Mary McLeod Bethune: Head, Hands, Heart

 

            In 1915, Mary McLeod Bethune wrote a letter to the Daytona Morning Journal explaining the theory of developing students’ heads, hands, and hearts. Bethune’s view of intellect, action, and passion guided her efforts to improve life for young African-American women. In the early 20th century, Bethune was an activist working in the poorest sections of the Daytona, Florida community. Her efforts aimed better living conditions, life options, and relationships through education.

           Bethune wanted to provide a quality education that had not been available to poor minorities. By focusing on lessons that required thinking, practical skills, and emotional connections, heads, hands, and hearts, Bethune equipped young women for work, and touched their spirits. The students she inspired had received little positive encouragement in recognition, affirmation, or support.                    

Bethune sought financial support from community leaders while she continued to reach out to the disenfranchised. Her efforts took time, determination, and energy, but Bethune persisted. Sadly, she did not receive help from the city.

         Still, Bethune continued to work as a civil rights activist and educational leader in the school that she had started with the dollars and coins she collected from average to impoverished citizens. Citizens who saw and struggled to cope with life challenges each day wanted to help Mary provide education for young people.  Community members knew young peopled needed to have no hope for a better future. Consistently Mary Bethune found support among the struggling minorities, but Bethune continued to seek financial support from a wide range of sources for the institution that trained young black women to complete academic work that could lead to full careers. Some of the poorest people gave most quickly to helping Bethune establish a school, but eventually, a wider support group emerged.

          Bethune inspired the students in her schools to do service in the community. Over time, her educational efforts included both young women and men in high school work that matched any achievement in other state high schools. Bethune expanded her fund-raising to create college opportunities for young people that had completed high school education, but who had few dreams if any about having a college education. Bethune had progressed from her lonely unrecognized efforts circulating through impoverished Florida communities on a bicycle looking for young people who needed help.

          Mary’s work made a difference in the lives of young people, and her caring and comprehensive efforts eventually achieved recognition. Finally, she garnered some support and honors from local, state, and federal leaders. Mary Bethune acquired help through cooperative efforts, and she even had opportunities to advise presidents Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, and Truman on child welfare, housing, education, and employment.

           In a 1920 letter to the Editor of the New York Times, Bethune asked for donations to help build a dormitory, an urgent need, for one of her earliest schools, the Daytona School. Bethune insisted that the education of young black women and men would lift people out of poverty and despair. Bethune’s legacy of meeting the needs of head, hands, and heart strides onward into the 21st century through the schools she established, the educators she inspired, and the role modeling she provided. As donations arrived, Bethune enlisted aides, arranged for school mergers, and became more active in a wider assortment of help efforts, from establishing hospitals to heading a federal agency.

           The W.E.B. Dubois Learning Center catalogs Bethune’s legacy of hopes. Her inspirational words address education, confidence, respect, faith, dignity, love, power, harmony, and responsibility. Bethune spoke of respect for all people and advanced appreciation of the need for civil rights for everyone. Her own consistent efforts and life example won respect and acclaim from all races.

           Born into poverty in 1875, in South Carolina, Mary Bethune had overcome great odds. As the fifteenth child of former slaves, her options for life goals seemed narrow. Her parents had the determination to work as hard as they needed to so that they could own their own farm. Though they reached that goal, living was hard. However, they had known slavery, and that was far worse than the hardships that came with freedom. They encouraged their children to try to get an education.

            Of all the children, Mary took education most to heart. Somehow, Mary believed education would not just enrich individuals, but whole societies. Mary, out of all her brothers and sisters, grew in a desire to learn. She had to walk five miles to attend a school run by a Presbyterian missionary because there was no school within closer walking distance that admitted African-American children. Each day when Mary Bethune arrived at home, she would help her family with farm work and spend evenings teaching her brothers and sisters some of what she had learned in school that day.

            Mary received a scholarship to attend a high school in North Carolina, also a religious school run by those who believed in equality for all their students in education and life. From her work at Scotia Seminary, the high school she attended, Mary was able to receive financial aid to go to Chicago to attend Moody Bible Institute. At Moody, Bethune was the only African-American student, but she was not inhibited by her uniqueness. Wherever Mary Bethune attended school, she emerged as a leader, a person who lived all the values a society needed.

           The National Association for Homecare and Hospice provides inspirational looks into the lives of people who cared enough to devote their lives to helping others. Mary McLeod Bethune has a feature page in their Profiles in Caring (www.nahc.org/nahc/val/columns/sc10-6.html), and it includes one of the mottos that guided Mary Bethune’s life: Invest in the human soul. Who knows? It might be a diamond in the rough. When teachers look out at the faces returning a gaze, or at the heads that are turned away, how many educators look at the students before them and see valuable gems?

           McCluskey and Smith (1999) described Mary Bethune as a woman who overcame both gender and race-based discrimination. Bethune saw self-help as key to a person advancing in life. Hostility and oppression reigned in the south of Bethune’s childhood. However, in the Chicago area, her race also prevented her from attaining her first choice for a career. Moody equipped many for roles in other countries as missionary teachers, but Mary was told that her dream of going to work in Africa as a teacher and missionary was not one that would be possible because the Presbyterian Mission Board would not send an African-American to Africa. Mary said, “Without faith, nothing is possible, with it nothing is impossible…no matter how deep my hurt, I always smiled. I refused to be discouraged, for neither God nor man can use a discouraged person” (Mary Bethune Academy, 2010).

            Not willing to give up her dreams of making life better for people, Bethune kept working to learn as much as possible. She sought to understand what she might have to do to start a school of her own for poor girls of African ancestry. Because she believed every person had value and researched locations of need, Bethune moved to Florida to start a school that would help young African American women advance in education. Bethune fostered educational efforts that offered knowledge, practical experience, and hope that led to serving others.

A Pace

           McKissack (1985) drew attention to Bethune’s beliefs that learning practical skills along with academic skills provided essential foundational tools for life. If a student had to work at a menial job, Bethune’s response was, “There is no such thing as menial labor, only menial self-esteem” (McKissack, 1985, p.70). Strategies and applications for Bethune’s theory of combining head, hands, and heart need to engage students in analyzing how each action and each job contributes to a better community.

           McCluskey (1989) emphasized Bethune’s beliefs and practices that linked head, hands, and heart; “They will be trained in their head, hand, and heart: Their head to think, their hands to work, and their hearts to have faith.” How do classroom strategies offer 21st-century students opportunities to connect knowledge to practical skills in ways that uplift individuals and communities? How do teachers and school leaders teach students that all people and all jobs have value?

           Respect for others, no matter what their job, education, or economic level, and living in a way to inspire respect from others can be taught through stories, exploration, analysis, and practice. McCluskey and Smith (1999) included Bethune’s own words about helping students to see that the future of civilization is in their hands. If they care to give something positive to the world, they can look for ways to show respect to others and have faith to work through the daily struggles.

           Introducing and reinforcing the concept of learning that involves, head, hands, and heart, a teacher can have students make a collage, draw a picture, create slogans, write a poem, or perform a skit that emphasizes growth in thinking, building, and feelings. Younger students will need more guidance in starting this activity. Older students can use their imagination along with technology to create a commercial, develop a PowerPoint presentation, write a song, or practice journalism in writing an article about someone who lives a life that illustrates a head, hands, and heart concept.

            Students can also look for the facts and skills a person needs for different jobs. Even a job that seems like unskilled labor requires knowledge and comprehension of facts, methods, expectations, responsibility, honesty, perseverance, and the ability to relate to others. Students can follow directions to evaluate how a variety of jobs improves a community.

Any age group can work on identifying, analyzing, and evaluating the following:

• Jobs in the community

• Responsibilities that are a part of different jobs

• Benefits to the community from each job

• Skills for the workplace

• Careers that can emerge from simple jobs

• How jobs are interconnected in a community

• How to develop more jobs

• Events and inventions that create jobs

• The value of having a job

• Excellence in the workplace

• Relationships in the workplace

• How work contributes to a family, a community, a county, a country, and the world

     Another project invites students to imagine and create an ideal community with a wide range of jobs, buildings, social areas, utilities, and varied transportation. This activity blends knowledge, analysis, and creativity for any age and any number of students working as teams, and it builds social collaborative skills. Students can create an ideal town or city in a model, in a computer virtual geographic location, on charts, or in writing. They can discuss each item they add to a community, why it is important, and how people will work in that new addition to their imagined community.

      Perhaps they will even argue over what should be added and where. Argument allows students to practice sharing differing views with respect for others, questioning, and reasoning skills. Students can learn that even though they may disagree with a classmate over one item, they can still share friendships and goals for their community.

     Language skills advance through interaction, research, defining, blending, writing plans, labeling, explaining, describing, analyzing, creating, and evaluating. Guiding students to explore, analyze, collect data, work as teams, provide affirmation to team members, find connections, and evaluate findings leads to strategies for all ages to practice thinking and social skills. Bethune encouraged educators to achieve both those goals of guiding students to success in education and providing opportunities to develop varied social skills. She emphasized the importance of ensuring practical applications of skills appeared in learning activities.

             Educators who worked under Bethune’s leadership demonstrated and stimulated awareness of how one can serve others. She established a portal for African-American women to garner an education and move forward into making their dreams come true with careers and economic independence. When this work was firmly established with young women, Bethune opened a school for young men. Eventually, Mary started several schools, among them an Industrial Institute and the college that is now Bethune-Cookman College.

          When working with Bethune’s ideal educational values, head, hands, and heart, educators must understand that as an ethnic minority woman in a time of prejudice and oppression, Bethune exhibited courage, skills, dedication, and sacrifice in starting schools for young African Americans. Discussions of fairness, determination, and efforts on behalf of those who rarely have a champion can lead to examining heroes and heroines in any society. Character and values can develop along with English vocabulary and speaking abilities. Students participate more in work when their heads, hands, and hearts can combine in efforts to study and learn. The interconnections of heads, hands, and hearts create lasting impressions, lessons for a lifetime.

            Walking: Bethune walked 10 miles a day to attend school when she was a young woman. Students can go for a one-mile walk, and then stop to consider that walk times 10, added to a full day of hard work in school, and more work awaiting at home on the family farm. Through research on perception and walking, Durgin (2009) found that moving through an environment brought the visual world more vividly toward a person increasing both interactions and perception selection and distortions. Walking allows a pace that aids perception of the environment.

Building perception abilities, while walking, develops stronger sensory discrimination. Bethune may have walked because she was too poor to afford any other kind of transportation, but each walk added to her mental and physical health in ways she could not imagine. Keinanen (2016) examined how walking advances thinking and found that the rhythm and space one enjoys in walking will strengthen thinking skills from memory to creativity.

           Working with one’s hands: Bethune helped her family earn the money necessary to keep their house and to meet basic needs. She picked cotton like a champion. According to Bailey (2007), Bethune could pick 250 pounds of cotton in a day by the time she was nine years old. Her family also raised rice on their 30-acre farm.

          Bethune worked hard even while going to school. She could bake bread, apply first aid, sew, scrub floors, cook, repair buildings, weave rugs, and cane chairs along with many other crafts. Students can collect examples of crafts in their home, town, and region as well as research jobs requiring direct physical effort more than complicated academic efforts. Through the study of the art and efforts of craft makers, students can be led to a greater appreciation of traditional elements in the culture.

            Inspire others: Bethune inspired others with her efforts and example. She also inspired people with her words. McCluskey (1994) cited individuals who gave up more lucrative options to work with Bethune. Mary Bethune had communicated her vision of a better world through the development of young people American society had relegated to the margins. Bethune adapted to the conventions of the white leadership in the nation while working to overcome sexism and racism. Concepts of courage, self-sacrifice, and vision can enrich studies of the English language and culture. Bethune became an advisor on education to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and became friends with Eleanor Roosevelt appearing on broadcasts together to promote inter-racial understanding (Quarles, 2012).

           In many cultures in the 21st century, degrees, titles, honors, and measures of success in terms of money and influence prove who is valuable and which jobs are valued. Mary McLeod Bethune would challenge people to see value in each person and in each person’s job. Jobs often relegated to a low status provide essential services. People who face limits to reaching their dreams due to a lack of degrees will often apply their energy and effort to excellence in another area. Especially when one works with older students, lessons about valuing anyone who does a good job at whatever their occupation is worth discussion and study. Honoring those who do the simple and essential jobs in a community helps students to look beyond materialistic social status.

          Teachers can affect the knowledge, actions, and emotions of students and community members as they learn how to see each person as valuable. Often the overlooked workers, the low-level jobs, provide essential services or foundations for the more public services. People who serve the community in basic jobs contribute to the greater social good. Bethune believed that every person and every job, no matter how lowly, mattered. Bethune wanted students to believe and value people as completely as she did. She saw honor in doing any job well and knew that employment viewed as lowly efforts established a way to meet fundamental needs in society.

         Lucy Craft Laney founded the Haines Institute for educating black children in Georgia in the 1880s (McCluskey, 1994). Ms. Laney’s young assistant was Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune not only learned through Ms. Laney’s mentorship but Ms. Laney’s example of using one’s head, hands, and heart inspired Mary. Bethune also caught the vision of keys to progress: vision, hard work, skills, economics, sacrifice, and leadership.

          Bethune started schools, a hospital, colleges, and organizations that offered opportunities for young people. Bethune advised federal agencies, presidents, and directors of organizations from the U.S. Secretary of War to the United Nations Council. Haiti awarded Bethune the Haitian Medal of Honor and Merit, that country's highest award. Bethune also received the Honor of Commander of the Order of the Star of Africa from Liberia. So much came from Ms. Laney’s choice to give Bethune an opportunity to work and learn as an assistant. Students can investigate the people who taught, shared, and worked with individuals who went on to become more famous leaders than their mentors. One observer of Bethune described her as a woman with “an iron fist and a velvet glove” (McCluskey, 1994, p.74).

          An interesting project involving writing and collecting and reporting data has students write letters to local leaders or to famous individuals asking them about the people who inspired and mentored them toward success. Teachers and schools could also invite community leaders to come and speak to students about how they learned with their heads, hands, and hearts. Writing summaries of talks from community leaders, sharing the summaries, and discussing the summaries cover the full range of thinking and communication skills. Exploring the community provides students with many models for how influential people learned leadership skills and became motivated to do their work. Students will also see that achievers often emerged from simple or even poverty-stricken backgrounds.

           Often students will encounter facts showing how parents and other family members worked extra hours in low-status jobs to help their child have more opportunities for education and a career. Students could make school displays of their findings and incorporate artistic skills and technological components into the presentations. Recognizing the efforts of others who try to make life better for someone else affirms those people and their efforts while engaging the students in active learning.

           In the United States, the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse Organization (NSLC) affirms the importance of serving for all citizens. In fact, the Clearinghouse (2003), reported that service to others builds national citizens who have a greater sense of responsibility and social connections. To counter the effect of social media from television to online options, service-learning helps young people see that actual physical effort and interaction make a positive difference in a community and in the nation. When people know their efforts can change lives for the better, volunteerism increases, and everyone involved in the service effort, from organizer to server, to those served, benefits.

           Kaye (2010) explained that service-learning needs to include what is real, relevant, and engaging to students. In one of the districts affected by Kaye’s presentations, Hudson, Massachusetts, K-12 schools, students, and school leaders have received national recognition as educational leaders promoting service-learning. The emphasis on learning ties to character education and ethics. Schools involved in service-learning find more student leaders emerge and more positive social mixing occurs between a variety of different peer and community groups. Service-learning blends heads, hands, and hearts.

           Options for service-learning in K-12 schools are as broad as participants’ ideas and motivations. Some schools have collected food and supplies for the homeless. Others have preserved local historical markers, cemeteries, and buildings. Grade levels have adopted projects that seek to overcome bullying. Students can tutor, visit the elderly, sing for community events, present informative skits, visit orphanages with supplies appropriate to the different ages living in the orphanage, create projects and posters to advance knowledge about the country, collect funds and supplies for emergency relief from disasters, clear and clean environments that have been polluted, undertake sewing projects, create artwork on buildings in depressed neighborhoods, and partner with local businesses in projects to improve the community. The national, K-12 Service-Learning Project Planning Toolkit, (RMC Research Corporation 2009) reviewed the five concepts essential to service-learning,1) investigation, 2) planning, 3) action, 4) reflection and 5) celebration, and showed how service-learning meets essential curriculum content goals and standards.

TEACH students to understand how they learn.

          Communication with skill and passion was one of Mary McLeod Bethune’s great abilities. Gutig and Sompolinsky (2009) explained in biological terms that perception of human speech relies critically on cues. The variety of cues is substantial and complicated. People engage in the challenge of speaking, listening, and responding each day by processing speech for meaning. Students can view and analyze speakers to see what makes them interesting and inspiring or what makes them boring. The skills practiced in careful listening and analysis of the spoken word, body language, tones, and content help prepare students for many future challenges. Students can practice giving different kinds of speeches and role-play situations requiring varied language skills. Application and practice of speaking skills can enrich language skills, thinking skills, and the potential success of students in future classes and careers.

           Murawski and Hughes (2009) described a new method of responding to the special needs of students with learning disabilities. The Response To Intervention (RTI) is a multi-layered approach to supporting learners with disabilities and at-risk learners (Murawski and Hughes,2009) Teams of educators and counselors work to blend a set of activities to meet the needs of students who fall behind or who seem to disconnect with the educational environment. Struggling learners and disconnected learners would have found Bethune’s attention and encouragement an inspiration to overcome negative school patterns.

           The concept of meeting student needs with classes that combine interactive learning to reach head, hands, and heart creates learner-centered environments. RTI requires a shift away from looking at students with learning disabilities and students who seem disinterested as the main source of the learning problems. Educators who study and use RTI approaches examine the whole learning environment. Their search and efforts to find individualized options help many students to have renewed hope and to reconnect with teachers and classmates.

           The RTI approach, like Bethune, moves away from the assumption that something is wrong with the student that does not respond to traditional classroom procedures and lessons. RTI is one method that helps teachers seek an effective change in instruction that will lead students to engage in successful learning. Bethune's  head, hands, and heart philosophy, combined with instruction that proactively provides support to students and enriches entire classrooms. The key to success in RTI teaching is a collaboration among school staff with shared goals for students.

           Challenges to RTI goals and practices include the tensions that accompany change: how students will have necessary intervention service, methods of need classification, and application of intervention across levels of need from students with learning disabilities to students with strong gifts for learning. Thomas and Dykes (2011) emphasized that a focus on teaching core subjects to meet testing demands often skims essential skills work needed by the struggling students. They found that technology could and should aid in all tiers and kinds of interventions. The curriculum needs to check periodic progress, celebrate success, vary implementation, and have a foundation of strategies that develop thinking skills and academic advancement.

           Educators can work together to meet a broad range of student learning needs. Students learn to understand that actions and choices happen in a context. People can help one another find a success they never dreamed possible. Newsome (1992) described Bethune as a woman of faith and spiritual strength from her childhood to old age. Demonstrating and living what she taught, Bethune inspired respect and changed lives. Bethune modeled the way teachers, administrators, and community members can build effective educational systems through her own commitment to learning, a willingness to do physical work, inspiring others to better lives and environments, and providing education, skills for employment, and opportunities for advancement.

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Teaching for Head, Hands, and Heart

Harry

            Harry works in a public school system. He learned early in his own life experience to encourage young people to think about others. Finding a project that will meet goals in the state language arts objectives and frameworks while serving the broader community presents challenges. Such a project requires coordination, communication, organization, and effort beyond his regular responsibilities, but Harry believes that moving students to interact in a way that serves others will enrich their character and learning. Books such as Doing Good Together, have led Harry to think about projects his students could do.

            Though impossible in the time of a pandemic, and often curtailed even before the pandemic, Harry found opportunities for taking students to visit the elderly in a nearby nursing home, one that is within walking distance, is a project that could foster positive inter-age communication and invoke Bethune’s head, hands, and heart concept. Harry learned that many residences for elderly require students to have a tuberculosis test and certification that they are clear of the disease. There will also need to be a block of time, more than one class period, to allow for walking to the nursing home, working with the seniors, and walking back to school. Harry does not say, “This is too much trouble,” and give up on his idea. Instead, he starts talking to the teachers who have the students in the class periods before and after his. He has found community centers for seniors that can, apart from in pandemic times, have young visitors .

            The teachers found a day once a month when they can blend their schedules for work on service projects. Some students will go with Harry to interact with the senior citizens, and some will stay at the school to work on other projects with the other two teachers. All the projects will be service projects (Friedman and Roehlkepartain, 2010). The projects have interdisciplinary applications and meet multiple objects in the language arts, social studies, and art frameworks. The grouping based on student choices and multiple options energize students and teachers. Positive messages go out to the community about the various service projects that will continue through the year.

            Harry, one teacher’s aide, and some parent volunteers walk with the students to visit the senior citizens. The students have made cards with words and pictures for the residents. Some students have handmade the cards. Some have used computers. Each card has a unique message of cheer and care. Some students wrote messages similar to those they would write to their own grandparents, and some students wrote poems.

            The senior citizen homes and community center have had an invitation to join in the inter-age sharing for the school year. It is their choice to participate. Because there are fewer nursing home resident participants than student participants, some students will work as partners in visiting a resident. This works well because Harry has some students who are reticent to work on their own but who do well when paired with a partner.

            Throughout the year students will gather information about historic events and people such as Pearl Harbor, the Korean War, and past presidents, in addition to customs for families, holidays, dating, and marriage from the residents. They will create sectioned notebooks with notes, summaries, and then formal compositions based on their topics of conversation with the residents. Each month when students visit the nursing home they will take something cheerful and seasonal to leave with the residents.

            One exceptional opportunity to have a positive effect on the elderly comes through the student who knows how to play the piano and wants to play a song for the residents, a popular song the elderly will remember from long ago. This prompts another student to suggest videotaping the piano playing for the residents so they can watch the performance again. This evolves into plans for a talent show in the spring for students and residents. The whole performance is recorded; students and residents have a memory for a lifetime of viewing of their special year of interaction with one another.

            For all involved in the inter-age project, Bethune’s head, heart, and hands concept has enriched their school year, their confidence in making conversation with people who are much older, their creativity geared to bringing joy to others, their planning,  their knowledge of historical events, and their writing. The students who have worked on other service projects that could be accomplished at the school have also found that their personal and academic skills have grown. In the summer, Harry learns that some of the students have continued to visit their new friends at the nursing home, even after the school year has ended.

Heather

What would life be like without __________? Every other Friday of the first semester, Heather has her students sit in assigned teams with names for where they will sit and do the activity: southeast team, south team, southwest team, west team, northwest team, and north team. She gives them a topic, such as: What would life be like without . . . People who prepare food for a living? People who remove trash for a living? People who drive others to places for a living? People who organize events for a community? People who take care of other people’s children for a living? The choices Heather makes for the teams to consider are based on jobs in their community. Often these jobs and their importance to the community is overlooked.

          Students discuss answers and everyone in the team has a responsibility during the activity that involves 15 minutes of discussion and a 5-minute review by all team members for changes and additions to the original team answers. The initiator is the first one to give an answer and ensures all the other roles are covered during the discussion time; the recorder will write down all the ideas; the expander will try to think of ideas connected to the various ones listed; the questioner will ask group members for details and explanations; the timekeeper will watch the clock and warn the group before the 15 minutes and 5 minutes have passed.

          Each group has a set of 3 x 5 cards with various roles, one per card. Team members pick a card and turn it over to see what their role will be in the discussion activity. After the 20 minutes of team time, a whole-class discussion follows for 10 minutes. Finally, on a large piece of newsprint paper, the class will compose a cinquain poem about the people they have discussed.

          Heather’s class studied a variety of short poetic forms earlier in the year and is familiar with the cinquain pattern. Usually, in 10 minutes they can create a cinquain poem. The title is always the same: Thank you for the work you do. Heather encourages students to make their own copy of this poem and give it to someone who has the job that they discussed. Through this activity, Heather hopes to stimulate Bethune’s concept of head (consideration of others), hands (working with others), and heart (appreciation of others). In the second semester, students choose the people to be considered in the discussion and creative writing time.

Hua Xin

The school where Hua Xin works does not emphasize service-learning. The school also asks teachers not to use class time for showing movies or video clips. The school opinion is that students can watch these on their own time if the teacher recommends them to the students. Test scores are publicized each year as a rating system for the school; thus, test scores have become very important to the students, their parents, and the community.

       Teachers are supposed to build a broad knowledge base, with reading and writing skills as priorities in the Language Arts curriculum.

Hua Xin knows that fairness stands as an important value to all her students. Though they are young, polls such as the Gallup Youth Survey have found respect and fairness appear as the top value for teens. Hua Xin also understands that real-life examples inspire students.

       To broaden the knowledge base, engage the students in reading, and practice writing skills, Hua Xin has collected inspiring stories from around the world: Rosa Parks and Thomas Edison from the United States, Billy Eliot and J. K. Rowling from Great Britain, Madame Curie from Poland and her husband Pierre Curie from France, Oskar Schindler of Germany, Corrie ten Boom of Holland, Meena from Afghanistan, Benazir Bhutto from Pakistan, Nelson Mandela from South Africa, and others.

Once each week Hua Xin's students have what she calls Living Life Lessons. They read a biographical article about a person who overcame great obstacles and answer comprehension questions.

          Then, Hua Xin, has the class pretend she is the individual they read about, and the class has the opportunity to interview her. To build thinking skills, students must try to ask questions that require long answers. If she can answer the question in five words or less the students know it was not a very good interview question. After the interview activity, students list the obstacles the person had to overcome. They analyze which practical skills and personal values the individual had that enabled him or her to overcome the obstacles. Hua Xin also asks them to determine how people gain these skills and values. For homework, they write at least three paragraphs about the person. The first paragraph highlights the person’s accomplishments, the second describes how the person reacted to unfairness and injustice, and the third presents the student’s personal opinion about the individual.

 

Hernando

Standard English presents as much of a challenge to native-born speakers of English as for English language learners in the senior high where Hernando teaches. Hernando looks for examples of people whom students admire—activists, athletes, actors, singers, musicians, artists, dancers, innovators, leaders—who have strong public speaking skills. Through a medium such as YouTube, Hernando finds a 10-minute inspirational and motivational interview, talk, or speech by the admired individuals. Once a month, when the students enter class, they see the name of the person they will listen to that day.

        Before Hernando plays the video clip, he points to the name on the board and asks what the students know about the individual. Then he asks them to guess what the person is going to speak about (head).

       Next, he asks the students what the person has done to make him or her worthy of admiration, and how would one develop the skills to accomplish success in whatever is the individual’s claim to fame (hands). Playing the video follows this discussion and students do not have to take notes. They only have to listen. Hernando asks them for their emotions, associations, and thoughts in reaction to what they just heard (heart). Any student can raise his or her hand to ask a question or make a comment to Hernando or to another student.

        After some general discussion, Hernando moves the students to summarize. Summarizing is a skill Hernando has been trying to teach the students, so he has them try to summarize what the person has said and emphasized. Hernando reminds his students that listening is a tough skill to develop. People do not usually speak clearly and often in speaking fast, they blur words together. The students work to contribute ideas for a summary that is three sentences in length.

        Then Hernando tells them he wants them to watch the video clip one more time and to pay attention to eye contact, body language, variations in tone of voice, and what is said. Now they are allowed to take notes if they wish to do so. Hernando has noticed that each time he does this activity more students make some notes, and there is much more attentive note-taking after all the prior actions.

        Last, Hernando gives the students another opportunity to discuss the speaker and what was said. He invites them to analyze whether the person’s tone of voice, body language, and eye contact contributed to the feelings that were communicated. Students keep a notebook list of each speaker, of the summary created by the class, and add their own rating of the person’s speech from a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 as the highest rating.

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Students absorb many messages about valuing others, work, self-discipline, and choices. Teachers and parents and guardians are the first of these, can guide young people with activities that touch emotions, intellect, and practical life skills. The more young people can see the importance of valuing others and positive contributions to life, the more this may become a world in which we can all be happier in belonging.

                                                                                                  Virginia Heslinga    January 20, 2022

 

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