Hi! So I loved Heather's reframing of my original question: "We need to be teaching children to think for themselves. To think about the consequences of their actions, and to make good choices based on information they have learned."
In my school, I think we do a good job of being reactive - if someone hasn't made a good choice, we're pretty good at helping her think through consequences of that choice and alternative courses of action. I also think we are pretty good at going out of our way to note good choices as they are made without making too big a deal of it. And we probably do a pretty good job of teaching about poor choices on fairly major issues like drug use, Facebook, and so on. And we do a lot of work with the 7th grade on agreeing to disagree. But, and bear in my mind we are an all-girls school (and I do believe girls are still being taught to please more than are boys), I worry that our students are not learning how to handle a situation where the power basically lies with the other person - parent, teacher, eventually boss or supervisor. They seem to basically shut down their voices, saying it's not that big a deal or they're worried about how the adult might react. Speaking for myself, I know sometimes I do make mistakes, and I would rather students point them out to me so that I can correct them. So how do we teach them to do that??? Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
