Today was the last day of the week long bully lesson. Students were going to be answering the most important question at the end of it, "How do you want to be remembered?" I started off the lesson with an awesome video that was just shared with the school by a colleague, "Cyberbullying PSA". Before watching the video we discussed interpretative dancing, and students were asked to lookout for hidden meanings behind the dancers moves. This video captivated the students attention and they noted that the girl in the beginning of the video who was being pulled and lifted by two other students, represented "having her feelings ripped apart". Students talked about how the internet and social media were made to keep people in contact and it has now turned into another source for bullying. The next video we talked and discussed was "Perfect" cover by AHMIR. I stopped a few times to discuss the lyrics they were hearing and what they meant. It would have been more beneficial to have the lyrics printed out so the students could further analyze them, but I think the video got the point across. After the video ended we discussed what kinds of things happen in our school that is bullying, and why this song was chosen for the video. I asked students to give me a thumbs up if they had ever felt "less than perfect", and every student in my classroom put their thumb up. I must say I was a little shocked to see 5th graders identifying themselves as not being "perfect". I know that we have a lot of character building and self-esteem boosting to do this year. After both videos had been discussed I asked students to take a final look at our board, and if that was how they wanted to be remembered. Quickly shaking their heads, I walked up to the board and erased one mean word and replaced it with the word "love". I high-fived a student and asked them to replace another word. This happened throughout the rest of the afternoon as we carried on throughout the day. Students were using the thesaurus to come up with other ways to express kind words. At the end of the day, there was about 10 words that were never replaced and we discussed why it's nearly impossible to erase all of the meanness in the world. They said that they can't control others, some people will always be mean, and people make mistakes and act out in anger. As we left class for the day and headed outside, a few students ran out late. They told me that they had to replace the last of the mean words up there. How awesome is that?!
After a few students ran back to class to erase more of the mean words.