This week at my student teaching placement the middle school was having spirit week, and they had a special day called "mix it up" day. This day has many elements meant to "mix it up" including having the kids sit with someone they don't know at lunch and the teachers change up what and how they teach for the day. My cooperating teacher, who is a 7th and 9th grade math teacher, did an intense, moving lesson on being understanding of others and bullying.
He began by talking about the human tendency to react with emotions to stressful situations and other people who are emotional. He said that it can be very difficult to react rationally and calmly, especially when your brain is still developing, but it's an important skill to learn how to be calm in stressful situations.
He next had an activity where he read a statement about a type of stressful situation like "if you have ever lost a parent, sibling, or immediate family member" and had students stand if the statement pertained to them. It was eye opening to me and the students to see how many students had experienced serious life stresses in their young lives. One of his points in doing that exercise was to have the students realize that everyone has stress in their lives, that we need to be aware of that when interacting with others, and that we should always make a point of being considerate of others. He followed the activity by reading his own experience with being bullied in middle school.
Next came the climax of the lesson in showing two emotional videos. I was surprised by the teacher's choice to show a video talking about kids who had committed suicide due to having been so severely bullied. I don't know if I would have been brave enough to even think about showing something like that to middle school students, but it ended up being an appropriately powerful message for the kids to handle especially because he followed up that video with the music video of Josh Groban's "You Are Loved."
Unfortunately, the class didn't have enough time to have a reflection immediately following the lesson, and they had to do their reflection in class the next day. I feel that the students really needed a reflection immediately following the lesson because it was so intense, and if I ever did a lesson like this I would make use that the would be enough time to decompress before sending them off for the rest of the school day.
What do you think of the lesson? What would you add or take out, or would you even want to do a lesson like this at school?
This is an interesting lesson in that the emphasis is on the emotional component related to stress. He starts the lesson, however, by talking about the importance of learning to be calm in stressful situations. For me, this would be a strong lesson. What are varying philosophies about dealing with stress? How do police officers, military, heck teachers handle intense stress? We have the vision in our head about how we would respond but that is not what we revert to when stressed. His point about young brains is also unusual and speaks to why we have laws related to driving etc. By focusing on his initial point, which is very strong, he might use this short opportunity to provide actual tools the students can use or think about. The subtle methods are often more impactful than the ones that make it sound easy. I'd be interested to know how the reflection went the next day. Were they in a frame of mind to reflect better right after the lesson? Did he come back to his objective at the end?
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