Five-day unit plan that leverages the power of the Classroom Circle to teach classroom expectations, recognizing values, self-awareness, emotions, strengths and struggles, teamwork, and empathy. The Classroom Circle is a powerful tool in building a classroom community. It's a way to teach and practice expectations for speaking and listening, as well as creating a classroom that provides a safe place for students to be vulnerable, empathetic, and to build on their own self-awareness.

The holidays are not always a joyful occasion, especially for those facing hardship or stress. In this activity, students share their feelings about the upcoming holidays and consider how they might provide some encouragement for those who are struggling.

Communicate Boundaries and Practice Consent: Setting and respecting boundaries of all types – physical, digital, emotional – are central to a healthy relationship. Practicing affirmative consent is one form of establishing boundaries that requires being a respectful “asker” and “receiver.”

Help a friend in an unhealthy relationship: We all play a critical role in supporting our friends to be in healthy relationships. To effectively help our friends, we need to recognize when they are experiencing or engaging in unhealthy behaviors. We then need to have the courage to have the conversation and the knowledge of how to safely intervene as a bystander.

Know the Signs, Spot the Signs: Understand the 10 Signs of a Healthy and Unhealthy Relationship and be able to recognize them in your life and in the relationships around you.

Navigate endings: Whether in a defined relationship, situationship, hook-up, or “a thing” — navigating endings can be difficult, and handling rejection is always tough. Understanding when and how to end a relationship requires thoughtful decision-making under stressful circumstances, even more so when the relationship might be dangerous and there is a need for safety planning.

Practice Healthy Relationship Behaviors: Everyone deserves to be in healthy relationships. This means having the knowledge and skills to: (1) live the 10 Signs of a Healthy Relationship, (2) set expectations for what we deserve in a relationship, and (3) build a healthy relationship with ourselves.

Helping Bereaved Children: 20 Activities for Processing Grief
Copyrighted Article Re-Posted with Permission from authors Brad A. Imhoff, Kaela Vance and Amberle Quackenbush of Ohio University Presented to the 2012 All Ohio Counselors Conference in Columbus, Ohio

http://www.allohiocc.org/Resources/Documents/AOCC%202012%20Session%2062.pdf

Students learn about the Seattle teacher's boycott of high-stakes tests and the larger testing issue, and consider a range of opinions about the effect of current high-stakes testing on teachers, students, and our education system.

Derrick Woods, the gallery teaching manager at Speed Art Museum in Louisville, shows how to play the game “How Art You Feeling?” The idea is to have students express what they’re feeling through art instead of words. Students are asked to do a “full systems check” to consider how they’re feeling beyond simple words like “fine” or “okay.” Students then create art to show these feelings and share their art with a partner, who describes what they see in the artwork.

The game encourages students be thoughtful about expressing their feelings. It also helps them learn to consider their partner’s feelings. In the video, the two young women who are game partners discuss the feelings they were trying to express and find common elements in their drawings. The activity helps students develop social awareness and relationship skills.

This series help students think about their bodies and body images in a social justice context. Each lesson looks at a different aspect of the relationship children have with their bodies. The series helps students take ownership over their own feelings and attitudes and develop an activist stance in terms of understanding body image and also looking after their own physical and emotional wellbeing.

10-lesson kindergarten unit to build classroom culture focused on identity, diversity and community.

10-lesson third grade unit to build classroom culture focused on identity, diversity and community.

Students interview one another, then draw or paint portraits containing symbols that represent the subject’s identity, beliefs, values or areas of interest.

Students create visual self-portraits that contain symbols representing the student’s identity, beliefs, values or areas of interest related to diversity, anti-bias or social justice.

The familiar children’s tune “If You’re Happy and You Know It” can take on a pro-social dimension if you change the lyrics. Singing “If you’re angry and you know it” provides an opportunity to explore appropriate responses to anger.

I’ll be the Judge asks students to demonstrate their argumentative and comparative writing skills.

Students will observe emotions depicted in an 18th-century bust and two 19th-century paintings. They will learn about and create similes based on paintings that depict people waiting and receiving a court verdict, respectively. They will write their own narratives about a time they had to wait, and they will use similes to describe characters' emotions. Students will then create two original works of art that illustrate their narratives.

In Conversation asks students to demonstrate their narrative skills when applying different points of view in writing.