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Discover Your Unique Character Strengths

We know strengths are important for leading successful lives. Strengths and talents can help us grow and thrive when we intentionally use, develop, and cultivate them.

Have you ever thought about what your character strengths are?

 

Scientists began studying the psychology of strengths in earnest decades ago. They started to explore what it looks like when we focus on developing what is right instead of fixing what is wrong. In 2004, leaders in positive psychology, Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Peterson developed the VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Following that, the personal strengths assessment, VIA Survey, was developed, measuring 24 character strengths under 6 Virtues in human beings (Find a copy of VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtues here).

 

Character Strengths are defined as the positive parts of your personality that impact how you think, feel, and behave in daily life. You can discover your unique profile of strengths by taking the FREE VIA Survey online. Users need to register and create an account in order to take the survey.

 

According to leading positive psychologists, we each have strengths we are naturally good at. These are called our signature strengths. Find out your unique profile and your TOP 5 signature strengths!

 

When you have your signature strengths (TOP 5) identified, consider these questions to help you reflect on how to develop greater awareness of your strengths:

  • Do they seem to fit you well?
  • Are you surprised by any of them?
  • Read over your list of signature strengths. Think about ways in which you already use them in your life. 
  • Do you underuse any of your strengths?
  • Do you overuse any of your strengths?
  • Brainstorm ways in which you can use them in new ways, and write down a list of specific actions you can take to use your strengths more in healthy and balanced new ways. And then, commit to using your strengths in new ways each day this week. 

 

You can also invite others to take the survey and have some fun activities with them!

  • Families: Invite your family members to take the survey and make a Family Strengths Tree!
  • Friends / Colleagues: Invite your friend to do this survey and have a discussion with them! Share with each other a story about one of your strengths and ask them to guess which strength it is!
  • Romantic Partner: Have you ever had a strength date? Invite your partner to take the survey and have a Strength Date with them! 

 

 

English - 05/25/2020 - Fiona Zheng
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Google Hangouts Meet Resources You Need

Resources for Hosting in Google Meet

English - 04/10/2020 - Fiona Zheng

Learning Zoom Basics

Are you also using Zoom as the digital tool for communication and classes as school moving toward a virtual space?

Updated COVID-19 Resources from Zoom (4/14/2020)

Please find this collection of useful resources Zoom basics:

Learn to use this tool to maintain communication in the school community and spread knowledge, love and care to students and families today.

Update March 16, 2020

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan Is Giving K-12 Schools His Videoconferencing Tools For Free in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Zoom is temporarily lifting the 40-minute time limit on free Basic accounts for schools affected by the Coronavirus.
If you are part of a K-12 School, complete the K-12 School Verification Form to gain Pro access for your entire school.

Step 1: Sign up for a free Basic account using your school’s email address.

Step 2: Fill out the information for your school to remove the 40 minute time limit for anyone on your school’s domain after verification. Personal email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook are not eligible.

English - 03/17/2020 - Fiona Zheng
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Areté 2020 Census Leadership Campaign

Arete Education and The Lab School aim to register at least 50 youth (ages 18-22) and 50 adults to successfully apply for and gain part-time or full-time employment as Census field workers, office workers, and/or supervisors in Mott Haven by March 2020. 

The Bronx is a hard-to-count community: just over half of the households (56%) self-responded for the 2010 Census, compared to 75% of households nationwide. The 2020 Census will determine how funds are spent in communities on thing like roads, schools, and hospitals. The fewer people counted in the Bronx, the fewer Federal tax dollars are spent on Bronx schools, hospitals, roads, transportation, and other community programs.

Arete will host Census Hiring Events on select Saturdays in February and March at the Lab School (360 E 145th Street, Bronx 10454)

    • February 29 (11 am - 2 pm)
    • March 14 (11 am - 2 pm)
    • March 21 (11 am - 2 pm)
    • March 28 (11 am - 2 pm)

Census 2020 jobs in NYC pay $28/hour, include flexible hours, pay weekly, and include training.

2020 Census Job Qualifications

You may be eligible if:

• You are a U.S. citizen.

• You are at least 18 years old.

• You have a valid Social Security number.

• You have a valid e-mail address.

• You complete an application and assessment questions. (For some positions, the assessment questions may be available in Spanish; however, an English Proficiency Test may also be required.)

• You are registered with the Selective Service System if you are a male born after December 31, 1959.

• You pass a criminal background check and a review of criminal records (including fingerprinting) as part of the Census Bureau's hiring process.

• You do not engage in any partisan political activity while on duty.

• Your current employment (including law and regulatory enforcement jobs) is compatible with Census Bureau employment (reviewed on a case-by-case basis).

• You are available to work flexible hours, including days, evenings, and/or weekends.

• You commit to completing training. (If offered a job, you will be paid for this training at a training pay rate.)

Most jobs require employees to:

• Have access to a vehicle and a valid driver’s license, unless public transportation is readily available.

• Have access to a computer with Internet and an e-mail account (to complete training).

 

Engage Others | Share the Campaign

For More Information: Census 2020 Afterschool Toolkit

English - 02/22/2020 - sbsd@areteeducation.org
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Learning Graphic Design Through Canva

Canva is a popular graphic design platform that allows users to create presentations, posters, social media graphics, and other visual content. It provides millions of fonts, images, illustrations, and templates, and many of them are FREE!

What many people do not know is that they also provided FREE short courses to teach you basic knowledge of graphic design:

Graphic Design Basics

Canva in the Classroom (For Teachers)

Here are more FREE courses on other topics:

Social Media Mastery

Branding Your Business

Presentations to Impress

Enjoy learning design!

 

English - 02/14/2020 - Fiona Zheng
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Practice Makes Perfect?

Many people use the phrase "Practice makes perfect" to depict the process of learning. Ulrich Bose pointed out that this is a remarkably ill-defined expression. Does practice mean endless repetition? Does practice involve feedback and reflection? Should practice be hard or fun?

Learning is a complex process. A growing body of research has shown that practice alone is not enough. We also need learning strategies. We need to be smarter with the practices by designing and utilizing strategies. Many research studies have consistently suggested that learners are not born but made. We are ALL able to be good at something through the dedicated practices and constantly refined strategies.

Research is making it clear that when it comes to become expertise, learning strategies can be more critical than raw smarts. Marcel Veenman found that people who closely track thinking and continuously reflect learning will outperform those with high IQ levels in terms of learning new things. His research also revealed that focusing on how we understand is 15 percent more important than innate intelligence when it comes to develop mastery. Learners are made, not born. IQ is not the only answer, EQ has to be concerned and actively be engaged in the learning process.

Areté has been strategically employing emotional intelligence in our after-school programs. Emotional Intelligence simply denotes being smarter with feelings. We provide students ample opportunities to understand emotions, to develop self-awareness and to reflect about their learning. By being smarter with feelings, students are able to identify their thinking, feeling and action patterns in learning, design and refine learning strategies and adjust the practices accordingly. Through this iteration process, they gradually get better at learning.

We do not simply urge students to practice and practice all the time because we believe practice is not enough for making perfect. We help them to learn smartly by employing strategies. We believe it is not enough to give them fish, but more importantly, teach them how to fish.

English - 02/03/2020 - Fiona Zheng
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10 Ed Tech Tools for Your 2020

The year of 2019 is coming to an end. To prepare you for a fresh start in the new year, here are 10 Ed Tech tools that can make your school life more interesting and effective.

1- Anchor.fm

If you are interested to create podcasts in the new year, you may want to try out this platform. It makes easier for distributing the podcasts to all the major networks such as Apple Podcasts and Google Play.

2- Canva

Want to make your poster/flyer/newsletter/infographics/cards/brochure look more professional and eye-catching? Canva is always your best friend! There are thousands of free templates on their website! Moreover, most of them are FREE! Best of all, teachers can get all of the pro features of Canva for free at canva.com/education.

3- Padlet

Padlet allows you to make beautiful boards, documents, and webpages that are handy to contribute and easy to read. The collaborative nature of the tool allows you to organize shared notes, gather ideas and opinions from different people at the same time, etc. You can always exercise your creativity and make the tool useful to you! See a great example for SEL resources created by Areté's executive director.

4- Slido

This new tool enables you to easily add interactive poll questions and quiz to your Google Slides presentations!

5- Educandy

Trying to design and create games to make the learning process more engaging and interesting? Try out Educandy! You can create interactive learning games through this tool! All you need to do is to enter questions and answers, Educandy will turn the content into cool interactive activities in minutes! Once the activity is created, a code will be generated. Share the code with others and PLAY!

6- BoClips

BoClips houses more than 2 million curated and copyright-cleared educational videos by minimizing the distractions typically associated with YouTube. They have 160+ content partners and the video content spans over 40+ academic subjects. You can find suitable videos for all age levels from their database.

7-ClassTools

This is a powerful website to help you create free games, quizzes, activities and diagrams in seconds! In 2019, they have added an interactive image generator template and more new game templates!

8- VidReader

This service allows you to generate a transcript of any YouTube videos containing spoken English! Transcripts created are hyperlinked with timestamps and printable.

9- Glide Apps

Trying to develop an app but having no previous knowledge about coding? No worries! Glide makes it possible for you to easily create an app from a Google Sheet and customize it on your needs. Create easy-to-use apps without writing a code! Most importantly, it's FREE.

10- Microsoft's Immersive Reader

This tool has been making reading more friendly than ever. It offers numerous reading support functions, including but not limited to read-aloud functions, font spacing and enlargement, syllabus highlighting and line focus. It was first designed to support students with dyslexia and dysgraphia, but can also support anyone who simply wants their reading experience on devices more enjoyable and convenient.

Post content adapted from Richard Byrne's newsletter (richard@byrne.media): Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week - Best New & Updated Tools in 2019.

English - 12/31/2019 - Fiona Zheng

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