...this is our district goal. It's on our website...in our pamphlet...maybe even on our stationary. I recently examined my role as a teacher supposedly trying to reach this goal. As I reflected, I had to admit that YES, I do quite a bit to prepare my kids for the 21st Century, YES, they are learning quite a bit of Spanish, but caring....hmmm, do I make efforts to develop them as CARING learners? Well, I won't let them be outwardly mean to each other...but do I show them what caring looks like?
Today we took the first part of class for a little bit of "Character Ed."
What we did:
I set up the activity by handing each kid a square of scratch paper and told them to get out something to write with. I further set up the activity by telling them "There is only 1 rule... you must all remain silent while we watch the video..I know you will want to talk when you see this video, and I promise to let you react..but at first we want everyone to see the entire thing, so rule #1 Remain silent during the video."
Then I showed this video..if you haven't seen this video before and you work with teens, get a tissue ready:
- I paused the video at : 40 seconds in and have the students write #1: The initial impression of this team is...
- We continued watching the video.
- I paused the video again at 4:00 and have students write #2: The most obvious lesson to be learned from this video is...
- We continued watching the video.
- After the video is finished, we wrote #3: Another/secondary lesson to be learned from this video is...
- Then they had 45 seconds to share out within their groups (I think this stair step is really important when trying to get critical/reflective thinking from students..let them have time to figure out their answers themselves, then share in a small group before sharing out in large group. This almost always helps the students feel more courageous and will get you a better class discussion.
- After discussing in groups, we discussed as a whole class.
- Finally I asked them to turn over their papers and respond to this prompt: If Jonathan was a student at SHS, how do you think he would be treated if people had never seen this video?
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