Make It Happen
9-12 Core Edition
It takes more than materials to implement Be Good People. On the page below, check out resources designed to support you in planning an effective scope and sequence, training staff, and communicating with stakeholders.
Go back: Core Ed.
Teacher Training and Coaching
At the secondary level, Be Good People instruction nearly always occurs once a week during a 20-25 minute advisory block. The Lessons, Extension Activities, and Community Building activities in Be Good People's Core Edition are all designed to take 15-25 minutes to deliver. Secondary schools typically design schedules that rotate between these three types of activities.
The top 3 pieces of advice we hear from secondary teachers are:
"You don’t need to be the expert (even though, as a functional adult, you really kinda are!)"
"The more you can talk about how the topic relates to your own experiences, the better (e.g., 'Let me tell ya, I had a boss at Burger King I did not get along with…')."
"You don’t need to do whole group the whole time (Think-Pair-Share is your best friend!)"
Observation Form - Be Good People (Updated 2/20/23).pdfObservation Form
Training is only one part of effective implementation—monitoring fidelity and providing coaching support is very beneficial.
This Observation Form is a helpful tool for coaches, but it can also be used by teachers to self-reflect on their own instruction.
Response Options for Secondary Students (One-Pager) - Be Good People.pdfResponse Options
Engaging students in rich discussion is critical, but we can’t always get there by calling on students individually.
This handout breaks down a small handful of response options that are often helpful with secondary students.
Student Handout
All of the Lessons end with some form of knowledge application, and in most cases this involves discussing a few scenarios using a discussion choice board. Teachers can facilitate this discussion in whole group, think-pair-share, or any other discussion format.
We find that sometimes students are more open during discussion if they're given an opportunity to jot down a few thoughts prior to discussion (i.e., ink-pair-share). To help teachers facilitate this, we've created an optional Student Handout (two variations). These are generic and can be used across lessons, so it's low prep (i.e., a teacher can keep a stack in a folder and just use them when applicable). These handouts are also linked into the Lesson presentations.
Please note that these are not intended to replace discussion, just to support it.
Planning Your School-Wide Instructional Sequence
The Be Good People lessons can be taught in virtually any order, and schools value this flexibility. That said, we strongly recommend organizing the lessons into a logical sequence and "clusters" of related topics.
A school may decide to either (A) have each grade level follow a different schedule which stays the same year-to-year or (B) have all grade levels follow the same schedule and then adjust this schedule every year.
Student Communication
Especially in the first year of implementation, we recommend adding a presentation similar to the adjacent example to your instructional sequence early in the school year. Make a copy and then customize it to your school.
This presentation is designed to communicate a relevant "why" — from a student's perspective — regarding why the school is covering these topics during advisory.
Note that the example presentation references Minnesota's Career and College Readiness Framework, and schools outside Minnesota will need to adapt this to a comparable reference point in your state.
