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Community Wellness Program – Wellness Ambassadors

April 18, 2023 / / 0 Comments

A ways back I listed a few ideas to consider when designing and implementing a community wellness program. I stressed the importance of involving parents throughout the process. Thus, one aspect of the program would be finding ways to gather ideas and share information with parents. As my diagram above points out, a community has multiple levels, from the macro community to the micro level of individuals in which to engage.

One way schools can connect with and share information with parents is through parent workshops. I intentionally choose the term “workshop” rather than presentation. Workshops encompass teaching but also bring in insights and perspectives from the parents. Another aspect of workshops is that parents work on processing, analyzing, and sharing their learning. An example of this is my workshop entitled Parenting in the Digital Age.

As we advance the community wellness program, I see myself reaching out to interested parents to form an advisory group to help me further grow the program. As mentioned in my wellness program design blog post, I would gather insights from parents on the most critical issues and topics they see for their families. I would also get their feedback on my initiatives and plans in response to what they share.

Back to parent workshops, I would work with this advisory group to design a series of workshops on wellness and parenting topics of their choosing. Zeroing in on wellness, I would ask for volunteers to be “wellness ambassadors” to help me with wellness workshops and supporting our community’s wellness. I suggest a few roles they could fill. Here are some that come to mind.

  • An essential partner in this process is the parent-teacher organization. I would start with their leadership team to get the ball rolling.
  • A sounding board for topic generation.
  • Unpacking topics for more profound understanding through the various cultural lenses of the community members.
  • Have them be my practice audience once I design the workshops. They could give me feedback to fine-tune the material before I work with the greater parent community.
  • They could work as table facilitators when we do the workshops with the greater parent community.
  • They give me feedback after the workshops on how they ran and what they learned from their table groups.
  • I advocate for their voices to be heard as we grow our wellness program.

I probably would not have these ambassadors engage in “how to parent-style” workshops. It could be uncomfortable putting them in the role of facilitating table discussions on parenting which can be a very personal and sometimes emotional topic to discuss. It makes more sense to have administrators and other instructional coaches who have experience working with parents help facilitate table discussions on parenting. 🙂

OK, here I go again, sharing some ideas I have yet to try and have not proven effective. I have written a few times with other ideas, such as constructing a parent portal to build community while supporting one’s parents. Hopefully, the ideas presented here make sense, and they elicit lateral thinking connecting to your experiences and plans to support your parent community.

A Community Wellness Program – Now More Than Ever

January 29, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Time for another Captain Obvious moment. Boy, howdy, do schools need school and community wellness programs more than ever! 🙂 CASEL and other SEL organizations are filling my inbox with messages pointing to the need for SEL support in schools and how education and government leaders now understand just how vital student well-being is for personal development and academic success.

I have written much about the need for school wellness programs to include staff and the greater community (families). As my world is international schools, I am sure that schools worldwide are all in on student and staff wellness, but I wonder how many have outreach programs for family wellness support.

My going forward thought is that if schools do not have a community component to the wellness programs, they need to put a plan together to bring parents and interested staff members together to design one. Some of my previous posts have a few ideas and structures that could go into one’s community wellness program.

And from a practical and competitive viewpoint, I think prospective families looking at schools might just start expecting school websites and promotional materials to list ways that the schools support community wellness through a variety of ways (e.g., a parent portal filled with wellness resources, community wellness blog, family wellness plans, on-campus parent center, family needs assessment survey, weekend sports, and activities, etc.)

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Student Journaling with Big Life Journal

October 20, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Student journaling to reflect on school subjects and/or unique ideas is a powerful and proven tool. Several of my posts cover this topic of student journals/planners. I recently ran across a company called Big Life Journal that provides journals based on SEL and aspects of Positive Psychology. I will be ordering copies to review but what I am seeing on the website looks good regarding the prompts, topics, and templates that can help students grow their self-understanding while adding “tools” to their personal wellness toolkits.

An essential part of my working with parents is to give them parenting materials that include strategies and templates to put them in the role of a life coach for their children. Hopefully, the Big Life journals for elementary and middle/high school students can be a helpful addition to my parent coaching toolkit.

Our Wellness Team could design educational materials and workshops to help parents use journals to support their children’s coaching. I could see my subsequent school purchasing copies for all students or promoting the idea of parents buying the books. I could also see using the parent portal wellness section to house the tutorials and the community wellness blog to post weekly strategies for using the journals.

Another approach could be to go through the school wellness program to have classroom teachers in the elementary assigning tasks in the journals for students to do in class and/or at home, depending on how the school uses the journal. My vote would be for home use with a possible teacher/parent partnership as a big part of the effort to grow parent understanding of how to support their children’s emotional, social, and general wellness growth.

Again, I don’t have a copy of the book, but I wonder if they have a digital wellness and/or citizenship section. I think these topics would need their own book as they are related to emotional and social well-being but are more in applying one’s emotional and social intelligence character strengths.

My current parents are very open to parenting guidance on wellness, the use of technology/media, and how their children interact with others via technology. I wonder if Common Sense Media has some form of workbook/journal for at-home use.

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Designing A Staff Wellness Program

October 13, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I continue to very much enjoy my class on wellness through George Mason University. My professor, Dr. Thurston, recently gave us the following task, which falls very much within my wheelhouse. Hopefully, my next school will already have a wellness program in place. If not, my write-up can be a starting point for me to put forth a proposal not constrained by the word count for this assignment. I also would, in PosPsych fashion, not focus on the negatives but rather look at how to help all community members flourish.

Assignment: Imagine you are the director of professional development for a large, K-6 public school. Burnout has become a significant issue for your school. The principal has asked YOU to develop a program  1) to help prevent burnout for teachers and  2) to help those teachers who are already experiencing burnout to find resilience and bounce back from it. The principal wants your support and training program to especially 1) promote mind-body wellness and 2) cultivate a renewed sense of meaning in being a teacher.

A Professional Development Plan to Prevent Burnout

As the director of professional development here at our school, I am writing to you as our principal, requesting your feedback and ultimate approval of a personal and professional learning program for our teachers designed to support and enhance their mind-body wellness while also focusing on our teachers who are currently experiencing burnout. I will offer some background information about negative factors affecting the nature of being in a helping profession. But the main thrust of this proposal is to provide learning opportunities to enhance physical health and mind-body wellness using the tenets of Positive Psychology which we introduced to the staff at the end of last year. With your insights and guidance, we can review some programmatic offerings for a sustained year-long effort to further support the wellness of our professional learning community. 

Background:

Let me start with some research by Dr. Cary Cherniss and Dr. Thomas Skovholt that deals with helping professions and the factors affecting burnout. Both authors highlight the importance of caregivers knowing about factors affecting potential burnout and how to prevent it. 

Dr. Cherniss shares several conclusions regarding reasons for burnout with stress, institutional struggles around workplace bureaucracy, societal expectations, and not feeling supported as being a few primary drivers. The research shows that these factors lower caregiving professionals’ initial idealism and belief in the meaning of their work, possibly then leading to more self-protection, lowering expectations for clients, and having less energy devoted to work. 

Dr. Skovholt’s work centers on the importance of meaning, building resilience, and the factors that do and don’t sustain the professional self. His research shows that experiencing a sense of meaning and purpose ebbs with giving professionals when they don’t feel they are making a difference in their work. He points out that helping professionals can control the advancement of their expertise and the quality of their relationship with their clients. However, they don’t have control over their clients taking steps to make needed changes in their lives. Dr. Skovholt stresses the importance of balance in work/personal life and the unhealthy nature of overly attaching to one’s clients. 

 

Program Development: 

Step 1: I propose that we start our wellness program with a full-day whole-staff kickoff introduction to our PD plans for the year. A primary focus of the first PD session will be to share information about what it means to be in a helping and meaningful profession that comes with challenges to the point of possible burnout. I can see us doing a thinking routine like Compass Points to have table groups respond to the italicized statement I just listed. 

After plenty of discussion and sharing table responses to the thinking routine, we provide information from the research by Dr. Cherniss and Dr. Skovholt. We would move from the negative factors affecting teachers into a problem-solving mode to understand what makes teaching meaningful. We would also look to decrease stress and stop potential burnout by offering several of Dr. Skovholt’s support strategies (see below for examples listed under PERMA(H) – Meaning).

Everyone’s homework will be to take the VIA Character Strengths survey. We will give a due date for everyone to complete the survey and notice that we will have a mini-workshop prepared for teams to discuss and build an understanding of the strengths. We then finish the day by reintroducing Positive Psychology to the staff, emphasizing how we will use the PERMA(H) construct and the Character Strengths as our vehicle for learning about and applying wellness principles to our lives. 

Step 2: A natural tendency is to emphasize the needs of those who are struggling, as in our teachers who are already experiencing high levels of stress, anxiety, and in some cases, burnout. Going forward, I propose we take a constructive and empowering Positive Psychology approach that offers wellness information and support strategies to all of our teachers, moving everyone to a more mind-body solid sense of well-being with the knowledge that some will start their learning in more challenging situations. 

Thus, we build on our introduction efforts from last year around well-being based upon the Positive Psychology “exercising” of the Character Strengths, the PERMA(H) pillars stressing the importance of the meaning and positive emotions in the lives of caregivers, and the value of life satisfaction with a focus on mindfulness as a tool among to help our staff flourish. 

Just as we differentiate for our students, I propose that we offer added support for those with more needs while giving everyone a menu of strategies to individualize their wellness planning and implementation efforts while also working with their grade level and specialist (i.e., art, PE, library, student support) teams. Teachers can work independently and with their teams with the option of having a “wellness buddy” for reflection and motivational purposes. It will be up to you to decide how much attention and which teams might need to work on their wellness, especially regarding relationships and functionality. 

This hybrid approach would include the development of a “Wellness Learning Portal” to provide background information on Positive Psychology and other aspects of mind-body well-being. The site would be organized at the top level around the PERMA(H) pillars, including strategies on how to engage the Character Strengths within each PERMA(H) pillar offering staff members a construct to organize their thinking and actions towards enhancing their well-being. 

We would offer designated individual and team-protected time to work on activities listed within the portal. We would gather feedback as we proceed to design whole staff reflection and sharing times as we progress through the year. The emphasis, though, would not be on all staff PD sessions. 

I propose starting with a life satisfaction survey and a resilience inventory to get a baseline of where everyone stands now. We can then give each instrument at the end of the year to measure the effectiveness of our efforts. The results can help our counselor/wellness coach quickly move to work with individuals dealing with burnout to help them create wellness plans and to receive ongoing life coaching. 

We can offer a few specifics within each PERMA(H) pillar through our portal. A theme for each pillar is to ask our teachers which character strengths they can dial up within each pillar to further enhance their wellness.   

Positive Emotions – Offer a list of activities and character strength engagements that lead to positive or those that can lead to uncomfortable emotions. Provide guidance in choosing positive experiences that lead to positive emotions by offering the Positivity Self Test. Provide research on the power of positive thinking and learned optimism. Journaling is a helpful tool for this pillar. 

Engagement – Offer an inventory that helps teachers reflect on which activities under which circumstances deepen their engagement in their activities. Include background information on experiencing a state of flow. We can offer an array of mindfulness techniques, including meditation. I could see setting aside a portion of one of our staff PD sessions to share the science-supported benefits of mindfulness and misconceptions while also taking a deep dive into the core elements of intention, attention, and attitude. 

Relationships – Offer articles on the importance of relationships for well-being, including the research on inhabitants of blue zones worldwide. List strategies to help build active listening and Active Constructive Responding (ACR) communication skills. We can offer a full menu of team-building and wellness activities.  

Meaning – Take a deep dive into articles on helping professionals and the importance of self-care while finding meaning in one’s work. Design an activity to engage staff with the four needs for meaning by Baumeister and Wilson (i.e., purpose, value and justification, efficacy and autonomy, and control).

We would then offer strategies to sustain one’s professional self. Here are a few strategies offered by Dr. Skovholt.

  • Distinguish between idealism and realism
  • Take care of yourself first – As told on airplanes, first put on your oxygen mask and then that of your child. 
  • Seek balance while at times dealing with negative self-talk around feeling selfish for taking care of your needs
  • Setting healthy boundaries for yourself.
  • Build a support network and look for opportunities to mentor others which gets at the R in PERMA(H)
  • Maximize successes
  • Find ways to bring play into our lives

Accomplishment – Providing ways to set goals and engage a Growth Mindset comes into play along with the strengths of resilience and perseverance. 

Health – We can offer physical and mental support strategies in our wellness portal, including diet, fitness, sleep, and a further focus on whole-body wellness. 

Step 3: Another delivery instrument for our wellness program is creating and implementing a wellness plan by individuals and possibly by teams. The wellness plan would include setting personal wellness goals. Here is a family wellness template that can be adapted for our purposes. 

Step 4: Connecting to our other initiative to integrate wellness principles into our classroom curriculum, I propose that all staff members make one of their professional goals to increase their knowledge of Positive Psychology to be ready for our student wellness program implementation.

 

Final Thoughts: 

This staff member wellness program outline is a starting point for us to build from. I would like to form a wellness team of interested staff to fully design and implement the program. 

 

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Designing a Lifebook (Life Planner) for Your Children

July 4, 2021 / / 0 Comments

It is a regular part of my job as a school counselor to support parents. I am coaching some friends to help them be more proactive and intentional in parenting their children. I asked my friends to have a notebook and pen (or digital notebook) ready for our first session, where I will introduce the term “Lifebook” to them.

The term Lifebook has several definitions, so my interpretation is to put a plan together for each child involving goals, strategies to reach them, and documentation of efforts all wrapped around agreed-upon categories. One can search the web to find many personal growth areas (categories) to use as a menu to choose from. My list starts with the PERMAH pillars.

Because children don’t grow up in isolation, they are a part of a family, school, and other communities; we will also talk about how their children interact with the family, school, and other systems. I will see if there is an interest in creating and implementing some of the individual/family wellness and mission plans I shared in previous posts and through the Wellness@ES resources site.

Our effort will result in each child having a Lifebook in his/her name. The parents and children will hopefully consistently reference the lifebooks to monitor their growth while adding artifacts of their efforts within each listed domain.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Home Learning Support Plan and More

February 12, 2021 / / 0 Comments

One thing is to meet with parents to provide a list of home support strategies. It is another to provide a method to help them apply the strategies. The image to the left is a screenshot of one parent’s effort to work with her child to complete a home support plan template I provided her.

The support strategies list provides strategies for building routines and health (i.e., diet and sleep), the physical learning environment (essential for virtual learning), organization skills, and self-control while supporting independence. One can, of course, come up with other categories.

I work with the students to design their personal wellness plans they then take home to share with their parents. The wellness plan is student-centered and managed with some parental coaching. The home learning plan is parent managed with input from the child. The older the child, the more he/she takes ownership of applying the strategies.

And then there is, of course, the Personal Learning System (PLS) and plan that I work with students to complete and implement to have agency over their learning. 🙂

Tips for Student and Family Wellness During Virtual School (Repost)

February 1, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Note: While many students worldwide have been in virtual school this school year, my school in Vietnam is now just starting it. I am reposting what I shared last spring.

These first tips are addressed directly to students; scroll down the page for the student and family tips.

  • Work with your parents to design a daily schedule that supports your virtual school schedule. Take little breaks away from your device every 25 minutes to give your eyes and your body a rest. Schedule longer daily breaks to eat, rest, get outdoors, and exercise.
  • Get physical! Schedule outdoor walks and other types of physical activity for at least an hour a day to help you stay healthy. Take turns with your family members to develop activities from bike riding to dog walking to our older students trying workouts from our own SSIS Dragon Energizer website.
  • Work with your parents to ensure you have healthy meals and snacks to fuel your body and brain to better help you do your schoolwork. It is important to keep sugary foods out of reach. Eat protein and healthy fats to keep you from getting sleepy during the day.
  • Sleep, Sleep, Sleep! Your teachers talk to you a lot about getting enough sleep each evening. Make sure your daily schedule has an early bedtime. You also need to stop looking at screens by 7 PM or earlier.
  • Be responsible and grow your independence. After virtual school in the spring, many of you said you became more independent in your learning. You also took on more responsibilities around your homes. Take steps to become even more independent during this second virtual experience.
  • Make time to think about how you are feeling. Ask yourself, “How am I doing? How am I feeling?”. You can draw pictures, write a story and talk to someone in your household about your thinking and feelings. You don’t need to do anything with your feelings. Just become more aware of them. This is a healthy thing to do.
  • Many of you have practiced being mindful in your classrooms. Mindfulness is about being present in the moment, which helps us be calm and healthy. We can be more present by focusing on our breathing. Listening to the sounds around us also helps us be more present. Your teachers will help you practice being more mindful.
  • Make time for gratitude sharing. Being grateful is about appreciating the people, things, and activities in our lives. Talk to your family about having a gratitude wall with Post-It notes for all family members to share moments of appreciation during the day.
  • Spend time with your family and friends. This means being proactive in planning times to sit down with your family to discuss your day. It also means using technology to talk with your friends and family who do not live with you.

 

Support Strategies for Families During COVID-19  

We all respond differently to crises. It is normal. We can experience feelings of sadness and frustration. During this time, some of us feel stuck, and others lonely, as we may spend more hours of the day away from our usual circle of support. Students are no doubt missing friends and teachers.

And although we may not know it, we are also growing during this time as we learn how to be resilient and persevere.

However, growth is not always easy. Particularly not “forced” growth during times of crisis. That’s why we have collected some strategies for you, as a parent, to use at home. They are inspired by the article “Ten Strategies for Educators’ Well-being.”

Encourage Reflection

Virtual School students are likely going through a range of emotions. This is healthy and normal. Talk to your children about how they are feeling. It is not unusual for children to be angry about the school closure and coronavirus. There is so much they do not understand, and that can cause them to feel frustrated. Ask them to reflect on how they feel about their accomplishments and their efforts.

Create Routines

In school, there are clearly defined routines. Routines help us feel calmer and in control. We know what to expect. Currently, teachers are working on helping students establish those routines within Virtual School. See how those routines can be expanded to include ways to support your health and wellness. Connect with friends, go outdoors, find ways to exercise, and get plenty of sleep.

Set Limits on News Consumption

We are all naturally curious about what is happening with the coronavirus in Vietnam and the world. We hear news from our friends and from news sources. Older students connect to each other and news sources via social media. But do not get caught in checking constantly. This is not healthy for ourselves or our families. A daily routine can set aside time to check the news and return to your tasks.

Get the Facts

Another part of our digital lives is knowing where to get factual information that we can trust. Our middle and high school students know all about questioning news sources to ensure accurate and valid information. Our elementary students are just learning about media literacy. Work with them. Discuss what they are reading and where they hear things they are bringing up.

Listen to Your Emotions

It is essential to reflect and think about how you are doing. For our elementary students, we call this self-awareness. Self-awareness is a life skill that helps us understand our feelings and needs. The more you understand yourself, the more you can take steps to care for yourself. One helpful way for our children to grow their self-awareness is to keep a journal and, or to take time to speak with a parent or friend about their day.

Here are some questions you, as a parent, can ask or, in some cases, prompt your children to ask themselves.

  • What went well today?
  • What is one thing that you appreciated today?
  • I experienced an emotion today:…, and I felt this way because…
  • One thing that inspired me today was…
  • What didn’t work today? What can you learn from that?
  • One thing I learned about myself today is…
  • A small win today was…

Ask Your Family to Share Stories of Challenges They Overcame

When resilient, we draw on many character strengths, such as courage, hope, and gratitude. Hearing grandparents’ and parents’ stories about how they overcame challenges can give you the strength to overcome your own difficulties. Ask them to share their stories with you. Also, hearing stories from our family members is a great way to learn more about our family’s history.

Take a Brain Break

Charge your batteries with a break away from your daily routine of work or schoolwork. Creative activities are great for that: doodling or drawing, singing, dancing, and going out to take pictures. Try to incorporate something creative into each day.

Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Physical Activity

There are many advantages to maintaining our physical health during times like these. It helps us focus, and it keeps us fit. Also, you will benefit from strengthening relationships when you exercise with friends. Come up with ways that you can exercise indoors and outdoors – the PE teachers in each division have shared great resources and are always happy to share more.

Be Proactive

Don’t wait for someone to suggest something to you. Why not take the initiative and be the planner? Pull out a board game for your family to play after dinner, plan a surprise for your sister or best friend, or meet a classmate in the park. Being proactive in making plans makes us feel more in control while experiencing the positive emotion of hope.

At the end of our efforts and strategies, one of the most important things to support our well-being centers is the emotional support we give and receive from those around us.

Our school community is a big part of our lives, and we must remember that we are all in this together. Others are going through the same emotions as you are. You are not alone. Seek help from any school resources, and tell someone how you feel. Reach out to a friend.

Together, we can keep our community happy and healthy.

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

Wellness Diffusion – School and Community – Go BIG!

January 14, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This is another post that has been sitting in my draft folder for a long time. I originally planned it for my “what if we…” series. My title was “What If We…Really Built and Sustained a Community Wellness Program”. We have scientifically proven tools through Positive Psychology to help individuals, teaching teams, and the greater community improve their well-being. This is a big honker of a wish, but I think it is doable, especially in a world with many stressors, including the need for digital wellness and individuals struggling with physical and mental health.

My hat is off to the schools that go full-on to provide wellness educational opportunities along with natural mechanisms to help all community stakeholders live and embed wellness into their lives.

Here is what I finally came up with for this post, including a graphic I put together a couple of years ago for the wellness committee at my current school.

Community Wellness

Community Wellness

How and where can school leaders help to diffuse the tenets of Positive Psychology (wellness) into the culture of the school and the greater community? I don’t have the background in administration or school communications to answer this question, but here are a few ideas. 🙂 A few areas that come to mind for broad integration opportunities are hiring practices, policies, ongoing staff professional growth, curriculum integration including planning templates and rubrics, communication conduits (i.e., newsletters, email, social networking), a wellness information resource site, a parent learning portal, etc. As for the question of where to spread the seeds of wellness, the answer is, of course, EVERYWHERE!

I think a good place for school leaders to start their planning is to look at how they approach the diffusion of the school mission and core values into the school culture and the greater community.

Schools naturally offer orientation and some sort of onboarding process for students, parents, and new staff to learn about the mission and culture of the school. I can see schools going BIG when it comes to introducing the school wellness program to newcomers as a part of an ongoing orientation program.

Parents could be offered a series of workshops on the mission and wellness practices and a wide array of topics/needs gathered from previous new parents’ reports. Sticking with wellness, book clubs, parent meet-ups, and online resources via a parent portal could also be shared as part of the diffusion process.

The Strength Switch, based on Positive Psychology, is the book that we are using at my school for a parent book club. I could see going big by giving all the new parents a copy and the opportunity to join either workshops on strength-based parenting or book clubs while providing online guidance via the parent portal on applying the principles shared in the book.

A theme of my blog posts about supporting parents is that schools should offer pathways for face-to-face (F2F) and virtual learning in the languages of the parent community.

Potential wellness workshops and online resources could be offered F2F and online on the topics of:

Another area to embed wellness practices and language into school culture is co-curricular activities and weekend community events. There are many natural ways to bring PERMAH and character strengths into the learning process, from sports to afterschool classes to the arts. Here is a blog post where I wrote about after-school programming and wellness.

Don’t limit your thinking to only students participating in afterschool activities. Look for a parent center with staffing and resources to support learning on the topics listed above and the others your community needs assessment results give you to provide to your school leaders.

As for staff learning about wellness, think outside the box of the typical “sit and get” sessions of bringing outside providers. Go to tried and true professional learning methods like Teachers Teaching Teachers (TTT). Construct your menu of learning choices by leveraging the expertise of your staff! Team up your instructional coaches and wellness coaches to provide individualized and team services to help staff set up their Personal Learning Networks (PLN) to personalize their learning for personal and professional growth. Provide “afterschool activities” for staff, offering wellness activities such as yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, local cuisine cooking, art/music/drama, sporting activities, etc. (Thanks, Kattina, for the idea!) And look to provide a wellness podcast and a blog to provide ongoing and just-in-time learning opportunities. I guess you could also have a school wellness Twitter account that informs the community of blog and podcast releases.

The bottom line is to find ways through multiple pathways to support the wellness of your community members!

Photo by Chaozzy Lin on Unsplash

Family Wellness Progress Reports

November 20, 2020 / / 0 Comments

A portion of my work as a counselor is doing some form of intervention in family systems. The continuum from parents needing just a few strategies to the extreme of working with families to get into therapy makes individualization for each family very important. But there are some givens that parenting experts agree upon that work for all families, whether it be in setting up routines, opening up communication, disengaging from technology, etc.

As a counselor, I know that offering strategies while guiding parents to read parenting books and websites is only the first step in supporting students and their family systems. Following up after parent meetings is essential to check in and continue the dialogue. It is also essential to provide and coach parents in using structures to help improve family dynamics and from a wellness angle to help families thrive.

One of the main structures that I offer families is to have regular family meetings and work together to put plans together. I wrote about this in the spring with the post An Opportunity for Making Plans!. I outlined steps to follow to construct family wellness, tech & media (digital wellness) use, and mission statements. And, of course, individual family members can create their own personal versions of the plans.

I tried to build practical action steps for the plans to make them tangible and a part of family cultures. One additional strategy is to have families design wellness progress reports to support each plan’s implementation and ongoing follow-through. Schools use the term progress report to mean different things. Still, in this instance, I offered it as a formative assessment to support reflection, communication, learning, and other goal-setting while celebrating progress.

When you add the character strength of proactivity by making family meeting appointments in the family calendar, families have a real opportunity to further live their mission, wellness, and digital wellness plans.

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Digital Wellness PERMAH Plan

October 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

As an instructional technologist, I always struggled with Responsible Use Policies (RUP). In many cases, they list a lot of behaviors the students should not do. There didn’t seem to be a positive approach around being creative, collaborative, proactive, in control of oneself, etc. And there was not so much buy-in because the students had no say in creating them. So I would give students the official school RUP to sign while making time to have them draw up their own personal responsible use policy, which involved what they could constructively do with technology. 🙂

Now that I am a counselor again and living in the constructive world of Positive Psychology, I think my approach was sound and could be designed using PERMAH and the Character Strengths. Did you notice that I used a few character strengths in the first paragraph? 😉 Yes, they can be applied to how our students and all of us engage in the digital world.

Previously I posted the idea of families designing their own tech and media agreements (Family Digital Wellness Plan) based upon their family values taking shape either as part of the family mission statement or as a separate document. I stand by that approach of having a family media agreement, but it could be enhanced by bringing PERMAH and the Character Strengths into the development process.

It might be too complicated for families to include this wellness approach in their discussions to create a family media/tech digital wellness and/or mission statement, especially with young children. I wonder if children and families might be offered a value-focused or a Positive Psychology approach. I will need to think about this, as both seem very solid.

I definitely see myself at some point working with students to use the PERMAH construct to create their personal digital wellness plan looking at how they will engage with technology and digital information to:

  • enhance their Positive Emotions
  • deepen their Engagement in activities
  • nurture aspects of their Relationships
  • offer them opportunities for Accomplishment
  • and grow their mental and physical Health

The process would also include listing which Character Strengths they will engage with within each PERMAH pillar.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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