Strengths & Passions
Year Levels 7 - 10
Engage in the school community, develop leadership and teamwork skills, and connect with others through the Strengths and Passions program
Program Overview
The Strengths and Passions program works with students to identify their personal strengths (i.e. listening skills, artistic or sporting abilities, etc.) and put these Strengths towards a Passion chosen by the group. With the support of our program, students will set group goals to engage in their community and collaborate on a program including (but not limited to) Peer Lessons, collections for Community causes, Primary School Visits, and other actions the group is interested in.
Participants develop teamwork, conflict resolution skills, assertive communication and build positive student voice and agency. Collaboration is promoted by the need to focus on, and work together, to achieve goals and tackle both pre-identified and spontaneous challenges. Additionally, the Program has an explicit focus on resilience, positive relationships and helping behaviours.
By empowering participants to choose and create a Project which benefits the school the Program also enables students to see themselves as leaders and positive actors within the school community.
Program Phases
Wondering and Research Phase: Students form a list of ‘wonderings’ about an issue (i.e. we wonder if everyone is getting a fair turn on the oval; we wonder if student feel happy at lunch; we wonder what makes students more confident, etc.). From this list they choose one to research using the most relevant research form (i.e. interviews, surveys, online, etc.) and draw conclusions about the issue based on what they discover.
Action Phase: In this phase students decide on a course of action based on what they learnt from their research. They set a goal, divide tasks and create a timeline to achieve change.
Reflection & Celebration Phase: At the end of the Action Phase students reflect on the success of their actions and explore the reasons why some actions may not have been more effective than others. As part of this phase students may return to the Wondering and Research Phase to tackle their issue further or choose another related issue to address.