Students Break the System of Bullying in English Class Video Lecture | Understanding Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Better Life - Personal Skills

>>Teacher: Once you gain
your students' trust,
if you can give them that's just
a little beyond their reach,
then they will go way farther
than you ever expected.
And they will be hooked into that,
because every kid wants to achieve.
>>Student: Me having an idea
alone is not going to make as much
of a difference as ten kids having
an idea and putting that to life.
>>Teacher: The students decided that
they wanted to have this campaign
against bullying and they
created a logo and a slogan,
and the slogan was
"Break the System."
So their idea was that bullying is
this system of bad things that kind
of happen between victims and
perpetrators, between bullies
and the people that they bully.
So the idea was, if they could
get control of this thing
by teaching people to break the
system, then things would start
to get a little bit
better for people.
In order to make this belong to
the kids, I started off by starting
with how they were feeling, and
things started coming out, like,
"I experienced bullying at this
time," or "I saw a kid get bullied
and it made me feel
like this," or even,
"I feel like a really
bad person right now,
because I've seen what things
that I've done could have
done to somebody else."
I think one of the most important
things for making something belong
to the kids is letting them talk.
>>Teacher: Don't follow
in anyone's footsteps.
>>Student: Where's the "Find
someone that's confident" stuff?
>>Teacher: Yeah, that's here.
>>When the kids feel connected to
the material, they engage in it.
And when they engage in it, they
participate in a whole different way.
And the other way that
kids really participate
and they become participants
is when you hand
over the onus of learning to them.
Kids learn so much more when
they're talking to each other.
They learn so much more when they're
working through a problem together.
They learn so much more when the
feedback comes from each other,
rather than from this higher power
that they hear from all the time.
>>Student: The things that are good
about it was the collaborative aspect
of it, how we were all able to
talk together and make a huge way
for teachers and students to learn
with each other about not bullying.
>>Teacher: Starting at a
place of collaboration,
finding the common ground, is a
place to build that collaboration
and it becomes a form of inclusion,
because when you have kids
collaborating on big projects,
on big issues, on solving
big problems,
then the kids who might not normally
have the strength in a situation,
their strengths come out.
>>Student: I was scared that
this wasn't going to work
like we wanted it to, but it did.
Like it really taught
me lots of things,
not only like as a person,
but, you know, as a kid.
>>Teacher: The thing I like the
most about the Quest models,
I really like that
everything's contextualized.
I feel like my students have
connected a lot with that.
And the fact that they
have this reason,
this impetus for figuring things out.
And then on top of it, I think
it's really nice to be at a school
where we're expected to
have students collaborate,
because I really learn the value of
collaboration for kids and how much
of a difference that makes
for them in learning.