This week my class wrote "This I Believe" statements. On Wednesday we watched a video and listened to Elie Wiesel's essay for NPR's "This I Believe" segment. Afterwards, I decided to have my students create their own statements in order to reflect on personal beliefs and values. I believe activities like this are important, because students need to explore who they are and what they value. If I can do that AND link it to literature, then I get pretty excited! I love learning more about my students as people, and activities like this really demonstrate their creativity, talents, and interests.
Before we began the assignment, I told students to reflect on what they find important about life. I shared some examples of my own personal beliefs and values, and told students that as long as they took it seriously their statements would be wonderful. I always try to encourage my students to trust their own thoughts and feelings, and to have confidence in the answers they give and the ideas they share. I've noticed that many of my students are overly concered with being wrong. They are constantly asking me things like, "Can I write this? I don't know if this is right. No, I'm not sure. Is it okay that I put down what I thought?" Statements like this make me cringe, because they often ask these questions in association with activities that are supposed to be all about sharing individual thoughts and feelings. No matter how many times I reiterate, "There are no wrong answers, I want to know what YOU think," they still seem to struggle with trusting their own ideas.
I personally believe that this is because our culture has put such a huge emphasis on being right ALL the time. An article by Ben Johnson addressed this idea, stating, "Unfortunately, we have socialized our students into the believing that not being certain is a bad thing, and as a result, few students are willing to take a risk and demonstrate their vulnerability." I definitely see this reflected in my students, and I've been working hard to show them that being 'wrong' is actually okay! No one can be right all the time, and when you are wrong it is simply something to learn from.
Regardless, my students powered through and completed some AMAZING "This I Believe" statements. Probably the most fun I've ever had grading! Each statement was so personal and touching, I was absolutely amazed. We published these statements on Friday, and the students got to demonstrate their creativity by turning their statements into works of art. I have now complied these statements into a huge class book, and it looks amazing. My students did such a fantastic job, and I was absolutely blown away by their insight. Working with students everyday is so rewarding!
We did "This I Believe" statements last month with the seniors, including listening to several online through NPR. It was really fun...at first. :P When we asked out students to write their own, things got very strange. We had them present their statements to the class and had such a wide variety of responses, which would seem like a good thing...We had everything from believing in cleaning up nice with a good haircut, to living every moment to its fullest, to keeping electronics away from water. It was like some of our students didn't know what to believe in and that was 1) puzzling for their age, and 2) a little sad. We ended up following that activity up with an entire unit on ethics in order to help students explore what they believe, which has been amazing!
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