One of the hardest skills to develop is the ability to see the world from different perspectives. This skill is especially difficult during crises like the Coronavirus where all around us we see despair, social dislocation and loneliness. Everything tells us to lose hope. It is during these hard times, however, that we have fresh opportunities to see differently in ways that can improve our mental health.
All students have run across “know-it-alls”. They might be one themselves. They walk into a room and express supreme confidence with their knowledge. Being humble is seen as a sign of weakness. Then there are those timid students who wait patiently, ask questions and only speak when they are certain of something. Confidence and humility are noble traits. The life-long challenge is striking the right balance between the two.
The Big Idea: Children confront problems everyday. Some are small like how to study for an exam or get a ride to school, and some large like how to support their friends who are in unhealthy relationships. All of these …
Before having students read Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau (or an excerpt), I would start a discussion using the conversation about responsibility from Dr. Seuss. This discussion will get students thinking about the role of the individual and how …
When students interact with others, they have lots of moral decisions to make. It’s hard for them to decide exactly how to treat other people, especially strangers, since many times they don’t have much information to go on and so they must rely on their intuitive judgements and best guesses. How they decide to act reflects deeply upon their characters.
An ambitious person is confident and self-motivated, both of which are qualities we want to see in our children. But ambition sometimes gets us into trouble. It encourages us to compete with others over scarce resources and that causes us to be selfish and uncompromising sometimes. It’s important to recognize that there are other people in the world and we have an ethical obligation to think about their needs as well.
A creative way to open a unit on Westward Expansion would be to have a conversation with Dr. Seuss on ambition. What I hope would come out of the conversation is a better understanding of the costs and benefits from …
Ask the students what they dream about and you are sure to get a wild variety of interesting answers. Students dream all of the time and some use them to set lofty goals for their life pursuits. Others see dreams as fake pictures of reality. However they are viewed, thinking about dreams is a chance for students to become more self-aware about what they value and what they really want out of life.
After the last tree falls and the factories shut down in The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, the Lorax has to leave the once fruitful forest. For this lesson, I would use the Sophocles’ conversation on hardship. In small groups, I …
We experience life with other people. This is true in our families, schools and workplaces. We are taught the importance of being individuals and being responsible for our own actions, yet many of our life experiences involve others and our successes and failures are determined by how well we are able to work with other people.
Freedom is a concept near and dear to the hearts of kids. Freedom means they can do what they want, when they want. But there are limits to freedom placed on children by parents, schools and society. When kids confront these limits they must decide whether or not to disobey the rules or conform to them. This is an inescapable ethical dilemma that stays with them for the rest of their lives.
Every student knows a little something about enemies and conflict. They don’t get along with everybody and these inevitable conflicts force them to make choices about how to treat other people. These choices have real consequences as they impact their capacities to build and sustain friendships.
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