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Chapter 1
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EXPLORATION
Empower Students to Become Curious About Their Values
If students don’t decide how they want to focus their energy, someone or something will decide for them. For example, we as their teachers give them messages about what’s most important all the time. Have you spoken to your students as if your class or a particular assignment were the most important thing ever? Or given a suggestion—to practice trumpet more often, proofread their essays more slowly, take fifteen minutes a day to review Spanish conjugations—as if they have absolutely nothing else going on in their lives? Multiply those messages by all the different teachers who give them. Then add messages from family, friends, work, local and world events, music, television, social media, their own bodies, and everything else that vies for their attention. Don’t forget to add all the thoughts buzzing around in their developing brains: hopes, fears, plans, memories, worries, and desires. It’s a lot.
The activities in this chapter help students explore what matters to them so they can make values-informed decisions about what they do with their time. And since they can’t always choose what they do with their time, these activities also prompt them to consider how every part of their lives can become a potential arena for enacting their values. Each activity includes sections with a list of required materials for each student, a sample script so you can envision how the activity might work in your classroom, a follow-up section so you can help your students enact the values work initiated by the activity, variations for additional approaches, and challenges so you get a heads-up about struggles you might encounter.
Flight Plan
Although students aren’t always in control of what happens to them or how they spend their time, they’re always in control of how they approach situations and relationships. How will they choose to treat the student who has no friends? How will they choose to treat the student with a million friends? How will they choose to approach the mathematics test? How will they choose to approach the mathematics teacher?
This activity helps students distinguish between what is meaningful to them and how they want to make their lives meaningful at school. It works well at the beginning of the year as a way for students to get to know each other (Porosoff, 2016).
Materials for Each Student
For this activity, each student will need a pen, sheet of 8½ × 11–inch paper, and the “Examples of Values” handout (page 214).
Sample Script
The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.
Today we’re going to think about what makes our lives meaningful.
On your paper, I’m going to ask you to list some of the people and things that are important to you. I’m going to make a list too. Try thinking about: (Pauses between prompts to give students time to write.)
• Family members you have a particularly strong connection to
• Close friends
• Teachers or coaches who have made a difference
• Groups that matter to you, like a dance troupe or sports team
• Significant activities, such as athletics or arts
• Places that matter to you, whether they’re in your neighborhood or places you’ve traveled to
• Areas of knowledge you’re curious about
• Issues you’re passionate about
• Important skills or processes you’ve learned
• Objects you cherish, maybe because of who gave them to you or how you got them
• Things you’ve made
• Books that had an impact
• Memories you want to hold on to
Take a few more moments to write.
Now we’re going to do something a little weird. We’re going to take the papers we wrote our lists on and fold them into airplanes. Fold them with the words on the inside so they can be private. If you already know how to make a paper airplane, go ahead and make it the way you know. If you don’t know how, you can either get help from a classmate, or let me show you the way I learned. There are so many kinds of paper airplanes! (See figure 1.1.)
Source: Ushakaron, 2011.
Figure 1.1: Make a paper airplane.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Imagine that this plane represents your life. Write your name on the plane’s tail, to represent that it’s your life. On board are the important experiences you’ve had so far. Take a moment to hold the plane of your life and think about your cargo: the people, places, things, ideas, and experiences that are important to you right now. What’s it like to think about all that cargo on board the plane of your life?
Notice that the cargo you have now might not be there your whole life. Some topics will become less important to you in the future. Memories might fade. Things can get lost, stolen, or ruined, or they can feel less important over time. Places can change, or we can lose access to them or outgrow them in some way. And people who matter to us can leave or we can leave them, or our relationships can change.
I want to acknowledge that for some of you, just thinking about the possibility of loss can hurt or feel weird. If I wrote about people and things I really care about, I might not want to think about losing them or even be able to imagine them becoming less important. But if you’re feeling upset or weird, that’s a sign that what you wrote about genuinely matters to you. (Pauses if students want to share reactions.)
Notice, too, that you’ll take on new cargo throughout your life. You will learn new things, make new friends, and develop new interests and ideas. What might that be like?
We’re going to fly our planes soon. What might happen when we all fly them at the same time? (Elicits lots of responses and points out how each flight can represent an outcome in life: We might crash into each other [have conflict], crash-land [fail despite our best efforts], get stuck and need help, fly where we want to go [achieve exactly what we want], or try to fly straight and end up making a stunt loop [succeed in an unexpected way].)
On my count, let’s fly these things. One … two … three!
Now, I’m going to ask you to take someone else’s plane back to your seat. Don’t unfold it or peek inside.
How does it feel to have another person’s plane?
In a few moments, you’re going to fly your classmate’s plane. What are some of the situations, here at school, where someone else’s plane will be in your hands, so to speak? (Pauses if students want to share reactions.)
On my count again, we’ll fly each other’s planes. One … two … three!
Now find your own plane again. Think about how you want to pilot the plane of your life—not where you want to fly but how. How do you want to approach your classes? Your friends? Your classmates who aren’t your friends? How do you want to treat your teachers? How do you want to treat yourself? How do you want to behave toward your families and communities?
For some people, it’s hard to think of words that describe how they want to live, so I’m going to give you a handout that you can use. You can also make up your own words. (Gives out “Examples of Values” handout [page 214] and reviews it with students.)
On the wings of your plane, write words that describe how you want to pilot your life. How can you enact these qualities right here at school? How would you like to enact your values more fully?
So we might lose some of our cargo, and we might take on new cargo. What we get in life isn’t always in our control. We might have a really well-thought-out flight plan, but where our lives go isn’t always in our control either. But how we pilot our planes is always in our control.
So let’s each decide how we want to pilot our planes and fly them again. Ready? One … two … three!
Follow-Up
If your students save their airplanes (or if you collect and save them), you can return the planes to your students at a later date and ask if the values they wrote on the outside still feel salient. How have their values changed? How have they lived their values since they made their planes? How can they live their values today? For example, if a student said she values behaving responsibly, how did she behave responsibly since she made the airplane, and how can she behave responsibly today? Students can share responses with partners or the full group. Questions like these can help them see that values, as qualities of action, are always available to them in a variety of contexts—including school. If they didn’t live their values in the last few days, weeks, or months, can they start now?
Variations
The paper plane works well because of its metaphors. Keeping, losing, and taking on cargo represent how our possessions, relationships, achievements, and interests can be transient. Our flight paths aren’t always in our control, but our piloting is. If folding paper won’t work for your students, or if they wouldn’t be able to handle the mayhem of flying paper planes in class, they can draw planes on paper or with an app, or you can draw a plane to use as a graphic organizer.
You can use this activity to help students think about their cargo and piloting with respect to your specific subject. For example, if you’re a science teacher, you might ask your students what has been meaningful in their previous years of studying science in and out of school: “What topics interested you? What seemed important?” Then you could ask how they want to approach science now: “How do you want to approach this class? How do you want to use scientific skills and knowledge? How do you want to treat your fellow student-scientists? How do you want to treat the science lab?”
Challenges
Students might find making paper planes a little hokey. (We prefer to think of it as playful.) They might have trouble with the idea of giving up valued possessions, relationships, and activities—particularly if they’ve worked hard to gain or maintain them—or with the concept that they’re not in control of outcomes. Those who have experienced loss, such as in a recent move or a death in the family, might find this activity upsetting—but being upset isn’t bad. Feeling sad about a loss indicates that something important is missing, and the point of this exercise is for students to discover what’s important to them. Noticing, appreciating, and mourning what was important in the past helps them recognize opportunities for meaningful connection in the present and future.
Those who haven’t experienced loss might get upset about the mere idea of loss. The point isn’t that students will mess up, get stuck, have conflict, or lose people and things they love. The point is that other people, things, and even the outcomes of their plans might not be in their control, but the qualities of their actions always are. You can tell your students that in every moment, even in the face of pain and defeat, they always have the choice to live by their values. The very act of appreciating the good qualities of an experience or mourning a loss is an exercise of that choice.
Hills of Beans
In this activity, students think about how different people in their lives send messages about how they should spend their time and how they can still serve their values in the context of these messages.
Materials for Each Student
For this activity, each student will need a pen, notebook, cup with 168 dried beans, about twenty sticky notes, and the “Where I Put My Time” handout (figure 1.2, pages 20–21).
Figure 1.2: “Where I Put My Time” handout.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Sample Script
The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.
It seems like everyone gives us messages about how we should spend our time, whether it’s on schoolwork, athletic practice, music practice, a job, family, friends, a romantic interest, or the million other things we do. Today we’re going to think about how we can spend our time.
Each of you is getting a small cup of beans and a bunch of sticky notes. (Distributes the materials.)
Imagine that the cup represents a week of your life. Just like you have only so many beans in your cup, you have only so much time in a week. The sticky notes are going to represent different ways of spending your time that are important to you, like maybe going to school, being with family, hanging out with friends, taking care of a pet, playing a sport, practicing your violin, exercising, and even basics like sleeping and eating. You’re going to write one important way you spend your time at the top of each sticky note. Begin whatever you write with an -ing verb: going to school, being with family, taking care of your dog, dancing ballet. As you write your notes, spread them out.
Now you’ll put beans on each note to represent how much time your parents or guardians would want you to spend doing each of these things if it were totally up to them. Use up all of your beans, because you’re always doing something, even if it’s staring into space. You might need to add more notes if you think of more things your parents or guardians would want you to do. Some notes might end up with no beans. (See figure 1.3.)
Figure 1.3: Sample hills of beans.
Take a moment to write about this arrangement, labeling it Family. It represents how your parents or guardians would want you to spend your time. What do you notice? Where are there a lot of beans? Where are there none?
Now, if you were going to spend your time exactly the way you think your teachers would want you to, where would your time go? Please rearrange the beans as much as you need to, and add any notes you need.
Take a moment to write about this new arrangement, which represents how your teachers would want you to distribute your time. You can label this one Teachers. Again, what do you notice? What about this configuration is similar to the last one? What’s different?
Next, if you were going to spend your time the way you think your closest friends would want you to, where would your time go? Again, add any notes you need and rearrange the beans so they represent how you imagine your closest friends would want you to spend your time.
And again, write what you notice. You can label this writing Friends. What’s similar to the other two? What’s different?
Up until now, you’ve thought about how other people want you to spend your time—or at least, how you think these other people want you to spend your time. Now, think about how you want to spend your time. It is, after all, your time!
Please rearrange the beans as much as you need to, and add any necessary notes. You’re going to leave the beans in this configuration for now, and—last time—write what you notice.
Does anyone want to share any of their observations? Were there any interesting similarities and differences? How does it feel when you start noticing that different people who care about you are giving you different messages about your time?
Do you ever feel like you have to spend your time a certain way because of what you’re trying to achieve? Do you ever feel like you have to spend your time a certain way to make someone else happy? How can you take care of yourself when you’re faced with these different messages?
Now I’m going to ask you to count the number of beans on each note. Write the number on the note itself. Once you’ve counted the beans in each pile, you can put them back in the cup.
Here’s the part I didn’t tell you yet. I didn’t give you a random number of beans; I gave you 168 beans. Why 168? Because that’s the number of hours in a week. So now, I’m going to give out a weekly schedule. (Distributes the “Where I Put My Time” handout [figure 1.2, pages 20–21].) Write in how you will spend your time. For example, if you said you want to devote thirteen hours a week to your family, which thirteen hours can you devote to your family? Or, if you’d like to devote forty-six hours a week to playing tennis but can’t fit that into your schedule, are there any small changes you can make to get a little closer? (Supports students as they fill out their schedules, such as by pointing out that a particular activity can do double or triple duty. For example, a yoga class might be part of athletic training, self-care, socializing, and connecting to a higher power.)
Who found this activity difficult? Are any of us alone in wanting to arrange our time a little differently? Do you think your family members arrange their time exactly the way they want to? Your teachers? Your friends? How might some of them spend their time if they could? How can you help them? If that’s what you could do to be kind to them, what could you do to be kind to yourself?
Follow-Up
In future weeks, you can ask students to revisit their schedules and discuss, as a class or in writing, the extent to which they’re allocating their time according to their values. They might have obligations that limit them, but they might be able to tweak their schedules so they can serve their values more fully (such as, “I’ll spend an hour playing with my little brother every Saturday” or, “When wrestling season ends, I’ll see my friends after school on Thursdays”). Whether they change their schedules or not, you can continually help your students gain greater awareness of the demands on their time, make informed decisions about how they use time, and take care of themselves in the face of mixed messages and conflicting interests.
Since the schedules will show you what your students do outside school, you can also help them think about school in the same way they think about their interests. Say a student loves baseball and spends hours practicing. If he struggles with writing, you can talk to him about how it feels to practice his batting stance and how it feels when he finally masters it. From there, you can ask whether he’d be willing to spend a little more time practicing writing, which might feel frustrating and tiring while he’s doing it but might lead to feelings of satisfaction. Students’ areas of interest will be the arenas in which they enact their values.
Variations
In a history or English class, students could imagine how a character or key figure would want them to arrange their beans: “If you were going to spend your time how Gandhi would want you to, where would your time go?” In a geography or language class, students could assess how their cultures inform the ways people spend time: “How is my bean arrangement a product of my culture? If I lived in the place I’m studying, how would I arrange my beans?”
Instead of beans, you could use any small manipulative of uniform size, such as paper clips or beads. If your school food policy allows it, you could use edibles like cereal or raisins and have the students eat them at the end of the activity.
Instead of writing their observations after arranging the beans, the students could share their observations in pairs or as a class, or they could simply observe without recording. They could also walk around and look at each other’s final bean layouts and notice similarities and differences among them all.
Challenges
Any time students use phrases like I should, I have to, and I can’t to describe the ways they spend time, you can gently ask, “Whose voice is telling you that? A parent’s? A friend’s?” Feeling a sense of obligation isn’t bad; it can indicate a healthy sense of respect for other people and for their own commitments. But a lot of shoulds can also indicate rigidity and missed opportunities to serve values in other areas of life. Dilemmas like these have no right answers, so a good discussion will consist of more questions: How does the time you spend on homework affect you in the long term? What would happen if you spent more time making art? How would your life be different if you spent more time with your sister? What do you miss when you choose to spend three hours a day watching videos?
Also, focusing on different areas of life in which students can enact their values is a little misleading: a human can survive spending absolutely no time studying, but if we don’t take care of our physical bodies, we die. It’s possible to pursue values in any domain even if basic needs for food, water, and shelter go unmet. Slaves held religious ceremonies, concentration camp inmates made art, and prisoners write poetry. But just because individuals in a state of deprivation can enact their values does not mean someone with access to nutritious food, comfortable sleeping accommodations, leisure time, and medical care should ignore them all in the name of achievement.
Do you know any students who have at some point ignored their physical needs in pursuit of some academic, social, or other goal? For example, are students sleeping enough? If lack of sleep comes up, you could make it part of the discussion: “What are you gaining and losing when you don’t sleep? If you don’t sleep enough, what parts of your life suffer?” This activity can be an opportunity to start conversations about self-care routines and a way to encourage your students to not ignore their bodies when they set goals and make commitments in other domains.
Typical Tuesdays
Students consider how their day-to-day lives have already changed and will continue to change. They think about the ways they spend their time at different points in their lives, and how they can serve their values even if they don’t have control over where they have to go or what they have to do.
Materials for Each Student
For this activity, each student will need a pen, paper, and the “Typical Tuesdays Throughout My Life” handout (figure 1.4, page 26).
Figure 1.4: “Typical Tuesdays Throughout My Life” handout.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Sample Script
The following sample script gives an idea of how this activity might work in your classroom.
Today we’re going to think about how we used to spend our time when we were little, how we spend time now, and how we might spend it in the future. I’m going to ask you to think back to when you were in kindergarten. Let’s say it was a regular Tuesday in your life as a kindergartener. Close your eyes if that helps you remember what it was like to be kindergarten you. How did you begin a typical Tuesday? What was your morning routine? When you went to school, what did you actually do there? What kinds of work and play did you do? What did you do after school? What did you eat for dinner? What was your evening like? What was your bedtime routine? (Pauses between questions so students have time to think and remember.)
Anyone want to share some memories of a typical Tuesday in kindergarten?
Let’s think about a typical Tuesday in your life now. Not a special day—just an ordinary one. How do you ordinarily begin a Tuesday? What’s your morning routine like? When you go to school, what kinds of work and play do you do? How do you socialize? What happens after school? Do you do anything to relax or have fun? What do you eat for dinner? What’s your evening like on a typical Tuesday? What’s your bedtime routine now?
How do your Tuesdays now compare to your Tuesdays back in kindergarten? What’s better? What’s worse? What’s just different? What’s the same?
Since we’ve thought about Tuesdays in the past and Tuesdays in the present, we’re going to complete the picture by thinking about Tuesdays in the future. (Distributes the “Typical Tuesdays Throughout My Life” handout [figure 1.4].) First fill out the Kindergarten Me and Me Today columns with what you do on a typical Tuesday. Be specific. Instead of just writing school for kindergarten and now, list what you actually did or do—like maybe block corner and reading groups for kindergarten and physics class and drama club for now.
Then, imagine what your Tuesdays will be like when you become an adult, when you’re middle aged, and when you’re elderly. I know it might be hard to picture a day in your life that far in the future, but try. Again, be specific. Instead of writing work, write what you imagine doing as part of your work day. Instead of writing home, what do you imagine doing at home? Instead of writing dinner, write what you’d make or where you’d go. (Circulates and supports students as they make their schedules.)
How do your Tuesdays now compare to your Tuesdays of the future? What do you look forward to? What are you not so excited about? What do you imagine staying pretty much the same?
If you look at these five eras of your life, what parts of your life become more and less important over time? What stays important throughout your life?
Which of the five Tuesdays seems like you’re spending your time in a way that best reflects what matters to you most? What’s stopping you from doing what matters to you most right now? What small changes can you make to your schedule for this coming Tuesday to make it better reflect what matters to you?
Let’s each share one small change to make for next Tuesday.
Follow-Up
After the following Tuesday, the students can share whether they made any changes to their schedule. If they did, how did it go? If they didn’t make any changes, what got in the way? If students bring up the fact that they don’t have much control over their schedules and don’t get to do preferred activities as often or for as long as they’d like, you can teach them mindfulness skills so they can savor the time they do have. Mindfully eating a piece of chocolate, or noticing their own breathing in and out, can help students experience good times more fully.
Even students who never get to choose what they do with their time always get to choose the qualities of their actions: how they do what they do. When they consider what they’ll do with their time next Tuesday, how do they want to approach each part of the day? Students could make a schedule for the coming Tuesday that includes adverbs attached to each part of the day. (See the appendix, page 214, for examples of these sorts of adverbs.) You could later ask what they did to live those values.
If you teach writing, this activity could lead to an essay assignment in which students compare and contrast typical Tuesdays at different life stages and discuss which Tuesday best reflects what’s important to them. Such an essay would give the students practice in making claims, organizing ideas, selecting relevant details—and discussing their values.
Variations
Instead of filling out schedules with lists of activities, the students could write about their Tuesdays in narrative form. They could even role-play in pairs: one student could pretend to be a loved one at home and ask, “How was your day, sweetheart?” and the other student could answer as his or her kindergarten self, current self, adult self, and so on. The student in the role of loved one could ask questions to elicit more information and storytelling. Then the students could switch roles. You’ll probably have to model this process with a volunteer before asking the class to form pairs and do it themselves. Also, acting out various versions of themselves—and each other’s caregivers and partners—might elicit some silliness and will take more time than filling out a schedule. At the same time, the role plays might help students remember their pasts and imagine their futures more vividly.
Challenges
Students might express frustration because they don’t control their time. They might even become indignant about doing the activity: “Why are you making us do this? It’s not like we can go back to kindergarten and play. This is just depressing.” If students make statements like these, you have an opportunity to validate those feelings. Many people miss their younger days or look forward to bright futures. You can share some of your own fond memories and future hopes.
As you help your students notice what they miss about their pasts or long for in their futures, you can also refocus them on qualities of action they can choose right now. Do they miss building castles in the sandbox because they got to be creative and purposeful? How can they live creatively and purposefully now? Do they miss getting to run around and be outside? What opportunities do they have to live actively now? Are they impatient for a future in which they can choose to spend more time with friends? How can they behave more lovingly or appreciatively toward their friends now?
Your Exploration
When it comes to how we spend our time, we’re not much better off than our students. Think back on the last couple of classes you taught. Did you spend every minute exactly the way you wanted? Do you have total control over what you teach or even how you teach it? Do you receive competing, changing messages about what’s most important for your students?
We also have lives outside school that demand our attention, and we don’t get to leave our ideas and worries at home when we come to work. As we try to teach, we deal with a million distractions: the heater kicking on, a siren outside, a colleague’s voice from two doors down, our students’ whispers and slightly distasteful remarks—we’re not immune to any of it. Nor are we immune to feelings of boredom and frustration in our own classrooms.
The good news is that our inability to focus on what’s most important can actually help our students if we’re willing to admit to it. If we do these activities alongside the students, they’ll be able to see that we, too, have to deal with demands on our time and energy. But we, too, can make values-informed decisions about how we spend our time (to the extent that we have that choice). We, too, can consider how we might enact our values in every part of our lives. These activities are not only opportunities for your students to explore their values; they’re opportunities for you to explore yours. Your students will see that exploring values can be a struggle—and one worth having.
From Exploration to Motivation
This chapter’s activities were about how students can explore their values. They notice how different situations, times, and people might influence the ways they can express their values—and how they’re empowered to choose their values even in contexts where they have less control than they’d like. In the next chapter, students consider how they can bring their values into the context of school and use them as motivation to do their work.
