Week of February 13: Changes and Choices

One of the professional pleasures of working at Miquon is that teachers are not locked into a rigid curriculum that remains the same, year after year. Although the learning goals are well-established, the ways those goals may be reached are flexible, are likely to change from year to year for many different reasons, and are under constant evaluation by individual teachers, teaching partners, and the staff as a whole.

One of the core programs in the fifth/sixth grade groups is one we call Changes and Choices. This program includes making healthy choices of many different kinds (including diet, drug and alcohol use, smoking, and peer pressure); navigating the social and informational world online; and understanding the changes that are a part of puberty. This year, we decided to do the program in a very different way.

In prior years, we have often worked on Digital Citizenship as a separate topic. Students have learned about engaging with social media, doing internet research efficiently and wisely, considering ways to protect their own identity and privacy, and dealing with personal safety and cyber-bullying. Changes and Choices generally encompassed the rest of the topics listed above. These explorations have usually spanned several weeks and have been done along with the rest of our program and the specialists’ classes.

This year, at Diane’s suggestion, we decided to try a different format. We put all of our other topics on hold (including those of the specialists) and spent all four days of this past week on Changes and Choices. We divided the topics into three major parts:

  • Digital Citizenship (1 day) — led by Mark and assisted by Jeri
  • Healthy Choices (1 day) — led by Jeri and assisted by Mark
  • Human Development (2 days) — led by Diane and Lynn

We blended and then divided our 31 students into four groups. Two pairs of groups stayed together throughout the week, rotating through those three topics. During the week before, students had the 3-part program explained to them. Then they were asked to write on a slip of paper any topics or questions that they hoped we would explore and drop them into our 3 collection boxes. Teachers later looked at those papers and made adjustments to their plans in order to incorporate as many of those wishes as possible.

Although the first two topics listed above were done in ways similar to our past practice, Human Development was initially intended to take us from conception to death. As we planned our time and activities, however, it became clear that we were not going to have enough time to explore death and dying, although it was clearly a subject that interested many of our students. We will take that topic up before the end of the year, but it could not be fitted into the four days that we had.

All four teachers wrote a summary of each day’s activities and included some general notes about students’ engagement with them. Those summaries were shared with parents at the end of each day. Parents were urged to continue the topics in conversations at home.

Below are some excerpts from those daily summaries. Because the conversations were greatly shaped by the students’ questions and degree of interest throughout each day, not every group had precisely the same experience with each topic. The excerpts represent what some families received; others got slightly different descriptions.

From Jeri (Healthy Choices): Today, our group worked on learning to make healthy choices on a daily basis and in life in general. There were several activities and lots of group conversations in each.

We started the day in half groups. Mark worked with a group doing with an online activity, “All Systems Go” and its worksheet. This helped the kids learn to identify the various parts and systems of the human body. The other half group took a close look at information about nutrition and exercise. Specifically, what should be included in a balanced diet, and how much exercise should kids get every day? We also looked at sugar and its effect on the brain and body, how the labels can be tricky to understand, and how sitting too long is bad for you. The kids were really surprised to learn how much sugar is in so many products and also that sitting too long has so many bad effects on your body.

The mid-section of the day focused on a variety of drugs and their effects on the brain and other parts of the body. Together we walked through an online activity, Drugs and Your Body. This activity includes information about the effects of abusing drugs such as tobacco, cocaine, methamphetamine, steroids and vaping. It goes through the effects on six different body parts – the brain, skin, lungs, mouth, heart –  and how they can lead to death. This activity was particularly shocking to the kids and grossed them out a bit. We also noted that not all drugs are bad, such as aspirin, but that they all need to be used cautiously and on short term, unless prescribed by a doctor.

In the last portion of the day, we focused on friendships and peer pressure, both good and bad.  The kids were asked to describe each and we talked through a few examples. A few of the kids acted out different scenarios that demonstrated both good and bad peer pressure situations. And finally, each child completed a “Decisions, Decisions” sheet, on which they ranked the values they hold and goals they aspire to, identifying ones that could not be swayed by friends and other peers.

From Mark (Digital Citizenship):  Today we started our morning with “Digital Life 101” from commonsensemedia.org, where we learned about the ways digital media fits into our everyday lives. We explored the 24/7, social nature of digital media. We began simply with what is media and how does it differ from digital media? We investigated our digital lives by questioning the way we communicate with and share with others over digital media. Because we’re connected in a more social and interactive way these days, we discussed online relationships and how to navigate them safely. We talked about ethical and appropriate ways to communicate online. We gave our students some tools to communicate effectively, avoid misunderstandings, represent themselves in a professional and thoughtful way, and engage respectfully when interacting with other online users. We ended our afternoon with robust debates about how to judge the intentions and impact of people’s words and actions online. We talked about ways to remain safe when online relationships turn into inappropriate online behavior and crosses the line into cyber-bullying.

From Diane (Human Development, day 1): Today’s work began with an animated conversation about the nature of development — how it happens in stages, how age boundaries on those stages are approximate, how it suggests growth that occurs across the lifespan, and how aging is something that can be understood to be happening from the beginning of our lives. Development also exists on many planes at once — physical, cognitive/language, and social/emotional.

We watched video clips of a 6 week old and then of a 21 month old child and observed for development in each of the areas above (physical, cognitive, emotional/social). We noted the clear and demonstrated development that was visible and connected it to other observations or experiences we had in our lives. The kids were astute observers and made reasonable inferences about what they noticed. We also briefly noted and roughly ordered a variety of developmental milestones. We talked about all of this as giving us insight (and therefore sympathy or even empathy) into others. The children then spent ten or fifteen minutes examining a chart of developmental milestones and descriptors for 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13 year olds taken from the book Yardsticks by Chip Wood. They were encouraged to find themselves reflected in those descriptions and to appreciate how their uneven development can mean they are on several charts at once. Attached to those sheets was a growth chart — the type one would see in a pediatrician’s office — and many of the children chose to chart their height on the chart. Tellingly, few charted their weight.

Every child then had an opportunity to observe a child in the nursery or kindergarten for  a short time, looking for development in those areas again. While those observations were happening, the other students were reading about the developmental milestones of particular age ranges (birth through age 5). Using that information, they drew outlines of appropriately-sized children and, with a partner, labeled those milestones in relevant places on the drawings (such as putting walking on the legs or feet). Those drawn and labeled figures were then hanging around us as we reconvened for a review of the morning and what we had learned/observed.

The afternoon was filled with work in gender-separated groups about the developmental stages in which these children find themselves, focusing specifically on the nature and challenges of puberty. Mark met with the boys and Diane with the girls.  (Lynn assisted Jeri, since Mark was needed for the boys’ meeting.) Both groups had open, free-ranging discussions as they learned about the body changes that puberty brings (to both boys and girls), about the reproductive system of men and women, and much more. Parents were sent a more detailed account of what their child’s discussion group asked about and explored, as the meetings were not identical in content.

Lynn (Human Development, day 2): Today Diane and I completed our 2-day study of Human Development with your child. We started with a teacher-created game show that we titled “More on Puberty and What Lies Beyond.” As students played the first part of the game in small teams, they learned about changes during puberty and adolescence that were not about sex and reproduction, such as growth spurts, cognitive maturation, and possibly needing eyeglasses. The second part of the game was about physical, cognitive, and emotional changes and experiences that are characteristic of the many stages of adulthood. These included strength and mobility gains and losses, career and family decisions, and changing financial obligations, among other things.

We watched “Life’s Greatest Miracle” from PBS, the amazing story of a child’s journey from conception to birth, featuring the amazing photography of Lennart Nilsson. Students asked some good questions afterward.  We talked briefly about the many ways that a child might enter a family (including ways that were chosen because of fertility issues, being a single parent, or being a same-sex couple — adoption, surrogate mothers, in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, etc.).

We spent about 45 minutes talking with Tony Hughes, Diane’s mother-in-law, Betsie, and her father-in law, Richard, about getting older. Students had generated questions and topics for them last week, and we had a very good conversation today about many different aspects of aging.

Finally, we looked at Thomas Armstrong’s concept of 12 Stages of Life and the “gifts” that come with each. There were a lot of good vocabulary discussions as students tried to figure out such words as benevolence, ingenuity, and enterprise. Children tried to pair the stages and gifts on their own, then got an explanatory handout of his view, and created a mobile with 3 by 5 cards.

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All four of us will meet soon to review how the revised program went, make sure the resources and activities are clearly described and annotated for use in future years, and consider adjustments to the format and time frame. We will also make sure that death and dying will be explored before the year is over.

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