In their video Treat Others the Way You Want to be Treated, our Olympic mentors reminded us of how important it is to choose friends with common interests, be open to other peoples opinions and always have good manners. This can be a tricky one for youth that are beginning to develop their own opinions and feel they need to share them. We took it a step further and said that you need to be aware of who the people are that you are with and that just because you have an expected behaviour around your friends, you do not have to be that person when in a large group. Manners do count!
Justin and Tristan continued with how to deal with disagreements and that it is important that you take time too cool off before you express how you feel, but that it is equally important to listen to how the other person feels.
Our monthly challenge on friendship was to find people in our school that we do not know very well and to come up with 3 things that you have in common, as well as traits/interests or activities that make you unique. To help do this amongst our classmates, we borrowed the idea from +Christine Thiessen of doing a round of "Speed Friendship". What a great opportunity this was to really get to know our classmates. Here is a list of questions that we used: Speed Friendship Questions.
While searching for ideas to bring my students closer together, I found a really neat video which one high school student prepared, showing the results of an experiment she had conducted. This helped to bring some connection to why jr high and high school students feel judgemental about others.
After discussing with the class their thoughts on this video, they became increasingly aware that sometimes we have a difficult time being friends with people because we fear what they will think of us. We also fear that we are not the image that we need to be in order to have friends from various backgrounds, or who have different images. It was exciting to see a few of the students even begin to realize that they are not less than or better than anyone else, because even they feel conscious about their appearance and feel they are not "beautiful". In reality, we are harder on ourselves and think less of ourselves because of this superficial idea of beauty.
To help bring this whole idea of friendship and recognizing that everyone has positive points to be celebrated--beauty, brains, fun nature, etc.,--the students were introduced to the 22 Days of Being in the Hot Seat. In this project, Jennifer Gonzalez: Cult of Pedagogy shows students just how much they are valued and appreciated by spending 22 days doing the Compliments Project. In this activity, every student in the class has a turn in the "hot seat". The seat is placed at the front of the class, with the persons back to the board. While here, the remainder of the students take time to record positive comments about this person. The exciting part of this activity was the response that people have when they realized they were important and that others like them, "just the way they are".
This activity was a bit risky with my class, as some of them really enjoy being the center of attention, especially if they can make others laugh. There have been many hurt feelings in this class in the past, but I knew that if I was going to break this cycle of criticism, I had to provide a safe setting for these students to take the risk. Setting up very specific criteria of acceptable comments, we determined as a class that comments had to be:
- positive
- no inside jokes, unless the joke could be shared with the remainder of the class
- nothing that could be offensive or misleading
As in the example I found from the Cult of Pedagogy site, I decided to take pictures and video the reactions. I was completely dumbfounded and pleasantly surprised at the results. This is partially due to the makeup of my students. Unfortunately, quite a few of these students have been the brunt of jokes and many of these teens have been hurt by the comments of their classmates. While Justin and Tristan were visiting, both athletes were part of the hot seat. During this same visit, I had invited a student who had been part of our class at the beginning of the year, join our class for the day. Afterall, she had been part of our classroom for many years and Classroom Champions for the past 3 years. For her to stand up in front of the class and let the remainder of her classmate--even those who had tormented in the past-- make comments about her, I knew that this class had succeeded in overcoming their personal struggles with self-esteem and self-image. More importantly, this class has really become a caring and respectful class. These guys make me proud to be their teacher.
I have included two videos below. The first is the video of the students enjoying the Speed Friendship activity, while the second is of the project "What's My Paw Print". With the mix of emotions that we had during the paw print activity, I could tell that it was something these great, young people needed to help them build the resiliencey they need to be able to feel confident in the big world.
I have included two videos below. The first is the video of the students enjoying the Speed Friendship activity, while the second is of the project "What's My Paw Print". With the mix of emotions that we had during the paw print activity, I could tell that it was something these great, young people needed to help them build the resiliencey they need to be able to feel confident in the big world.
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