Strength-Based | The Belonging Project

Strength Based Practices: Seeing Students Differently

Strength-based practice shifts the educational lens from fixing deficits to recognizing and building on student assets. This course explores how to intentionally notice, name, and nurture strengths in ways that affirm student identity and increase engagement. Educators will learn to reframe challenges, design strength-based supports, and co-create learning environments where every student’s gifts are visible and valued.

Start Here

Welcome to the course! This learning experience is designed to help you explore inclusive education through a blend of practical strategies and powerful storytelling. Before diving into the course content, your first step is to choose the story that will guide your learning.

About This Course

This course supports you in building inclusive, flexible learning environments that recognize and amplify the strengths of every learner. While you’ll deepen your understanding through interactive learning interludes, everything begins with story.

Each course is anchored in a set of narrative case studies—realistic, practice-based stories that illuminate inclusive strategies in action. These stories will help you reflect, connect, and see how the course concepts apply in real school contexts.

Choose Your Story

Each story features:

A Prologue to set the scene
Four Chapters that trace growth, tension, and change
An Epilogue to reflect on learning and impact

Choose one story to follow throughout the course. Pick the one that most closely matches your role, context, or interests. This story will provide a consistent lens as you move through the learning interludes and activities.

Not sure which to choose? No problem. You can always return to this page to explore other stories. Many learners choose to follow more than one story to see how inclusive practices come to life in different settings.

What Happens Next?

Once you’ve chosen your story:

If you're learning independently, head to the Course Content section and begin with Learning Interlude 1.
If you're learning with a facilitator, they’ll guide you through the journey using the facilitation materials provided.

You're ready to begin. Scroll down to explore the stories and pick the one that will guide your path through the course.

Shining a Light: The Story of Jamila

Jamila is a dedicated middle years teacher at Wayfinder Middle School. With over a decade of experience, she knows her students deeply—but lately, she’s been feeling a growing discomfort. As she works through the latest round of IPPs, she notices a pattern: each plan centers on problems. Pages filled with behaviors to fix, deficits to manage, and interventions to control. Even her most vibrant students—those full of creativity, humor, and leadership—are flattened into checklists and goals.

One afternoon, a passing conversation with a colleague stops her in her tracks. “What if your plans started from strengths?” the colleague asks. Jamila smiles politely but is stirred by the question. Could she really change her whole approach to documentation? What would it mean to stop fixing and start noticing? What began as a hallway conversation soon becomes a complete shift in how Jamila sees her role—and her students.

Prologue - More Than a Checklist ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Seeing What’s Already There ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Flipping the Script ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Profiles with Purpose ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Teaching From Strength ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Shining a Light ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

The Joy Journal: The Story of Damien and Leo

Damien is a thoughtful, steady educational assistant at Wayfinder Middle School. He works closely with Leo, a student with complex communication and mobility needs who requires intensive support throughout the school day. Most team meetings about Leo follow the same predictable pattern: charts of what Leo can’t do, notes on the support he requires, and concerns about what’s missing. Damien listens silently, growing increasingly uneasy with how these conversations flatten Leo’s identity.

Because in the quiet corners of the day, between routines and transitions, Damien sees something different. He sees the way Leo’s eyes light up when a peer sings off-key. He notices how Leo leans toward a window when it’s sunny or lifts his chin slightly when someone reads a funny passage aloud. These glimpses of joy aren’t formally documented anywhere. But to Damien, they matter.

One day, he decides to write them down, not in a spreadsheet, but in a simple notebook labeled Joy Journal. What began as a private act of noticing gradually transforms into a reimagining of what support can be. By leading with strengths and documenting moments of connection, Damien doesn’t just shift how Leo is supported, he starts to shift the mindset of an entire team.

Prologue - More Than a Glance ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Moments That Matter ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Rewriting the Narrative ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - A Plan Rooted in Strength ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - The Ripple Effect ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - A Different Kind of Expertise ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

A Culture of Recognition: The Story of Priya

At Emmaus Catholic School, a richly diverse K–9 Catholic community in an urban neighborhood, Principal Priya walks the halls with deep love for the students and families she serves. Many of her families are newcomers to Canada, bringing with them rich traditions, resilience, and multilingual experiences. And yet, in formal meetings and documentation, Priya notices a troubling pattern: conversations about these students often begin with what they lack.

“He doesn’t know enough English yet.”
“She struggles to make friends.”
“They don’t have any books at home.”

The narrative is subtle but harmful - a deficit lens that flattens identity and unintentionally positions families as problems to solve.

Priya knows this isn’t the whole story. In her hallway chats and casual playground greetings, she hears threads of pride—parents sharing how their children helped translate at immigration appointments, how they care for siblings, or how they sing traditional songs at family gatherings. These are gifts. But they rarely make it into the official record.

With quiet determination, Priya decides to disrupt the pattern. She begins asking different questions, modeling different language, and designing school practices that intentionally name and honor strengths. Over time, something shifts, not just in the tone of meetings, but in the school culture itself. Families feel seen. Students feel valued. And staff begin to realize: when we look for gifts, we find them.

Prologue - Unseen Gifts ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Listening for Strengths ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Reframing at the Edges ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Welcoming Through Story ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Rewriting the System ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - A Culture of Recognition ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

From Case to Kid: The Story of Elias

At Riverstone Elementary, Ms. Clarke is preparing for the new school year when a thick cumulative file lands on her desk. It's Elias’s. Labels jump off the page: “slow processing,” “disorganized,” “reading below grade level,” “inattentive.” The tone is clinical, focused on gaps, deficits, and compliance goals.

But when Elias walks into her classroom, he’s a burst of life, chatting enthusiastically with a classmate about the Perseid meteor shower and sketching planets on the back of his agenda. Within minutes, Ms. Clarke hears words like celestial, gravitational pull, and orbiting bodies. She pauses. This isn't the student described in the file.

Rather than dismissing the paperwork, Ms. Clarke treats it as only part of the story. What she sees in front of her is something different: a learner brimming with curiosity, especially about space. Over the following weeks, she begins tuning in—watching Elias’s eyes light up during science discussions, noticing how he perseveres through reading when the topic is astronomy.

She wonders: What would happen if we planned from his strengths rather than around his struggles?

As she shifts her lens, so does Elias’s trajectory. What was once seen as noncompliance becomes creative divergence. What was previously “scattered” is now “innovative.” Through intentional design, strengths-based feedback, and co-authored learning experiences, Elias steps into his own identity, not as a struggling student, but as a capable, confident learner.

By year’s end, Elias isn’t just “improving". He’s inspiring. And Ms. Clarke knows the truth: he was never a problem to fix. He was a scientist waiting to be seen.

Prologue - A File Full of Deficits ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Curiosity as Compass ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Rethinking the Problem ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Voices That Matter ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Designing Around Strength ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - From Case to Kid ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

From Fixing to Flourishing: A Schoolwide Shift

At Harvest Hills Elementary, the staff has grown weary. Every meeting, every document, every report card seems to focus on what’s broken. Despite best intentions, their language has become saturated with terms like “needs support,” “below expectations,” and “lacks focus.” Even when students are celebrated, it’s usually for overcoming deficits rather than expressing their strengths. The mood is heavy. The vision feels dim.

But a question starts to rise, quietly at first, then with momentum: What if we started from what’s strong instead of what’s missing?

It begins as a small idea of just a group of staff members participating in a collaborative inquiry project on strength-based conferencing. But the idea spreads. Educators begin observing differently, listening more closely, and involving families in new ways. They recognize the power of starting meetings not with gaps, but with gifts. Learner profiles are rewritten with language that celebrates complexity, purpose, and potential.

What began as a pilot becomes a school-wide movement. Classrooms begin shifting their documentation practices. Students co-develop portfolios that reflect who they are becoming—not just where they are struggling. Family nights take on a new tone, centering stories, hopes, and shared visions for growth.

As the year unfolds, the mood in the school changes. There’s more laughter, more ownership, more clarity about who each learner is. And perhaps most powerfully, staff find that when strengths are made visible, even challenges feel more workable because they are grounded in relationship and trust.

By the time they draft their guidebook, they realize they haven’t just piloted a new strategy, they’ve created a new culture.

Prologue - Enough About What’s Broken ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Observing With a New Lens ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Changing the Meeting ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Profiles That Uplift ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Design in Action ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - From Pilot to Practice ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )