In response to encouragement and a very nice request from an MVXC athlete, we will host a Monta Vista CharacterLab session on Friday, October 30, at lunchtime.
What is CharacterLab?
The first thing you need to know is that CharacterLab is OPTIONAL. If you are busy, overbooked, trying to catch up with your studies in every spare second, and/or not interested in listening to Coach Flatow rattle on about psychology, then you can stop reading now and go back to APUSH.
The Monta Vista Character Lab is a series of talks for Monta Vista athletes, focusing on how positive psychology can help athletes and teams thrive, both in sports and life. Topics may include:
- How positive psychology differs from self-help advice
- The value of grit
- How finding your ‘we’ can smooth the road to success
- Thinking traps and how to avoid them
- The difference between “meaning” and “mattering”
- The basics of performance psychology
- Effective goal-setting strategies
- Building new habits
- Active-constructive responding to good news
- Classifying and using character strengths and virtues
Our goal is for each talk to leave you with thought-provoking ideas, a deeper understanding of positive psychology, and practical insights to enhance your life. We want all Monta Vista athletes to thrive!
Our Topic: VIA Character Strengths
The VIA Institute on Character (Values in Action) has identified 24 strengths that can guide personal growth, improve relationships and contribute to positive environments. Character strengths are positive traits reflected in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and are recognized across cultures.
The VIA Character Strengths survey identifies a set of 24 universal character strengths grouped into six virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. These strengths can be used for personal growth, improving relationships, fostering positive education and workplace environments, and enhancing well-being.
The goal is that by understanding and applying one’s character strengths, individuals can lead more fulfilling lives, contribute positively to their communities, and achieve their personal and professional goals.
We can’t cover all this in a 45 minute lunch session (my UPenn program covered character strengths over an entire three-week cycle of my Positive Psychology and Individuals class), but I think we can create a fun introduction.
Homework in Preparation for this CharacterLab Session
If you want to come to this session, you have about 30 minutes of homework to do before then.
- Take the Via Survey. Go to the Via Institute on Character website (clidk that link, or paste https://www.viacharacter.org into your browser). You will see a button “TAKE THE SURVEY NOW!”. You will have to register and all like you have for a billion other websites, after you go through all that there is a series of about 96 questions that you answer “like me, not like me” etc. Don’t agonize over the questions, try to go with your first reaction and move on. There are no “right or wrong” answers and there is no grade at the end. If your parents usually want to know when you use the internet to explore a new site, please share this with them so you know what you are doing. I think this is a very innocuous and safe site, but I am not your parents.
- Print out at least one copy of your results. Yes, please print out a copy on paper (and if you are comfortable sharing results with me, print out another copy, or send me a pdf by email to coachflatow@gmail.com).
- Don’t share your results with teammates (yet). We are going to try an exercise where we try to spot each others’ signature character strengths, and then explain them (SEA: Spot, Explain, Appreciate each other’s character strengths).
- Optionally, come with one, two, or three partners (groups up to four). If you don’t have a group and come on your own, we will pair you up, but if you want to come with friends that works too and might be even more fun or useful. Encourage and remind your partners to take the survey, but remember to not share results until we are all together.
- Bring your lunch to D101 at lunchtime on Friday, October 30. Please get there as rapidly as possible, we are going to try to do a lot in a short amount of time.
Remember, CharacterLab is entirely optional. However, I hope to see you there!
Your Instructor: Coach Kirk Flatow
Coach Flatow has coached cross-country and track & field at Monta Vista since 2011. During this time, the teams have won two Central Coast Section championships, competed in the State championships five times, and won 15 league championships. He has also coached track at Johns Hopkins University, and coached marathoning for Team in Training/Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Before his coaching career, Coach Flatow was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, co-founding one company that was later sold, taking another company public, and managing divisions of up to 500 people at Tessera/Experi, Flextronics, and Harmonic Lightwaves.
Coach Flatow completed a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 2024, exactly 40 years after earning an MBA from the University of Chicago. His undergraduate degree is from Santa Clara University. Additionally, he holds a level 5 (elite) certification from the International Association of Athletic Federations and the highest certification from USA Track and Field, and he coached the distance team at Johns Hopkins University while completing his master’s degree at UPenn.
