BIS Hanoi Secondary School is proud to be adopting VIA Character Strengths into both our Pastoral and Academic programs this year. VIA strengths highlights 24 character strengths that across cultures, nationalities and religions we can all agree make up what is best in human beings.
Over the past two weeks, all of our staff and students have been participating in the VIA Character Strengths survey in order to find out what their signature strengths are (top 5 strengths). Teachers and admin have been posting theirs outside their classrooms/offices and now students are deciding how they want to share theirs. A great dinner time conversation this weekend would be to ask your child what are their top 5 strengths and brainstorm examples of how they use these strengths on a daily basis, or how they could use them.
We have chosen to implement VIA strengths at BIS Hanoi as they are cross-cultural, scientifically researched and easy to implement. Identifying each other’s strengths will help ensure we are on the look out for what is best in each of us, and continuously working at how to grow those strengths. Too often society is set up to look for what is wrong, we want to see what happens when we focus on what is right and how to use it more often. Schools who have implemented this in the past have seen increased positive mental health, stronger academic results and students who have identified themselves as flourishing.
Later this term, we plan to offer a parent session on VIA strengths so you too can better know your own strengths and how to use them to better engage with your child. Stay tuned for more information regarding this. In the meantime please feel free to complete your own VIA character strengths survey in multiple languages here at www.viacharacter.org.
Lori Fairbairn
Counsellor
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