Surprised (Happily) by College's Service Culture

“How do you figure out which colleges will be best for your child?” a mother in the audience asked me recently.

“A good place to start is by asking your child to think about times in his life when he felt confident, energized, connected, or felt he was making a valuable contribution,” I replied. Four years ago, when my daughter Lauren was doing this exercise, she realized that a number of her best moments came during community service projects.

So I took notice last week when the college she chose, Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU), won a 2009 presidential award for community service.

“Did you know OWU was so strong in community service when you picked it?” I asked Lauren, now a junior.

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t you remember?’’ My memory’s not what it was… “That was one of the questions I always asked colleges because I loved the Honduras work [done in high school] so much,” Lauren explained (patiently). I guess I was the only one surprised by how that played out four years later.

How do you make a culture come alive-- even to a high schooler?

This made me curious: how does a college foster a service culture that is noticeable even to a high school student? I asked OWU’s Susan Pasters, Director of Community Service Learning, and Rock Jones, President.

CD: Why do you think so many OWU students volunteer so many hours in community service?
SP: Each student’s motivation is uniquely individual, but OWU attracts students who are predisposed toward participating in community service. Many of our students want to be engaged in service-learning activities outside the classroom. Others find that community service is a good way to make friends and feel good about themselves.

RJ: Ohio Wesleyan has a long heritage of combining rigorous classroom work with real-world experiences, including volunteer service. There is a particularly strong culture of service on the campus that is embraced by virtually everyone at OWU.

CD: Many colleges have community service. When you arrived at OWU, did you expect that this was an area where the school would stand apart?

SP: I arrived in July 1989 to establish a community service office. I knew that OWU had a long history of producing a large percentage of graduates who entered a life of service…[but] in 1989, I had no idea that Ohio Wesleyan would end up being an exemplary school for service and service-learning.

RJ: I learned in the interview process of the longstanding commitment to service at Ohio Wesleyan, dating from the early 20th century when OWU sent large numbers of graduates to serve as Methodist missionaries to the late 20th century when OWU was recognized for being one of the universities to send the largest number of graduates to service in the Peace Corps. Service is in the genetic code of OWU.

CD: How do you encourage students to get involved?
RJ: We start talking about it during the admission process, we talk more during Orientation, and we host a Volunteer Fair during the first week of classes.

SP: We advertise through every means possible, but there is also a great word-of-mouth network where students recruit their friends to get involved because they are having such great experiences.

Finding Meaning

CD: Finding meaning isn’t always easy. Does community service add meaning for OWU students?
RJ: Yes – it happens every day. Many students share with me stories of the deep meaning they have found through volunteer service. I believe that a part of our educational mission is to help students understand the connection between their academic work and their most cherished values that provide the source of their understanding of life purpose.

CD: What else does participation in community service do for a student?
SP: In my opinion, students who engage in service have a better idea of what they want to do in life, have more hands-on experience to put on their resumes, and are apt to be more compassionate toward people different from themselves.
RJ: When I interview graduating seniors, many of them cite community service as a source of important growth and personal transformation during their years at OWU.

Community service is one of the ways to bring out gifts that don’t show up in the classroom and to bring meaning to life.  It's also often a place where kids who don't do well academically can feel they make a valuable contribution.  For these reasons and the inherent gift of helping someone else, I recommend encouraging service in your child even if his school doesn't (and you may be surprised!).

I originally wrote this for Positive Psychology News Daily and the original article is here.

How to Free Your Child from the Critics' Trap

I once had a wonderful professor who was funny and a great teacher in front of the class. When I spoke with him privately, though, I felt like an idiot. Once, while discussing my plans for a research project, he snapped, “Why would you want to do that?!?”which left me feeling off-balance and dumb, not sure why I had thought “that” was such a great idea in the first place.

Consciously or not, by belittling my ideas, he made himself look smarter.  “Teresa Amabile at Harvard showed that humans have a tendency to perceive critics as smarter than approvers when they lack sufficient information to make judgments on the content of statements,” reports Dave Shearon, MAPP.

In fact, Teresa Amabile says, “Negative reviewers were perceived as more intelligent, competent and expert than positive reviewers, even when the content of the positive review was independently judged as being of higher quality and greater forcefulness.”

Are Positive People Dumber?

This got me think about the common saying, “Fat, dumb and happy.” Where did that come from and why do we conjure an image of the Pillsbury Dough Boy when we use the word “happy?” Whatever the origins, you can be sure it is not a recent development. According to Shearon, Gustave Flaubert said, ‘To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.’

We set up a flawed choice in our language and perceptions: be negative and smart or cheerful and dumb .  Do we really want to leave our children (or ourselves) with the idea that being critical and negative means you’re smarter?  Not if we want them to live, long satisfying lives, we don’t (see #1 below).

To free your child from the critics' trap, show them that this is a flawed choice, that they can be both positive and smart.  Here are a few ways to do this:

1. Know the Recipe for a Satisfying Life

Maybe we would be less skeptical of cheerfulness if we understood that to live a long, healthy life you must feel more positive emotion, according to research on health, nuns, and Harvard men.   The “heart strengths” of love, hope, zest and gratitude are correlated with life satisfaction and intellectual strengths are not, according to Marty Seligman and Chris Peterson. 
This must have been obvious to Ernest Hemingway, who said, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

2. Remind him that a 2-year-old can say, “No.”

We have this notion that it’s more sophisticated to be negative, but the fact is it’s so simple that even a toddler can do it. What’s sophisticated is coming up with creative new ideas, concepts, products and services.

Demonstrate this to your teen by setting a timer and asking her to criticize something of yours (writing, cooking, clothing…). Then set the timer again and ask her to help you expand upon the good aspects of the item in question. She’ll see how much more time, effort and thought go into building-up than tearing-down.

3. Seek the Gems

A friend’s father once said, “I’ve never met a man from whom I cannot learn” and in the past 25 years I’ve found he’s absolutely right. Encourage your child to find a gem, something smart and worth understanding, in others and in himself.

When he looks for things to appreciate, not only will he learn and explore the world with curiosity and intelligence,  but he'll increase the positive emotions that lead to lasting happiness.   Isn't that smart?  :)

Your child has tremendous potential and specific gifts to share with the world. If it's a challenge for you to see this right now, you need a Better Frame of Reference.  A good place to start is our small-group Parent Mentoring program on January 30, in Wellesley, MA.  Learn more...

Guitar Hero or High School? One Family's Choice

Blake Peebles is a high school sophomore who wakes up at noon, does a few hours of school work, and then practices Guitar Hero for 10 hours.  Are his parents crazy? 

Maybe they are, but consider this: since replacing eight hours of high school each day with three hours of home-school and tutors, Blake now tests at

 a 12^th-grade level, he socializes more often and has more friends, according to an article in the May issue of American Way Magazine.  He is also absorbed in mastering computer gaming, one of the fastest growing fields in our economy.

It was not an easy decision for his parents to let Blake leave high school and it continues to be a hard choice.  They are attacked by critics —most of whom they’ve never met.  If the Peebles had taken the expected path and insisted that their son stay in school, no one would be giving them flack – even if their son was bored, depressed or learning less.  Many would tell them they were doing the right thing.

Yet, today Blake is 

absorbed for most of his waking hours in something 

that creates flow for him – 

a path to well-being that the majority of high school students do not achieve in class, accrding to Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi.  Not only that, but Blake has rid himself of the stress he felt in a public high school that was not designed to bring out the best in him.   He is learning, he is engaged in flow, and he is happy.

I give the Peebles credit for their courage.  There are many parents and educators thinking about reducing pressure in high school, but the critical issue is not just to reduce high school work, but to increase teens' engagement, or flow. The Peebles listened to their child’s needs and they were willing to take a risk in the hope of improving his well-being.  Their choice is not one that many would make, but it has proven to be a good one for Blake.

y articles and videos are now posted on my new website: www.christineduvivier.com. You can find this article

Have You Done Your Homework?
Surprising Facts on the #1 Question Parents Ask


Did you ask your child about his or her homework this week? In parent circles, homework is getting a lot of air time. Parents often ask me, “Do you agree there is too much homework?” If you are one of the parents questioning students’ school assignments, you may want to do your own homework on this subject.

In his book, “The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing,” researcher Alfie Kohn says none of the studies on homework show a significant positive effect on high school learning. Some of the studies actually show harm, and, at best, the studies are neutral, Kohn reports.

I agree with parents who feel that for many teens there’s too much homework. When my own daughters were going through high school (two different schools), I felt this way, but I thought it was just me. Now, more parents are speaking up and questioning high school work levels.

You’ve probably heard the “benefits” of more homework, but how often do you hear about how teens benefit from less homework?

There are at least three major benefits of less homework:
1. Increase parent-teen bonding time
2. Reduce family stress
3. Free-up time for life-changing activities

Increase Parent-Teen Bonding Time

At a recent parent workshop, one mother said, “I used to bond with my child while taking a walk in the woods, but now she has too much homework and other school activities: there’s no time.” If you are a high school parent, this is a crucial age for family bonding. We need positive relationships to buffer against the negative effects of stress, says Dr. George Vaillant. Additionally, Dr. Ned Hallowell explains that parent-teen connection leads to adult happiness.

Less homework frees-up opportunities for reconnecting with your teen: nice for you, vital for your child.

Reduce Family Stress

The high levels of homework can damage parent-child relationships in another way: students’ school demands can begin to feel like parents’ school demands—and we can end up nagging our teens because of the pressure we feel to make sure they get the best possible start in life.

In my worst moments as a parent, I imagined my teens lying on the couch watching TV for the next 30 years—if I didn’t prod them now! Sadly, when I looked around for help, all the resources encouraged more nagging and prodding: schedules, planners, tutors, consequences, kind-but-authoritative expectation-setting… it’s exhausting just to think about it. Looking back, I think it’s a good thing that I didn’t have the energy or the discipline to follow-through on all the advice we got—it’s one assignment I’m glad I failed.

At the age where our kids most need to know we are there for them, school pressures can add to our stress and undermine the love and trust teens need (even if they don’t show it).

Free Up Time for Life-Changing Activities
Even if you’ve maintained a great relationship with your teen, you still have good reason to question the amount of high school work. Engagement — “flow”— occurs when you are absorbed in an activity that challenges your skills or uses your strengths in new ways, and flow gives kids a chance to flourish, says Martin Seligman. What better life lessons could our teens learn?

Sadly, most teens are not engaged in their academic classes, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reports.

Most of the flow in high school learning happens in non-academic areas—electives, sports, and arts. Outside of school, activities like hobbies, games, volunteer service and scouting can be highly-engaging—yet these are often minimized due to time-pressure. If most of students’ school experience is not engaging, do we really want to add even more non-engaging homework to the daily strain—and deprive teens of activities where they can flourish?

If you are questioning how to help your teen thrive, my response is: less homework, more flow.


For more information:

My website: http://www.positiveleaders.com/ -- See a free video or download the study of students' school myths, learning gifts and future prospects; Upcoming parent workshop with Dr. Hallowell, "Unwrap Your Teen's Gifts"

Shernoff, D. J., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Shneider, B., & Shernoff, E. S. (2003). Student engagement in high school classrooms from the perspective of flow theory. School Psychology Quarterly, 18(2), 158-176.
Hallowell, E.(2003). The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Kids Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy. New York: Ballantine Books.
Kohn, A. (2006). The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing. Cambridge: Da Capo Lifelong Books.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press.
Vaillant, G. (1998). Adaptation to Life. New York, NY: Harvard University Press.

This article originally appeared on December 18, 2008 in Positive Psychology News Daily. The original article is here: http://pos-psych.com/news/christine-duvivier/200812181350

Teens Who Bring Good Dreams to Life

y articles and videos are now posted on my new website: www.christineduvivier.com. You can find this article


Imagine you were asked to help improve the future prospects of Jill, a high school junior with a GPA of 2.0 who daydreams in English, History, and Spanish. What would you advise Jill to do?

a) Get screened for a learning disability and, if needed, take medication to focus.
b) Visualize a report card with all “A”s.
c) Both a and b.
d) Keep on dreaming.
e) None of the above.



If you answered, “keep on dreaming,” congratulations. You may already know that daydreaming can lead to better life satisfaction by improving relationships and boosting creativity. If not-- or if you answered a, b, c, or e, please read on.

Dream Relationships

Daydreaming may not be the first word that comes to mind when you think of ways to improve your love life, but this is one of the surprising scientific findings cited by author Jonah Lehrer in his article, “Daydream Achiever,” (Lehrer, p. C3). By imagining a variety of scenarios and testing them in our minds, we role-play internally and then take action in our real-lives to create the relationships we want.

Daydreaming and Creativity

Scientists have also found that daydreaming fosters abstract thinking, says Lehrer, by allowing us to make the new connections and develop the new ideas that are the heart of creativity. Ask Arthur Fry. Arthur was a daydreamer and one day in church, instead of listening to the sermon, his mind went off on a tangent. He started thinking about the paper scraps he used for bookmarks and how they were always falling out of his hymn book (Lehrer, C1).

Now it may be that Arthur missed an important message from his minister that day, but let’s all give thanks for his distraction -- it brought us the eternally useful Post-it® Notes.


Creativity and Economic Success

Fry’s creative new idea not only gave us walls covered with colorful reminders, it gave the 3M company more than $1 Billion a year in revenue, reports Greg Beato. This is just one example of the link between creativity and economic success.

Professor Richard Florida says that the “creative class” is now the fastest-growing part of our economy and will continue to be our decisive economic advantage in the future. The core professions in this class range from technology to sports to the arts and they develop best in communities that foster diversity—of ideas, cultures, interests, and abilities (Florida, 2002).

This is great news for all teens – but especially for those in what I affectionately term, “The Bottom 80,”TM—those who are not in the top 20% of their classes. I found that students in The Bottom 80 TM have the strengths and gifts to thrive in the dynamic world Florida describes (see http://www.positiveleaders.com/ for more details).

It could also be good news for students like Jill, the high school daydreamer in question at the start of this article. In a world where connecting diverse ideas is a crucial competitive advantage, you’d expect daydreamers to be revered. Sadly, though, this is not yet the case. Adolescents who daydream are often seen as unmotivated, underachievers, or problems that need to be “fixed,” tutored, or medicated.

What’s Right with Daydreaming Teens?

When you think about it, daydreaming is paying attention—it’s giving your attention to something more engaging than the reality in front of you at the moment. That’s what happens with ADD students, for example. Their distraction doesn’t mean they can’t focus on anything-- just the opposite, in fact: they actually hyper-focus, becoming absorbed in activities they find so intriguing that they cannot give attention to anything else around them according to expert Ned Hallowell, M.D. So what would you guess is a top strength in ADD teens? Creativity, of course.

Imagine what would happen if we stopped looking at what’s “wrong” with daydreaming students – and started seeing what’s right with them?* It is when they are not interested in a topic-- or they are more interested in something else-- that they daydream…and make creative connections, as Arthur Fry did on that fateful Sunday morning.

What if, instead of focusing on how to make these students listen in class, get better grades or go to a “great” college—we encourage them to bring good dreams to life?

This article originally appeared on Positive Psychology News Daily.The original article is here: http://pos-psych.com/news/christine-duvivier/200809121016.

My website: http://www.positiveleaders.com/

Images: Daydreaming Girl, Link, Post-It, Daydreaming Boy

References:

Beato, Greg (2005). Twenty-Five Years of Post-It Notes. Retrieved September 6, 2008 from:

http://www.rakemag.com/reporting/features/twenty-five-years-post-it-notes0#adjump
Duvivier (2007). Appreciating Beauty in the Bottom 80. University of Pennsylvania:

Capstone, August 1. Retrieved on September 3, 2008 from:

www.positiveleaders.com/studyresults.html
Florida, R. (2002). The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure,

Community and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.
Hallowell, E., & Ratey, J. (1995). Driven To Distraction : Recognizing and Coping with Attention

Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood. New York: Touchstone.
Lehrer, J. (2008). Daydream Achiever. Boston Sunday Globe, August 31, pp. C1-3.

* Inspired by Dewitt Jones’ film, “Celebrate What’s Right with the World” (2007).

Preventing Depression

y articles and videos are now posted on my new website: www.christineduvivier.com.

In my June 11 article, I talked about alternatives to anti-depressants. Here I will turn to what I believe is the bigger question: how can we prevent depression in the first place? In other words, how do we help healthy kids to enhance their well-being and flourish in life?

Optimism and Engagement are two ways individuals can buffer themselves against depression. But to have the greatest impact, we need system-level change so that teens develop in an environment that prevents depression-- and this means changing our approach to education.

Optimism
One of the best things we can do for our children is to teach them the thinking skills that build optimism and hope. The way we explain life events to ourselves falls into two styles: pessimistic and optimistic, according to Martin Seligman, in his book, “Learned Optimism.” The pessimistic style is associated with depression and the optimistic style prevents depression.

When a bad event happens, the key question is how I explain it to myself. Do I say, “It’s my fault; there’s something wrong with me; I failed?” Or, do I name multiple factors, beyond me, that contributed to the event? The first set of answers reflects a pessimistic style and the second answer reflects an optimistic style. When good events happen, I want to do just the opposite: focus on things I did to make the events happen.

Engagement
Engagement is the experience of being so absorbed in an activity that you lose your sense of self—and your sense of time. For example, playing tennis, planting a garden for your community center, meditating, and using your top strengths in new ways are all engaging activities. Each of these requires focus beyond the self – which is crucial to preventing depression, according to Seligman, in his latest book, “Authentic Happiness.”

Sadly, researcher Mike Csikszentmihalyi found that most teens are not engaged during much of the school day. Further, the two areas where teens are most engaged at school are the same areas where opportunities become more limited as kids get older: Sports and Arts. Increasing the amount of time spent in engaging activities, through participation in sports, arts, using one’s character strengths, meaningful service to others, and meditation are all ways to enhance well-being and buffer against depression.

Changing Our Approach to Education
In addition to individual skills, we also need to consider the system in which teens operate daily-- to be sure it enhances well-being. In a study last year, I found that our current system reinforces factors that cause depression (lack of control, defeat and pessimism, as well as focus on rank and status). For more detail, please see my study at www.positiveleaders.com/studyresults.html. If we want to systematically prevent depression in teens, we—parents, voters, and educators-- need to change our approach to education.

To begin with, three false myths affect the way we view and talk about education: (1) Not being a top student means you are not hardworking, motivated, or intelligent; (2) Being a top student leads to a great life; and (3) Our approach to education is best for our teens.

Students in the bottom of their classes have strengths and gifts that are well-suited to successful lives, but often these abilities are not amplified and enhanced in school. Nor are some strengths of the best students. While top students can thrive in school, they are also encouraged to focus on factors that correlate with anxiety and depression: rank, teacher opinion, being the best, or looking smart.*

World, corporate, and scientific leadership – as well as the future economy — depend on a far broader set of abilities than those we currently emphasize in school. Changing our approach, and actively engaging diverse gifts and strengths, not only leads to teen well-being, it also prepares the next generation for the world they will run.

* Jennifer Crocker at University of Michigan, Janice Templeton, at Fort Lewis College, and Barry Schwartz , author of “The Paradox of Choice,” have written about these factors.

For More Information:
Optimism and strengths tests: http://www.authentichappiness.com/

My Website: http://www.positiveleaders.com/

If you would like to be on our distribution list (we do not give your information to anyone else), please email julie@positiveleaders.com

"Learned Optimism" and "Authentic Happiness" are available on Amazon.

© Christine Duvivier 2007, 2008 All Rights Reserved