Meeting Minutes 2/11/11
New Website: https://reason.kzoo.edu/supportstaff/
Please feel free to check out the new website. It will be updated with the minutes from each meeting.
It will also have useful information for all members of the support staff. Also, the findings from the
Survey that was taken after the holiday party are also on the website.
Welcome Wagon- Dotty is heading this new group up. We are striving to make sure that all new
members of the Support Staff are welcomed in a warm way. Given a tour of campus, reminded of
Support Staff meetings, contact info for all members etc. if you are interested in helping with this please
contact Dotty.
Debbie from the counseling Center came and spoke about inclusion and being a better self. I have
copied her presentation below.
Our next meeting is march 11th in Olmsed room.
What we know about how babies learn.
a) trial and error
b) successive approximation
c) watching and copying
d) practice
Also:
a) They do not give up easily.
b) They are hard-wired to keep trying to walk, feed themselves, talk, & so on.
c) They do not obsess over how long it takes them to master something, or which
kid at day care is already able to perform the task.
d) They are good at knowing when they need help and knowing how to get it
In the end, all babies who are physically able to do so will learn these things. All babies are born with
the tools for success.
It helps if the environment provides:
 others who support and encourage you, such as involved parents or caregivers
 reasonable expectations on the part of the parents or caregivers
 appreciation for learning curve—not expecting too much too soon
 appreciation for your strengths
Babies who do not have emotionally supportive caretakers (people of all ages) can still be incredibly
successful through resilience, or the ability to bounce back from adversity
Two people may experience the same traumatic life experience and go in opposite directions. One may
rely on inner strength and support from loved ones, gradually surviving the experience. The other may
turn inward, lose hope, and never recover.
Major components of resilience:
1) personal protective factors:
a) positive, hardy personality
b) secure sense of self
c) feeling that you have (at least some) control over your life
2) social support factors
a) having people who believe in you
b)having family and/or friends you can turn to in stressful times
Having the experience of major trauma is not necessary to improve your resilience.
Being protected
from any stress is actually bad for you!
Resilience is increased every time you:
a) cope with daily stress in a positive way
b) expand coping strategies (increases confidence)
c) draw on inner strengths
c) draw on social supports
“Learnable” skills to improve resilience:
(HANDOUT)
Emotional awareness: your ability to identify your feelings and control them when necessary
Impulse control: your ability to tolerate ambiguity so you don’t rush to make decisions; learn to look at
things in a thoughtful way before acting
Optimism: cultivate realistic optimism, not pie-in-the-sky optimism. This is possibly the most important
factor.
Causal analysis: your ability to consider problems and contributing factors from many perspectives
before seeking a solution
Empathy: the ability to read and understand other people’s emotions helps build relationships and thus
social support—it also reduces isolation
Self-efficacy: confidence in your ability to solve problems. This is partly about knowing what your
strengths are, and partly about relying on your strengths to cope. This is different than simply feeling
good about yourself.
Reaching out: being prepared to take appropriate risks. Trying new things involves the risk of failure,
and failure at something new is simply a part of life. This is not the same as seeing yourself as a failure.
Resilient people don’t go it alone. When they have a problem, they reach out to the people who care
about them and ask for help.
Consider which of the above factors are among your strengths and focus on them.
(Taken from Dr. Karen Reivich, co-author with Dr. Martin Seligman, of The Optimistic Child and The
Resilience Factor)
And this brings us, rather organically, to the Values In Action questionnaire.
My Top 5 Strengths Are:
HANDOUT/REVERSE
1.
____________________
2.
____________________
3.
____________________
4.
____________________
5.
____________________
www.viacharacter.com/surveys
Self-efficacy
Simply put, SE is a person’s belief in her or his ability to succeed in a particular situation. Our beliefs
about ourselves are determinants of how we think, feel, and behave.
Sources of SE:
(think about the babies)
1. Mastery experiences: performing a task successfully strengthens our sense of being able to
perform tasks successfully. It’s circular: success breeds success *practice; trial and error; successive
approximation
2. Social modeling: seeing people similar to ourselves succeed by sustained effort raises the
observer’s belief that she or he too has the capacity to succeed. *We learn to imitate or copy.
3. Social persuasion: getting verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self doubt
and instead focus on giving their best efforts to the task. *Supportive caregivers
4. Psychological responses: moods, emotional states, physical reactions, and stress levels all can
impact how a person feels about her or his abilities in a given situation. It is not the sheer intensity of
the reactions but how they are perceived and interpreted. * not comparing self to others;
reasonable expectations & appreciation for the learning curve;
being hard-wired to keep trying;
awareness of when help is needed and knowing how to get it
to reiterate:
you were born with everything you need to succeed, however you define that
you have definite strengths you can draw on to help
and so do your friends and colleagues