Your Child's Strengths: A Guide for Parents and Teachers [Mass Market Paperback]

Jenifer Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 24, 2009

With this groundbreaking work, renowned educator Jenifer Fox argues against the flawed and maddening paradigm that "fixing"kids' weaknesses is the way to achieve success. Rather, Fox promotes focusing on kids' natural inclinations in three interdependent areas: Activity Strengths, Relationship Strengths, and Learning Strengths. Pairing inspiring firsthand accounts of success with practical workbook tools, alongside an outline of the award-winning strengths-based Affinities curriculum Fox has implemented in her own school, Your Child's Strengths is a user-friendly and indispensable guide for parents, teachers, and administrators alike.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fox, head of a girl's boarding school in New Jersey, writes about a strengths-based curriculum she developed and implemented with great success. She not only presents a workbook that can be utilized by educators and parents, but also offers a convincing argument in favor of over-turning outdated curriculums and teaching methods. Instead of focusing on weaknesses, Fox submits that children do far better when the focus is on their strengths. Childhood is for "creative dreaming," not preparation for standardized tests. Fox identifies three types of strengths: activity, learning and relationship strengths, and helps parents guide their children toward self-discovery, explaining that true strengths include not only what a child is good at, but what she enjoys and makes her feel strong. The book is written in a lively and engaging style, and sprinkled with anecdotes from Fox's teaching life and her own experiences as a student who was frustrated and uncomfortable in a traditional school setting. Clearly, writing is one of Fox's strengths, as is her inspiring passion for helping kids lead meaningful lives.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Brilliant, innovative, enormously practical . . . this book could change the world."
-Edward Hallowell, M.D., author of Driven to Distraction

"Jenifer Fox has extraordinary insight into the minds of young people and an unshakable belief in their potential. . . . This is one program that the schools must have."
-Marcus Buckingham, from the Foreword

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (February 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143115170
• ISBN-13: 978-0143115175
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #906,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jenifer Fox, M-Ed is the author of the book, Your Child's Strengths and the award-winning, groundbreaking strengths-based curriculum, The Affinities Program.

With 25 years of experience as a teacher and an administrator in a wide variety of pre-collegiate settings: public and independent schools, day and boarding schools, religiously affiliated, single-sexed and special needs schools, international and American schools, Jenifer Fox has set out to lead The Strengths Movement in Schools, an international educational movement aimed at transforming the K-12 system from one that focuses on the deficits and weaknesses of children to one that celebrates strengths.
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A struggling student in high school, Jenifer overcame her challenges through devoting her energies to discovering her strengths. She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin- Madison and two masters degrees: an MA from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and an M-Ed from Harvard University.

Ms. Fox has written numerous articles and presented workshops throughout the country on the topic of school reform, teaching struggling students, parenting, and building on strengths to realize human potential. Jenifer's experience as an actor and a writer make her an engaging and compelling storyteller and speaker.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Jenifer has lived in Denver, San Francisco's East Bay, the west coast of Florida and in the New York metropolitan area. As an independent school administrator her specialty is in 'turn-around' businesses where she is able to leverage the strengths of an organization to change it from an institution in a struggling weakened state to one that thrives both culturally and financially on its strengths.

Jenifer lives in New Jersey with her husband and two dogs.

In 2006, I traveled with business consultant Marcus Buckingham on his Go Put Your Strengths to Work tour. I was the educational expert on the tour, spreading the word about how strengths can help all kids be successful in school. I am the President of the Purnell School, www.purnell.org, the first strength-based high school in the USA. I have written my own book, "Your Child's Strengths, Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them." This book will give you many practical ideas about how to apply strengths in your home and with your children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Middle School Teacher Raves, March 12, 2008

By 

Niko Sirbu "Expert" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them (Hardcover)

As a career middle school teacher, I know how challenging it can be to manage a classroom full of diverse learners. It is easy to focus on "fixing" what is wrong with kids. What Fox does in this book is offer a practical program to build on students' strengths. She shows us how to discover them with great activities and exercises and also makes a strong case that building on student strengths lays the groundwork for students to improve their performance overall. In this age of standardization, this book provides a refreshing reminder to teachers and parents that kids are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be discovered. I, for one, am looking forward to sharing this book with the parents of kids I teach and using the exercises and ideas in it to partner with them to see our students in a new light. Great book, groundbreaking.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, misleading feature page, February 11, 2010

By 

D. Butler "Worm it" (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Your Child's Strengths: A Guide for Parents and Teachers (Paperback)

I love this book. This is the refreshing voice that we need leading the way of reform for education for our children. One of the perspectives that I really appreciate is that we are making a mistake in assuming that learning differences are an issue for the child only. It is very often a mismatch of environment and learning style that create the struggle.
On a different note, Amazon has this book listed as frequently bought with Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, and Use Them. These are the same book, one in hardcover, one in paperback. I have contacted Amazon several times to get them to clear up the confusion on the listing but have not yet seen results. I purchased both books at their recommendation and want to help others avoid the same duplication.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Your Child's Strengths by Jenifer Fox, July 15, 2008

By 

jjmachshev "jj" (Grovetown, GA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them (Hardcover)

What an excellent book for parents, educators, and just about everyone else too. "Your Child's Strengths" by Jenifer Fox is a well-structured, logical, and methodical plan for bringing out the best in children, while inculcating resiliance and responsibility to help them face the ups and downs ahead of them.

Fox uses well thought-out plans, exercises, and examples to help her target audience learn how to re-focus their senses to work WITH children rather than trying to work ON children. Her approach is designed to assist the parent or educator in acting as a guide to the child who discovers their own strengths. I'm sure anyone who has ever had or worked with a child can verify that truths which come from within are much more powerful and have much more staying power than those others 'teach' TO us. Learning to recognize your own strengths vice talents can be compared to recognizing small epiphanies that occur in your life when you are happy, pleased, and self-confident. In this respect, the book is a manual for recognizing personal strengths in ourselves as well as enabling our children to learn to recognize and work with their strengths.
Fox is careful to explain the both the concepts behind this strategy and the actions needed to carry it out. The first part of the book explains the reasoning and successes of this method. The second portion provides descriptions and examples for recognizing strengths and how to delve deeper than mere words by utilizing all our senses to pick up what children can't or won't say. The final chapters are literally a textbook with exercises, suggestions, and charts each reader can use.

Even the appendices have structure and use as they detail lists and writings to implement this process individually, in the family, in groups, and grade-by-grade in schools. There are also success stories and contacts available for readers.

As both a mother and an educator, I'm very encouraged after reading "Your Child's Strengths". Both parents looking for guidance and educators screaming for help (although maybe I should phrase that the other way around!) can use the truths laid out so diligently in Jenifer Fox's book to combat the negativity so prevalent around us and infecting our children. I'll certainly be recommending it to my fellow educators and close friends. After all, with so much to learn the target audience need not be restricted to parents and educators. Personal growth is not, and should not be, only a childhood experience.