Overview Your Child's Strengths Your Child's Strengths Tour

The Affinities Program
Discovering Strengths in Girls for Whom Success Has Been Elusive

The Latest News
An outline of the Affinities Program will be published on February 28th by Viking Penguin Books as an appendix to Purnell President Jenifer Fox's book, Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use Them. Following the publication of the book, the complete Affinities Curriculum will be available online at www.strengthsmovement.com. For more about the book, see the links to the right.

Other Important Documents
The Affinities Program Featured on the Today Show
Jenifer Fox Interview About Student Strengths
Strengths Movement Homepage

Program Overview
Building on Strengths
Purnell's award-winning Affinities Program grows out of a belief that building on a student's strengths is the best way to help her grow into the person she was meant to become. At Purnell School, girls discover their strengths and use them to carve out a path toward a meaningful future. Many students come to Purnell with specific challenges to overcome and one of the important things we do is provide a framework for each girl to discover how she can address those challenges in healthy and productive ways. But addressing challenge by understanding how one learns is only half of a Purnell education. The other half includes helping each student discover her strengths.  A strength is defined as more than an  interest in an external thing. It is more than choosing a career or a major to study.

Self-Discovery
The Affinities Program ® is really about self-discovery. Self-discovery is the key to helping our students find and create meaning in their lives. All schools should seek to consciously engage students in a process of self- discovery that will be meaningful in tomorrow's world and relevant for today's young people. At Purnell, we begin by helping girls understand which activities make  them feel strong and then we engage them in those activities over and over again.  The Affinities Program is a four-year program with curriculum that is designed to develop girls' strengths and to help them understand relationships at each grade level.  This program is implemented with the help of a fulltime Affinities Coordinator, a role that has been evolving in the school since 2003.

Additionally, the Affinities Program brings strengths development into the whole school culture, creating a positive, supportive environment that is not found at any other school today.