Developed by Sean Hurley
Coy Middle School, Beavercreek
Study Hall/Music
Grade Level: 6

Introduction

Bullying has become a serious problem in schools. Nearly 1 in 3 students (27.8%) report being bullied in school (National Center for Education Statistics 2013). It often leads to serious problems such as thoughts of suicide for individuals, or to schoolwide problems such as the Columbine, Colorado, incident in which two alienated students decided to kill their fellow students. Solutions to the problem of bullying are elusive, but one way to prevent it is to talk to young people before it happens. Sean Hurley, choir teacher at Coy Middle School in Beavercreek, Ohio, used what he learned at the Muse Machine Summer Institute in 2016 to help students talk about themselves and address issues they may be facing. He used the River Story exercise that he acquired from Ping Chong & Company to help his study hall students find and address key incidents in their lives that have shaped them to be where they are today. The key message being that we are all different and we are all facing difficult issues in our lives. We invite you to see his lesson and perhaps gather information on how you can design a similar lesson for your students.

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Non-Arts Discipline

School Climate

Strand/Process

Student lead sharing

Content Statement

Enduring Understandings:
Part of being human is to communicate with other people.

Level of Inquiry (confirmation/structured/guided/open)

• Students will be given opportunities to ask questions specific to identity and belonging in our specific school.

Essential Questions

• Why are humans usually inclined to communicate with others?
• Why do humans seemingly have a need to congregate and socialize?
• What types of attributes help humans bond with true friendship?

Content Elaborations

Students will learn how to make statements about their identity and how they can use that knowledge to help themselves become more connected with peers.

Expectations for Learning

Students will demonstrate this learning by writing short statements about what kinds of identifiers, which with they feel strongly associated.

Instructional Strategies

Students will be engaged and supported in learning by the teacher taking an active role in modeling and help guiding students to discover their identifiers which will help them make connections with other students in the school.

Assessment (Pre and/or Post)

Students will know how well they are learning by being able to discover their identifiers, be able to write down a specific instance where they feel the identifier is valid, and be able to get into groups with peers with similar identifiers.

Materials & Resources

Materials list for teachers:

• Projector

Materials list for students:

• Paper
• Writing utensil

Student Performance Tasks

The goal is to have students discover the personal identifiers of what defines their identity. Once they find their identifiers, students will use the information to find common interests with other students.

• Teacher will describe the seeming human need of belonging in a culture or family type atmosphere.
• The teacher will demonstrate through their own experiences how to find their identifiers.

1. Father/Mother
2. Teacher
3. Musician
4. Church Member

•  Students will be asked to write words that identify them.
• Students will be asked to share their three strongest identifiers with the class.
• The teacher will help students organize themselves into groups with commonality.
• Students will then write a few sentences in first-person and using present-tense verbs so the action feels it is currently taking place in the story.
• “I look across the street and see an elderly man who seems to be struggling to carry his groceries.” Students will write about a specific time when their identifiers have strong emotions in their life.
• Students will share in their groups and peer-edit to make sure the verbs are present-tense.

If they feel safe to do so, students will share their stories with the entire class.

Career Connections

Helping people understand what defines them as an individual will also help them understand their relationship to other people. This is a valuable exercise to be able to repeat in any phase of life for important self-reflection and leadership.

Diverse Learners

Diverse learners will be helped with more one on one guided discovery. Students will still share, as much as they are able, and will still participate in student groups.

Interdisciplinary Connections

This lesson can be integrated with the SI 2016’s: Name Origin, River Rocks, or Cross-Curricular Introduction, and Undesirable Elements.

The River Rocks exercise is particularly evident in this lesson. The River Rocks exercise had participants place “rocks,” symbolizing memories, in a river traveling from the past to the present. The rocks/memories are placed in the river chronologically. Each memory is a deeply impactful experience which shaped the flow of the “river,” symbolizing life. The exercise inspired me to translate the activity to students and get them to remember impactful memories.

The goal is to get them to open up about topics in their life they feel comfortable sharing. Eventually, students will do the same activity but the topic will change from “identifiers” to bullying. Students will write about a time they were bullied in the first person and in present-tense. Discussing bullying in this manner could have a profound impact on a level of compassion/empathy a student feels towards his or her peers. It is my feeling that Ping Chong’s Undesirable Elements Theater is a great way to get students to open up and share experiences they may not want to discuss through the writing of a script for a play or participating in this lesson. This lesson could be a great way to get dialogue started about how to change bullying culture.

Technology Connections

Free programs, like Google Forms technology, could be a good way to have students anonymously give information about identity, the way they see peers interact, and other social norms of you school.

Home/At Work Connections

Students will be asked to apply their discoveries about their identity and how peers form friend groups in their school. They will be challenged to find students who are not part of student groups and find common identifiers with those students.