Students Break the System of Bullying in English Class — Transcript

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1. 0:04>>Teacher: Once you gain your students' trust,
2. 0:06if you can give them that's just a little beyond their reach,
3. 0:10then they will go way farther than you ever expected.
4. 0:13And they will be hooked into that, because every kid wants to achieve.
5. 0:18>>Student: Me having an idea alone is not going to make as much
6. 0:22of a difference as ten kids having an idea and putting that to life.
7. 0:26>>Teacher: The students decided that they wanted to have this campaign
8. 0:29against bullying and they created a logo and a slogan,
9. 0:34and the slogan was "Break the System."
10. 0:36So their idea was that bullying is this system of bad things that kind
11. 0:42of happen between victims and perpetrators, between bullies
12. 0:46and the people that they bully.
13. 0:48So the idea was, if they could get control of this thing
14. 0:53by teaching people to break the system, then things would start
15. 0:56to get a little bit better for people.
16. 1:00In order to make this belong to the kids, I started off by starting
17. 1:06with how they were feeling, and things started coming out, like,
18. 1:09"I experienced bullying at this time," or "I saw a kid get bullied
19. 1:13and it made me feel like this," or even,
20. 1:15"I feel like a really bad person right now,
21. 1:16because I've seen what things
22. 1:18that I've done could have done to somebody else."
23. 1:20I think one of the most important things for making something belong
24. 1:24to the kids is letting them talk.
25. 1:25>>Teacher: Don't follow in anyone's footsteps.
26. 1:28>>Student: Where's the "Find someone that's confident" stuff?
27. 1:33>>Teacher: Yeah, that's here.
28. 1:34>>When the kids feel connected to the material, they engage in it.
29. 1:38And when they engage in it, they participate in a whole different way.
30. 1:43And the other way that kids really participate
31. 1:46and they become participants is when you hand
32. 1:49over the onus of learning to them.
33. 1:53Kids learn so much more when they're talking to each other.
34. 1:57They learn so much more when they're working through a problem together.
35. 2:00They learn so much more when the feedback comes from each other,
36. 2:03rather than from this higher power that they hear from all the time.
37. 2:06>>Student: The things that are good about it was the collaborative aspect
38. 2:10of it, how we were all able to talk together and make a huge way
39. 2:17for teachers and students to learn with each other about not bullying.
40. 2:24>>Teacher: Starting at a place of collaboration,
41. 2:26finding the common ground, is a place to build that collaboration
42. 2:30and it becomes a form of inclusion,
43. 2:33because when you have kids collaborating on big projects,
44. 2:37on big issues, on solving big problems,
45. 2:40then the kids who might not normally have the strength in a situation,
46. 2:45their strengths come out.
47. 2:46>>Student: I was scared that this wasn't going to work
48. 2:50like we wanted it to, but it did.
49. 2:53Like it really taught me lots of things,
50. 2:55not only like as a person, but, you know, as a kid.
51. 3:00>>Teacher: The thing I like the most about the Quest models,
52. 3:02I really like that everything's contextualized.
53. 3:05I feel like my students have connected a lot with that.
54. 3:10And the fact that they have this reason,
55. 3:13this impetus for figuring things out.
56. 3:16And then on top of it, I think it's really nice to be at a school
57. 3:20where we're expected to have students collaborate,
58. 3:23because I really learn the value of collaboration for kids and how much
59. 3:28of a difference that makes for them in learning.