As a school psychologist, I worked with students facing the most significant challenges – students with the highest needs, most complex behaviors, and lowest performance.
Efforts to provide these students with the best chance for success meant investing time, meticulous planning, focused attention and if you’ll allow me to be candid, patience.
If you’ve been an educator for any length of time, you’ve likely been part of a student support team working through this problem-solving process. The nature of the process requires support teams to spend a great deal of time focused on improving student deficits and minimal time focused on the strengths, talents and gifts of those students.
When we think about it, over the course of a typical school day most students aren’t given the opportunity to gain knowledge and understanding of their aptitudes or offered a chance to develop and apply their strengths. For students facing struggles at every turn in their school day, imagine how meaningful these opportunities could be.
If you’re reading this, you’re at least curious about how you can integrate Empowered resources into your classroom so every student can maximize their learning experience. Our learning strategy (called PMM) casts the net wider, embracing and making a space for students who may not be the highest performers, most fluent readers, or the most engaged.
Empowered educators use an experiential approach to learning, one that provides students with opportunities to create value within their classrooms, contribute alongside their peers, and showcase their virtues and talents in ways that extend beyond traditional academics. Our activity library is full of customizable lesson plans that can be modified to include any learner with any learning style.
Providing all students with a chance to contribute meaningfully increases their confidence and allows them to experience success and demonstrate their leadership skills. Imagine the ripple effects when this self-actualization generalizes to other areas of their lives.
When you offer students a learning environment that is real and relevant, you will see your students experimenting, engaging, and realizing they can bring value to their classroom and community – no matter how they learn. With Empowered, you can create a magical threshold into a classroom that highlights students’ strengths, not their deficits, and reinforces our shared belief that everyone has a gift.
If we can help you leverage Empowered’s resources to allow every student to flourish – let us know.