Choose ONE Activity:
Activity A – School Life (in the Lunch Room) and/ or Playground
This activity is designed to help you revisit a high school social scene of lunchtime rituals. After finding the appropriate setting and doing some observation, or yes, you can use a film instead or you can use the school where you were a student.
Draw a map of the cafeteria layout.
– Place and label the social groups and where they stationed themselves with a color code or legend.
– Use terms, (skaters, stoners, jocks, beaners, geeks, gothe, etc), and reveal as much as you can; What does the scene look like? How are individuals and groups dressed?
– List several assumptions for each group/ clique.
– Describe the students and their body language; Who is talking, touching, teasing?
– Describe how race/ethnicity, class, and gender modified group membership.
– Analyze this “hidden” cafeteria culture from the viewpoint of faculty and administration.
Activity B
Social Issues in Schools
Contact a school of your choice (your own, from tutoring, your neighborhood school, etc.) to find out how they address (or do not address) the following issues on their campus:
– Substance Abuse
– School Violence
– School Shootings (Prevention)/ Disaster Plan
– Substance abuse
– Homophobia
– Suicide
– Obesity and Eating Disorders
– Sexual Activity and Pregnancy
– Bullying
– Dropping out of School
– Homeless Families/ Homeless Students
– any other issues you want to add
While gathering this information, consider these questions: To what extent are these issues seen as relevant problems by school administrators? Are they handled as isolated or interconnected issues? Are the schools responses proactive or reactive? To what extent are parents and community members involved in programs addressing these issues?
Activity C School Life Continued
Watch (Rent, Stream, Use your memory if you’ve already seen the movies:
one of these:
– Mona Lisa Smile
– Remember the Titans
– Stand and Deliver
– Dead Poets Society
– Respond to these prompts:
Using stick figures, a graphic, chart, place, and label the social groups you see in the movie.
Use terms, (skaters, stoners, jocks, beaners, geeks, gothe, etc,) and reveal as much as you can.
– List several assumptions for each group.
– Identify the benefits and consequences of a group membership.
-If you were in the script, which group would you want to belong to?
– Describe how race/ethnicity, class, and gender influence group membership.
– Analyze the school culture from the viewpoint of faculty and administration.
Activity D:
Students and Society: It Was the Worst of Times. It Was the Best of Times.
Work with a classmate or work alone. Prepare a graphic to list as many issues as you can that reflect the problems facing young people, both in schools and in the larger society. Add to the graphic another list: his time of the positive aspects of being a young person in America today. Develop another area of the graphic to describe the roles schools have in either helping to solve the issues brought up for this activity.
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