6th graders absorbed in Because of Winn-Dixie
The world of books can be a vast moral laboratory for watching characters encounter challenges, make choices, relate to others, and experience consequences. Sometimes if we watch a character make a mistake, it will save us making it ourselves. Other times, we find a hero to emulate.
One of my goals is to help middle school students realize this opportunity, first in the novels we read in class, and then in the ones they read independently. With that in mind, I created a book club unit on novels with resilient characters (Committing to a Book Club Experiment). In addition to learning discussion skills and literary analysis skills, students have also been learning about resilience—what it is, and 6 ways to increase it recommended by Mayo Clinic (Student Book Clubs: Learning to Learn Together).
This week Wednesday, students reflected on their protagonist’s resilience, assessed their own resilience, and picked a resilience skill that they wanted to work on. Here are some of the goals students picked:
- I’m not really good in being hopeful. I do accept that things are in the past, but sometimes I still have late night thoughts on past actions that I regret, and I get why I do that. I would like to work on forgiving and if possible to fix the mistake.
- I want to take care of myself better. To do that, instead of blaming myself for everything, I want to try to think about what I can do to fix the problem.
- I should learn from my mistakes because I do make the same mistakes over and over.
If those 6th and 7th graders can really act on those goals, that would be transformative learning! So I want to capture for myself how students arrived at the point of being able to see themselves so clearly, and what I want to do next to continue supporting their learning.
First, students learned some content--in this case, Mayo Clinic’s 6 “skills to endure hardships”: (1) get connected, (2) make every day meaningful, (3) learn from experience, (4) remain hopeful, (5) take care of yourself, and (6) be proactive. (For further reflections on this framework, see my post How Can I More Effectively Help Students Increase Their Resilience?)
Then, students to applied the content to the literature, assessing how resilient the protagonist in their novel is in terms of those 6 skills. I gave the following prompt:
Think about how your protagonist would respond to the following statements that describe resilient people. Which of the following steps in becoming more resilient does your protagonist need to take? Which are they working on? Give evidence for your answer.
Finally, I asked them to assess their own resilience. I gave them the following prompt:
- Get connected: I have at least one close friend, at least one adult I can talk to, and a community where I feel I belong.
- Make every day meaningful: Every day I do at least one thing that gives me a sense of accomplishment and helps other people. I set goals and accomplish them.
- Learn from experience: I think about how I’ve dealt with problems in the past–what has helped and what hasn’t. And I use that thinking to guide what I do the next time I have a problem.
- Remain hopeful: Instead of staying mad or sad about the past, I think about what I can do now.
- Take care of yourself: I eat healthy food, exercise, sleep 9-12 hours every night, do something I enjoy, and have strategies for managing my emotions.
- Be proactive: I notice when I’m having a problem. (I don’t hide it or pretend it isn’t happening). Then I make a plan and do something about it. (I don’t feel helpless or just wait for someone else to do something.)
How would you respond to each of the following 6 statements? (A) Make your answer bold. (B) Pick one step to increasing your resilience that you do well. Type it in the box below, and explain what you do well. (C) Pick one step to increasing your resilience that you would like to work on. Type it in the last box, and explain one thing you will do to work on it.
I was pleased with the thoughtful discussions of their characters, and with the honesty of their self-assessments. With 2 more weeks left in the unit, I need to plan follow-up activities to help students really implement their goals.
(1) Get connected: I have at least one close friend, at least one adult I can talk to, a relationship with Jesus, and a community where I feel I belong.
- I feel connected.
- I do not feel as connected as I would like.
(2) Make every day meaningful: Every day I do at least one thing that gives me a sense of accomplishment and helps other people. I set goals and accomplish them. I know God made me for a purpose.
- My days are meaningful.
- My days are not as meaningful as I would like.
(3) Learn from experience: I think about how I’ve dealt with problems in the past–what has helped and what hasn’t. And I use that thinking to guide what I do the next time I have a problem.
- I learn from experience.
- I don’t learn from experience as much as I would like.
(4) Remain hopeful: Instead of staying mad or sad about the past, I think about what I can do now. I can do this because I believe that Jesus forgives me, loves me, and helps me grow into the person He made me to be.
- I am hopeful.
- I am not as hopeful as I would like.
(5) Take care of yourself: I eat healthy food, exercise, sleep 9-12 hours every night, do something I enjoy, and calm my heart by praying to God.
- I take care of myself.
- I don’t take care of myself as well as I would like.
(6) Be proactive: I notice when I’m having a problem. (I don’t hide it or pretend it isn’t happening). Then I make a plan and do something about it. (I don’t feel helpless or just wait for someone else to do something.) I know the world is broken and sinful, but when I ask, God gives me inner strength, wisdom, and people I can ask for help.
- I am proactive.
- I am not as proactive as I would like.
What about you? How do you help students connect literature to life and experience transformative learning?
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P. S. Blog posts related to this one:
- How Can I More Effectively Help Students Increase Their Resilience?: some of my background thinking on resilience
- Student Book Clubs: Learning to Learn Together: how I run the book clubs
- Committing to a Book Club Experiment: the books I picked
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