Begin to discover your child's Signature Strengths and write them down.

As soon as the first time you meet the teacher!! Bankstown South Infant School is implementing learning from the Student Voice project - therefore your child's teacher is keen to learn about your child's strengths as soon as possible!

Be the empowered parent that Dr. Lea Waters, author of the Strength Switch book talks about. Dr. Waters asks: "What if you could make a small shift in your parenting style that would yield enormous results for your child… and for you?" Lea is a Board Member and the 2017-2019 President of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). Her break-through strength-based parenting approach helps parents see what is right about their children, then nurture and cultivate their innate strengths and talents. Start with observation! Read more about it here and watch the video clips below to give you ideas to start with.

A research team led by Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania, studied the religious and cultural traditions of the world over thousands of years. n their book, Character Strengths and Virtues, they concluded there are 24 strengths that are universal. We all have them and bring them out at different times in our lives... but we are not necessarily aware of our strengths and how to grow them.

By noticing your child's strengths and building on them, you can help your child thrive. Have a look at these strengths described below:

Learning about success stories during the project

Judy, school coordinator reports that there already are some great learning from this new type of collaboration. Judy supports teachers in the school to apply Student Voice project learning and collate progress through their Teacher Dashboards. “So far, most students have passed a good amount of small steps (1 or 2) on the way to achieving their goals whilst all the other goals are progressing well”.

Amplifying student voice learning

• Teachers are continuously improving their strength-based learning techniques: they are collating all students’ Signature Strengths to assemble in a chart on the board - this will benefit all their students, including those who are not currently on the Student Voice program.

• Whilst discussing the Student Voice project with parents, teachers are able to ask parents to share more of their knowledge: for instance some parents share a communication folder collated by a speech therapist and educators implement some of the visuals at school - which had not been possible beforehand.

Recognising home-school collaborative learning

School and families are working in partnership on many goals, and results are showing up:

• Tracing goals: teachers and parents are exchanging photos of the student working in the home and the school settings.

• Working on tasks independently: Teachers are trialing strategies with students and are noticing that students work a little longer on other tasks. Once parents adopt such instructions at home… they can look forward to cooking dinner whilst their child happily works on tasks independently!

• Fine motor coordination: Kudos to Mums who send yogurt with a spoon to school every day to extend practice time for their child!! Teachers report that they can see the value of practice in the home environment, as students markedly improve on their spoon skills!

Teacher learning

• Judy: “What I have learned with the Student Voice project is to engage on a different level with families - it has given me a platform that we can use and reminded me how much parents can accomplish at home! Technology can play a core role as we can easily share with parents what we learn about how we progress with students’ goals. We have a phone in our pocket that allows us to capture videos and photos and instantly share on Class Dojo the specific progress that parents can then continue working on at home. Although we’ve had Class Dojo for some time, this project has reminded me how much such information matters to parents and how they can use it at home!”

Judy: “I am getting better at recognising student voice and using Signature Strengths and child wellbeing as leverage to support the goals we're working on. Student voice is the missing link, the glue that I have been looking for! Positive Psychology is so important in helping Early Intervention children and has the potential to make a long term impact on child and family. I am including these elements in my planning for next year, and start right from day 1 to coach parents to identify their signature strengths, share with them how we will formulate goals together to include student voice and how we will collaborate on supporting their child achieve their goals”.

Read about these stories and others in the online newsletter that was sent to parents about the progress of Student Voice.