EMPOWER Your Students - Lauren Porosoff

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class, but you want to, maybe put the sticker on your English notebook.

      You might put your stickers on your materials for a particular class, like your history binder, your science text, your music folder, or your calculator. You might put them on materials you bring to all of your classes, like a laptop. Your locker, phone, or homework area could all be helpful places. The best place is wherever you might look when you need a reminder to engage in the behavior. Who would like to share where you’re putting your stickers?

      After a few days or weeks, you can ask if the stickers ever prompted the behaviors they represent. How did it go? How did it feel? Are there other places the students want to put stickers? Are there other behaviors they want to try making icons for (perhaps using a different color dot sticker)? You can keep a supply of dot stickers on hand and occasionally ask students if they want to share stories, make new commitments, or renew old ones.

      You can ask your students to think about how they can incorporate their valued behaviors into processes they learn in your class, such as the writing process, the process of analyzing a primary source document, or the process of doing a lab experiment. Students can share their behavior targets with one another to help hold themselves accountable to their values.

      If you don’t have dot stickers, you could use sticky notes or have the students draw their icons directly on their materials in permanent marker.

      You can suggest that students hide their icons so they find them in the future. For example, a student who wants to listen more actively could draw her ear icon on random notebook pages. On days when she gets to these pages, she’ll rediscover the icons and remember to listen more attentively during those class periods.

      You can also use this activity to help students think about how they want to behave during less structured parts of their day. Instead of asking them to recall a time when they were engaged in learning, ask them to recall an experience when they were their most compassionate, kindest, or most respectful selves. They can list the things they were doing during this experience and make an icon that represents and prompts the behavior. This version puts group values ahead of individual values while letting students choose how they enact those values.

      Students who dislike drawing might resist making icons, and some might need help thinking of visual representations. Others might complain that their icons aren’t creative enough: “I want to ask questions, but a question mark seems so obvious.” Still others might create icons that don’t connect to the behavior; a student who draws a line to represent asking questions (because asking a question is like crossing the line from curiosity into knowledge, perhaps) might forget the icon’s meaning. Then it won’t prompt the behavior. These kinds of struggles could be great opportunities for your students to help each other, and also to notice that the point isn’t perfection but workability.

      We’ve found that this activity works best if you have your students immediately put their stickers into place. Otherwise, the students most in need of reminders will be the ones who lose their stickers.

      Some students might choose behaviors that are already easy for them, or that aren’t that important, or that they can most quickly figure out how to represent with an icon. After some time has passed, ask your students to think about whether their focus stickers are reminding them to behave in ways that genuinely matter to them. If not, they can make new stickers that better reflect their values.

      For some students, the stickers won’t serve as effective cues. If the sticker isn’t working, you can help that student brainstorm other kinds of reminders that might work better.

      Students spend a fair amount of their time in groups, whether they’re assigned a partner for a project, having lunch with their friends in the cafeteria, playing on a team, or just being members of different classes. Any of these group situations can feel threatening. Students might worry about looking stupid or uncool, getting a bad grade because of someone else’s mistake or lack of effort, being excluded, and all sorts of other unwanted outcomes.

      When we feel threatened, our behavioral repertoire tends to narrow (Wilson, 2009; Wilson & Murrell, 2004). We fight back, run away, or freeze up—and in the process, we sometimes subvert our values. Think of a student who wants to treat others compassionately but rewrites his partner’s half of their essay because he’s afraid it will bring their grade down. Or a student who wants to express herself creatively but stays silent during a brainstorm session because she’s sure her peers will laugh at her ideas. Or students who want to treat themselves kindly but skip lunch for fear of getting bullied in the cafeteria. This activity’s aim is not to get students to behave a certain way, but rather to help them take stock of their options so they can act more flexibly in the face of a perceived threat.

      This activity works best when groups are forming: on the first day of a group project or when a class, team, club, or ensemble first comes together. You can repeat it every time a group forms.

      For this activity, each student will need a pen, writing paper, “Being in a Group” handout (figure 2.5), and the “Examples of Values” handout (page 214).

       Figure 2.5: “Being in a Group” handout.

      Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.

      The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.

      Think about some of the groups you’ve worked with. It could be a class, a sports team, an ensemble for a performance, a religious group, or maybe something less formal like a team for a class project or even a group of friends. When all goes well, what can be really great about working in a group? (Students suggest benefits of group work, such as hearing more perspectives on problems, creating solutions together, making new friends, sharing burdensome work, learning from each other, and playing to each person’s strengths.)

      We’ve probably all experienced some of the things that don’t go so well in groups. What can be really horrible about working in a group? (Students suggest drawbacks such as arguing, being unable to compromise, distracting each other, having different standards for the final product, having a boring task, getting left out, getting bossed around, and having some people not contribute enough.)

      What can we do when we’re in our groups to maximize the benefits and minimize the drawbacks? Let’s try to give dos instead of don’ts so that we know what to do rather than what not to do. (Students suggest behaviors such as taking turns speaking and listening to all perspectives before making a decision. If students suggest don’ts, like don’t micromanage, ask what the do is: “If you’re not micromanaging, what are you doing?”)

      Sometimes people don’t like working in groups because of these drawbacks that are outside their control. So today I’m going to ask you to think about what is in your control. (Distributes the “Being in a Group” handout [figure 2.5].)

      When you think about how you want to behave in your group, what words come to mind? How do you want to interact with your group members? How do you want to do the work? How do you want to solve problems? Since we’re talking about how we’re behaving, we need adverbs. For example, if it’s important to me to be real, I might write genuinely. If I want to act kindly toward the people in my group, I’ll write kindly on my chart. What qualities of action are important for you? Write them in your chart. (Students write their adverbs. For

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