The Teaching of Wellness – Prime Instructional Activities and Strategies #5

Mission Statements – We work to embed our school mission statement and core values into the culture of our classrooms. There are a few ways to bring the character strengths into this process. One is to do your regular school mission/values integration activities to then add the prompt “how can we exercise/practice our character strengths to help us further live the mission and core values?”. The class can brainstorm supporting actions and strengths to then post them in the classroom.

A second approach could be to develop a class mission statement. You can design how this process would work depending on the age of your students. Here is a family mission statement development document that you can draw from to design your step by step process for introducing the term “values” to then provide guidance to help build understanding and to write your mission statement.

It is one thing to come up with class community values but the main objective is to have our students live them. So take a look in the family mission statement document at Meeting Three> Values to Actions to work with the guiding question of “What do we do that shows we are living these values?”. The students can further unpack what actions they can take to live the mission and values. The character strengths come into play when students see how they can exercise specific ones in support of the class mission and values.

Another approach is to have students create their own personal mission statements. Look to draw on the activities that you use for your class mission statement to apply them on an individual level. A further integration approach is to have the students periodically reflect and record their efforts via their portfolios (e.g., SeeSaw with written and/or audio recording reflections along with photos and/or drawings of the supporting actions). This process offers the opportunity to introduce the term “personal code” to your students (i.e., what is your personal code that you live by?). Themes running through each of these activities are self-reflection and self-understanding, agency and follow through as individuals and as a community.