tied directly to "strengths" but that do grow out of the same range of approaches and concerns. These include the chapters "Positive Emotion: Becoming Better Mood Managers," "Building Resilience with Flexible and Accurate Thinking," "'Smart' is Something I Do: Student Mindsets That Work," "Wishing and Willing: Goal-Setting, Engagement, and Meaning," and "High-Quality Connections and Appreciative Questions." The chapter titles pretty tell you what they're about. Some of the ideas were familiar from other sources (Carol Dweck's Mindset, for instance) and some of it was new to me, but in every case the authors did a good job of making it useful to those of us working with adolescents.
I'd hate to give the impression, however, that this is simply a book about "Building Character, Resilience, and Relationships in Youth" (which is the sub-title of the book). The tools, approaches, and paradigms of the book are equally useful for adults as we navigate our own lives.
That said, I do think this is a valuable resource for educators and leaders of any sort--teachers, coaches, parents. Tied to an in-service workshop, I was asked to read three chapters of the book. I found it interesting enough that I couldn't stop before I finished reading the whole book.
The book comes out of the discipline of positive psychology, and central to its method is focusing on strengths. This means identifying what a person does well, either through testing mechanisms (some of them available for free on-line) or through observation (or through a group activity called a Strengths 360 in which the group becomes familiar with a set of strengths and then writes down what they think each group member's primary strength is--then the group discusses each person in terms of the ways they've seen those strengths in action). In any case, it's a form of appreciative inquiry, in which the premise is to start from what's going well or from what a person does well or how a person characteristically approaches situations and work to be successful by understanding how to leverage those strengths. And it's not just about focusing on the positive, but also about building an awareness of "the dark side" of those strengths and the ways that our strengths can interact with other people's strengths, both positively and negatively. There are separate chapters on how an understanding of strengths can be used by parents, teachers, and coaches.
The book also includes chapters on other elements that aren't necessarily tied directly to "strengths" but that do grow out of the same range of approaches and concerns. These include the chapters "Positive Emotion: Becoming Better Mood Managers," "Building Resilience with Flexible and Accurate Thinking," "'Smart' is Something I Do: Student Mindsets That Work," "Wishing and Willing: Goal-Setting, Engagement, and Meaning," and "High-Quality Connections and Appreciative Questions." The chapter titles pretty tell you what they're about. Some of the ideas were familiar from other sources (Carol Dweck's Mindset, for instance) and some of it was new to me, but in every case the authors did a good job of making it useful to those of us working with adolescents.
I'd hate to give the impression, however, that this is simply a book about "Building Character, Resilience, and Relationships in Youth" (which is the sub-title of the book). The tools, approaches, and paradigms of the book are equally useful for adults as we navigate our own lives.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review