Taking A Stand: Video Project

After students have defined and internalized advocacy and taken time to learn, reflect and brainstorm solutions around an injustice that is affecting the majority of their classmates, students are ready to take a stand to voice their beliefs on how we can collective prevent it from happening within our classroom. Here you will see how my class created videos for their classmates on how they would chose to stand up to a bully. Students reflected on the solutions we came up with as a class during our conversational portion of the lesson and put the solutions into action.

One of the most important parts of being a teacher is to ensure students internalize and master the material we are learning in our classroom. Teaching for mastery of content, skills and concepts is considered by education researchers a brain target that solidifies the thinking and learning process (Hardiman, 2012). It allows students to utilize different skills and be creative. This is where the heart of the learning takes place.

Concluding our advocacy lessons around bullying, students were asked to make a video stating how they would stand up to a bully. Students were asked to use specific strategies that we had created as a class during this unit. By allowing students an opportunity to describe how they would address a bully, shows that students are taking ownership over their work and internalizing the material for future use. By integrating the arts, such as repetition of information, creating a video and enacting the solution, students will be able to get creative, use their problem solving skills and enjoy the learning process (Hardiman, 2012, p. 96). This is the part of learning where students can really think outside of the box and are not required to sit in their seats to complete a worksheet.

Seen below are student responses to the taking a stand video project. Students utilized the solutions we had created as a class to address how they would chose to stand up to a bully. Student videos were created independently concluding the initial advocacy and bullying lessons. Their work shows retention of information around a real-world problem and ways in which students can use their voice to make a positive change.

The videos students created were shared within our first grade class. After we watched our peers videos I asked my students if they thought this new information could help out other students similar to them. As a class, we decided to share our videos with one of the kindergarten classes in our building to promote kindness within our entire school. Since many of the bullying events that students described earlier in the lesson occurred during their kindergarten year, my students want to ensure the kindergarteners at our school had the tools they needed to effectively stand up to a bully. I sent a text to the kindergarten teacher at our school asking if she would share our videos with her class and send us her students responses and reflection. Below you will see the initial texts to her as well as her follow-up response outlining her students opinions and suggestions.

A truly transformation teacher is someone who does more than just teach lesson concepts and standards and have students regurgitate information. A transformation teacher is someone who inspires students to take initiative and responsibility over their learning and inspires and excites them throughout the learning process. An important aspect of transformation teaching is "symphonic thinking" where students question the concepts being learned, are able to make connections between the various concepts and synthesize the newly learned information (Finley, 2015). I believe students accomplished this during the action part of our advocacy lesson. Students were able to synthesize the new concepts and ideas we had learned throughout our advocacy unit, and create new ideas from the texts and videos by analyzing and reflecting on their personal experiences. I was inspired by my students bravery and willingness to expand their thinking in order to truly understand and internalize the concepts and skills aligned with advocacy. Now that my students have the foundational knowledge and background information necessary to comprehend and demonstrate advocacy, I believe they are prepared to continual use their voice to advocate for positive change not just within their classroom, but within their entire school and community.