Purpose

Definition: Commitment to making a meaningful contribution to one’s community. I contribute to my world.  The drive to do something that feels meaningful and that helps others. 

Motto: My actions are intentional. 

Note: One can think about the difference between this Character Lab's strength of Purpose versus the PERMAH pillar of Meaning. My tendency is to use the pillar of Meaning to think about how one's action can positively affect others and possibly provide a sense of connection and spirituality - a more macro viewpoint. With Purpose, I lean more to focus on being thoughtful and intentional in my actions - a more micro viewpoint. Character Lab includes the following in their description of Purpose. It gets more at my definition. 

"It drives you to make positive contributions in line with your own interests and strengths. And this pursuit gives your life direction and forward momentum; it motivates and guides your short-term goals and daily activities." The "what it looks like" section below further differentiates purpose from meaning in my mind. :)

The VIA Character Strength list does not include Purpose though the strengths of Judgement, Perspective, and Prudence do assist in being Purposeful.  

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What it Looks Like and How to Encourage:

• Looking for ways to have a positive effect on others

• Being thoughtful and intentional in one's actions

• Reflecting and setting goals to be a difference maker 

• Thinking before acting 

• Thinking about what matters most to oneself and why it matters

• Promote a language around purpose and wellbeing

• Situational analysis (Teachable Moments)

Teacher Strategies to Personally Strengthen Being Purposeful:

• Finding Your Ikigai - Start building your understanding of the Japanese approach to purpose by responding to the following questions provided by Positive Psychology. You can also take an Ikigai inventory. 

Do what you love:

• • What did you enjoy doing as a child or in your early adult years?

  • What do you do now in your spare time that makes you happy?

Do what you are good at:

• • Do you know your strengths and skills? What are they?

  • What do people ask you to help them with?

Do something the world needs:

• • What and who inspires you?

  • What makes you annoyed or frustrated?

Do something you can be paid for:

• • What service or product could you sell (what would people pay you for)?

  • What job could you do?

• Grow your awareness of your strengths by making them more visible. Depending upon your learning style and preferred modality, choose tools from your instructional toolkit to apply to yourself. Examples: Audio Recording (have a friend interview you to record your very own "strengths podcast"|Concept Mapping|Outlining|Sketchnoting. Find ways to show how you combine strengths in some situations while also connecting to your talents/abilities, skills, interests, and values. 

• Review the strategies from the Greater Good article "How to Find Your Purpose in Life".

• Use the CL construct of model, celebrate and enable to develop some personalized strategies.

Character Lab Purpose Teaching Strategies and Tips: How to offer age-appropriate versions of the strategies? Note: There are dozens and dozens of tips from Character Lab. These choices are filtered for elementary school and practicality to bring this strength into the culture of one's classroom. 

• Beyond the Self

• Know Thyself

• My Values: “Identify 2 to 3 values, then write about why they are important to you.” (Character Lab)

• The Money Trap

• Use WOOP to set goals supported by Character Strengths. (WOOP Worksheet from Character Lab. A more scaffolded worksheet.)  WOOP App: Android | IOS

• Values Affirmation

• Character Day - Find ways to participate and elaborate on the activities offered for this annual event. 

• Expert Practice - Review and adapt the Character Lab resource to support focus and sustained practice with your students. Look to use the terms "focused" and "sustained" to help them construct their understanding of what on-point practice looks like in our distractible world. 

• Flow - "Psychological Flow captures the positive mental state of being completely absorbed, focused, and involved in your activities at a certain point in time, as well as deriving enjoyment from being engaged in that activity." (Positive Psychology) "Flow is an optimal state of consciousness where we feel and perform our best. More specifically, the term refers to those moments of total absorption, when an individual becomes so focused on what they’re doing that everything else just disappears, and all aspects of performance are significantly amplified." (Flow Research Collective) You might have heard of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who is known as one of the founders of Positive Psychology who also is known for his research on flow. It is really worth one's time to take a deeper dive into his work. Here are some articles that overlap: What is Flow in Psychology? | 8 Characteristics of Flow | Flow Theory in Psychology | Flow is listed here as being focused towards a purpose and with some of the other Character Strengths as an opportunity for you to expand the wellness vocabulary of your students while using the term in the language of your classroom. We want to give students opportunities to work distraction-free on activities of their choosing that can put them into a state of flow. We want to be very purposeful to model and acknowledging the wellness benefits that flow can offer us. If you feel inclined, you can work to design and coach your students into potential flow experiences. This article offers some strategies. 

• Inspire with Awe - Find ways to bring awe into the lives of your students to ignite curiosity and passion. Read how experiencing awe can bring purpose into our lives. 

• Inward-Outward ² - Think of ways to be purposeful internally for your own wellbeing. Think of ways to express the strength outward to benefit others. Example: In- Set mini-goals and use timers to use technology/media. Out- Choose a character strength to support others that you wish to use more meaningfully. Design a plan to do so. 

• Sketchnoting to Paint the Strength Picture - Guide your students to make visible their self-understanding of how they currently engage with each strength. A secondary activity is to have your students sketch out new ways they can exercise each strength. We know that going from thinking about ideas to then make them visible often leads to taking action with the ideas. The first step to this strategy is to teach your students about sketchnoting. You will find applications of this tool across all areas of your curriculum. :) Students can take pictures of their sketches to upload them to SeeSaw to then explain their thinking. 

• Spotlighting for Focus - One aspect of being purposeful is being focused and determined. Thus, work with your students to think of their eyes sending out a circle of light as a flashlight does. Guide them to use the light of their focus to work on the task at hand while everything outside the light is excluded. Embed the use of this phrase into the language of learning in your classroom as in "it is time to work individually on the activity. Remember to turn on your spotlight (of focus) to not be distracted". (This strategy is drawn from the work of Jason Williams.) An additional step is to have an object that students can put on their desks to communicate they are in spotlight mode. It probably works best for it to be something that stands on the desk so that it can be seen from a distance. Go to the Self-Control page for more information on attending. 

• Strength Chart - Teachers have lots of ways to bring strengths into the language and culture of their classrooms. A teacher at one of my schools connected to the school's core values by having the names of students on small sticky labels that he stuck to the core values poster. He would place the student's name by the value on the chart in the following ways that are adapted here for the strengths. One technique is for students who want the class to support his/her effort to grow their strengths to have his/her name placed beside the designated strength(s). A second strategy is for teachers to verbally highlight students who are applying their strengths at the moment in class. The teacher then puts the student’s name by the strengths on the chart. 

• Superhero Creation - Challenge your students to create a superhero who maximizes this strength. One approach is to have your students draw a picture of the character with a biography that describes how the superhero uses the strength in his/her life. You can provide categories such as physical, intellectual (thinking), emotional, and social as to how the superhero demonstrates the strength. This activity could take the form of playing cards that students then create games around.

• Other possibilities - Purposeful Superhero marketing design projects, Student-created videos highlighting purposeful stories, building purposeful practices into class cultures, high school IB students using CAS time to produce age-appropriate videos for ES students answering questions of “What does being purposeful look like? How can I be more purposeful?”, older student buddies and their ES partners from time to time share examples of being purposeful, incorporate into co-curricular activities like field trips, after school activities, assemblies, etc. 

Grade(s) Specific Teaching Strategies: The following ideas are offered as jumping-off points for teachers to build from and adapt to their needs. We will have a mechanism in place for you to share your adaptations and full lessons with our learning community. 

EC-K> 

• Lesson Listing - Access teacher-created lessons and those from other providers. (To be developed)

• Storybook readings, digital media, and share time by teachers and students to build understanding.

• Purpose Wall - Teachers introduce the concept of purpose by sharing pictures of people and their contributions to the community. Teachers already do this so see how they might put examples up on a “purpose wall”. 

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools. 

1-3>  

• Grades 1-2> possibly doing some storybook readings and use of digital media. Eventually could lead to students writing their own storybooks that show their purposeful actions. 

• Purposeful wall in each classroom where students post examples of their efforts.

• Use visuals of toolkits and tools engaging language of creating our "strength toolkits" with strengths as tools. 

• Weekly Contribution Seesaw Journal post: will need to develop prompt and potential categories for students to draw a picture of and/or take a photo of their purposeful actions. They then voice-record their response. 

4-5> 

• Design a lesson around the question “How do you think people succeed?”

• Journal - Google Doc or paper version. The teacher provided prompts and in time work with students to create new prompts. Could be a section of their portfolio.  

• Work with student ideas to learn and strengthen being purposeful.

Learning About Purpose: 

Websites>

Character Lab

Books>

Parent Engagement: 

• Ask someone to video record the strength in action and publicize the efforts via social media (#----------) and the school website.

• Family Tree of Strengths: Provide parents with definitions and what strengths can look like in action. Provide a family tree graphic organizer with space for names and the individual’s main strengths. Offer prompts to guide parents to explain how family members and earlier generations lived specific strengths. 

• Have students take their character cards home to teach their parents about their strengths. 

• Strength-based Parenting - Share with your parents the Dr. Lea Waters website which includes resources and information on her book. Here is an article to help with your understanding of strength-based parenting. 

• Use our various communication pathways to inform parents of their children strengthening they're being purposeful. 

• Teachers offer ideas for parents to share with their children examples of their weekly purposeful actions. 

• VIA Strengths Survey: Send parents information about the strengths and the English language Strengths Survey that they can take. The results can offer a discussion starting point for families. Teachers send specific reminders to have family talks around the purpose reflection products the students produce. 

Research References

Character Lab Image Source

¹Embedding Character Strengths. Institute of Positive Education.

² Niemiec, Ryan M., and Neal H. Mayerson. The Strengths-Based Workbook for Stress Relief: a Character Strengths Approach to Finding Calm in the Chaos of Daily Life. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., 2019.