Workshop "Working with strengths at a group and individual level using the narrative approach":
McAdams stated: “If you want to know me, then you must know my story, for my story defines who I am. And if I want to know myself, to gain insight into the meaning of my own life, then I, too, must come to know my own story. I must come to see in all its particulars the narrative of the self – the personal myth – that I have tacitly, even unconsciously, composed over the course of my years. It is a story I continue to revise, and tell to myself (and sometimes to others) as I go on living" (McAdams, 2013).
The presenter will demonstrate how the strengths can be identified using the narrative method. Children and adolescents can often find it tiresome to fill in questionnaires. Identifying our own and classmates’ top strengths using the narrative method is a fun and entertaining activity.
At the same time it facilitates tolerance because it visualizes strengths for all in the class and emphasize the understanding that we each have skills and together we can accomplish.
The workshop is based on “The Strength Game” written by the presenter and include hands-on exercises for all professionals working with children and adolescents.
About the presenter:
Louise Tidmandis a Danish “pracademic” – a practitioner and an academic. Her Ph.D. research focuses on developing life coping skills, resilience and wellbeing in adolescents through a whole school approach intervention. Louise is a teacher and educational psychologist, and she has devoted the past ten years to transform research into tangible educational materials for teachers, parents and students to work with in a school or home setting. Her books and games have received recommendations from the Danish National Board of Health and the Danish Board of Social Services. Louise is passionate about connecting research to everyday lives through strength-based methods and approaches that will enable schools to develop Positive Education school cultures.
Through her business The Strength Academy, she educates and trains professionals, who work with children and young adults, in social-emotional learning, strengths, wellbeing and life coping skills. As part of her PhD Louise was enrolled at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne, an experience that added an international perspective to her research. It also gave her the opportunity to visit pioneer Positive Education Schools around Australia, speak to teachers, school managements and world leading researchers about the core of Positive Education, future directions of positive psychology, and wellbeing literacy.
