Lagniappe for Learning

Recently, I participated in an exercise of “strength” finding along with other faculty and administrators at our school. As an educator and counselor, I’ve always looked for ways to better myself and others. I often examine what works and what doesn’t work in my own methods of teaching, learning, communicating, and living…and I’ve surrendered to a variety of introspective assessments designed to provide you with things you likely already know about yourself. The Strength Finder is not unique in that manner. It revealed that my strengths for teaching are: learner, achiever, deliberative, futuristic, and intellection. Further descriptions of these attributes do indeed prove to be true of me and my ‘talents’.

The premise of the book, Teach with Your Strengths, is that teachers need to discover their own innate talents and utilize them in their educator roles in the classroom. That makes sense to me! The authors go on to explain that knowing one’s strengths alone does not guarantee a great teacher, but that one must also consider skills, knowledge, and the development of strengths.

My concern with the emphasis of strengths is that the balance scales tip too away from the concept of realism. Positive attitudes and emotions are certainly desirable, though I didn’t find their claim of “this principle has altered several branches of psychology and created a new one: strengths psychology.” (Liesveld & Miller, 2005, p. 45) – at least not in the divisions of the American Psychological Association, though there is a reference to Positive Psychology in Wikipedia.

Optimism has been found to fight cancer, increase creativity (Pink, 2006, p. 225) and in general, provide a more productive atmosphere. But in my own optimism is caution as I fear too many will turn a blind eye to the reality which is often negative and downright ugly. I still advocate for a balance and that requires one to consider their weaknesses – sometimes that just means acknowledging them and accepting them, but often, it behooves one to seek improvement and change for those weaknesses.

Liesveld & Miller (2005, p. 53) claim that “working on weaknesses means that you keep doing, with dogged and pained determination, what you don’t – and can’t – do well. Even with all that effort, the best you can hope to become is mediocre.” Not only does that seem like a ‘cop out’ for dealing with reality and working towards improvement, but it then begs the question, if we don’t need to work on our weaknesses, why are we expecting students to do that in their day to day lives in our educational institutions? Do we hold a different standard for them?

Again, for emphasis, I’m not against examining and taking advantage of our strengths – those attributes will undoubtedly lead us to the best ‘fit’ in avocational, vocational, relational and personal pursuits. A closer look at our weaknesses does not have to lead to negativity – indeed, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” (quote attributed to Winston Churchill). So, I only propose that we balance those strengths with the continual consideration of reality – because, after all, we will have to face it on a day-to-day basis. As our Professional Learning Communities continue to explore the relationships of strengths to teaching and learning, I’m sure I’ll grow with additional reflections and postings, as well!

Liesveld, R, & Miller, J (2005). Teach with your strengths.NY: Gallup Press.
Pink, D (2006). A whole new mind. NY: Riverhead Press.

Photo Credits: Partsnpieces’ Strength in Numbers at Flickr, Harshad Sharma’s Optimistic at Flickr, Scoobymoo’s Reality Tag at Flickr.

Technorati tags: StrengthsFinder, Teaching, Learning