The Council of Catholic School Parents @CCSPNSWACT is the peak body for parents with children in Catholic Schools in NSW and ACT, Australia. A few weeks back I was invited to be on a panel at their biannual #FutureReady Conference. 200+ educators & parents from across New South Wales and beyond enjoyed engagement with a number of speakers.
One such speaker preceding the panel was Professor Lea Waters who actively promotes “Visible Wellbeing in Education“. Professor Waters’ presentation resonated with much of the work occurring at St Luke’s Catholic College. Much of Professor Waters’ work and other research:
- affirms the Positive Behaviour Support for Learning (PBS4L) approach which has been adopted at St Luke’s
- complements the St Luke’s commitment to bring social skills and enterprise skills to prominence as articulated in our 6 Pillars of Learning.
- aligns with the intended strengths based approach to our Pathways Program from the beginning of 2018.
I was also interested in many of her free resources accessible via her website. One in particular is a self reflection tool which prompts parents to reflect on their approach to parenting. It is not meant to offer a judgement, but act far more as a reflection tool which also comes with some tips and insights into how to be be a ‘strengths based parent’. Click here to access the link.
Most importantly, Professor Waters reminded me that parents are the primary educators of children. I walked asking myself… “How often do schools stop and ask parents about the strengths of their child?” I am not talking about a child’s ability to read, write or add up, but more so, for example, their ability to manage themselves or relate with others. Schools possibly ask parents, “When is your child at their best?” Yes, I know parents can, at times, be deluded about the abilities of their child (I may be one of those parents!), or may ignore their obvious deficiencies, but, imagine the engagement that might come if schools formally invited parents to offer a comment about their child’s strengths, not their academic strengths, but their natural talents, skills and capabilities ‘beyond school’. Maybe it is something that can be done as we host 2018 Kindergarten or Year 7 Orientation Days as they occur this term.
LEARN AND LEAD 
Great insights from the conference Greg. Kindergarten orientation is the perfect time to start the ‘getting to know the student’ process. What a good idea! Also appreciated your contribution on our #futureready panel
Strengths focus for kids – wow! It seems so natural and sensible to find engagement through strengths yet all too often we fixate on weaknesses. Great piece.
BTW – Gallup do some awesome strengths focussed work and their student poll ought to be more widely taken for the data it delivers.