The first step is the hardest

SAME OLD CHARACTER ED LESSON, DIFFERENT RESULT

We have heard the quote attributed to the Chinese Philosopher Lao-Tzu "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".  While it may seem cliche to use it to characterize this evolution of becoming a digital school counselor, it is appropriate. I had contemplated what to do and how to do it  for several weeks. I wan't sure what to blog about, what to do first, or what audience to target.

Epiphany -- just do it...we encourage students to try and sometimes fail.  We learn from failure, we learn through second chances.  Consider a baby learning how to walk or learning to talk.  They are not afraid of failing, so why as educators are we?  As we find new ways to do things, so too will we find other ways which are not successful.  We can learn as much from those experiences as we do the successful ones.  We preach continual improvement to our students in the classroom and to our athletes on the field, and we should be living that ideal as well!

Modeling what we want our students to achieve is important and powerful.  If we hope to develop Humanistic thinking skills, then we need to model those for them.  We need to take that one step further and engage them in activities which give learners the opportunity to use their current skills and build upon those they already have.

So, where to start?  As I said earlier, it didn't matter.  I simply had to have the courage to engage them and risk failure.  As a co-sponsor of our National Honor Society, I decided to incorporate one these new ideas into one of our meetings.  At our regularly scheduled meeting, we discussed the importance of living the values we hope to inspire in others.  We talk regularly about 'authentically' being what we want others to think of us.  I told our members that on the next morning at 7:30 we would be engaging in an activity to encourage them to think about the values they hold and what their actions say.  I also said it was optional to attend.

The next morning rolled around and to my surprise every member showed up.  Now comes the part where I have vowed to begin engaging students on their turf.  Rather than pose questions out loud to the large group and hope for one student to be brave enough to offer their thoughts, I used the website www.todaysmeet.com for our socratic dialogue.  This online method allowed everyone to see others posts.  It was amazing what these students had to offer online that they would not have shared out loud.  For some reason foreign to me, this online 'talk' provided students with greater courage to share.  Our conversation was phenomenal.  Every student had something to offer and every student took something away from it.  Over my 7 years of counseling, I can honestly say that this was the most engaged kids have ever been in a character education lesson.  The lesson was the same as it always has been, but the delivery was on their turf.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0xa98cy-Rw 

Some people (some teachers included) are quick to say that youth today are apathetic and not hungry for knowledge or skills.  I disagree.  It may just be that we are stifling in how we deliver lessons.  I believe that kids are hungrier than ever for knowledge and skills.  Many kids today lack true communication skills.  They are reluctant to try new skills in the 'analog world', so why can't we or don't we provide that practice in the digital world.  Without digressing into a discussion on digital citizenship (maybe another blog post), we need to find new ways to feed kids what they need to be successful in the digital and analog worlds in which we live.

I can say, that this first experience of 'taking the first step' has solidified my commitment to taking another step to continue to engage students to learn new skills.  I have thought about the next step and decided that I will continue this journey into character education delivered in a digital format.  Next up, I am going to have students create videos of some topic yet to be decided.  Maybe sportsmanship, trustworthiness, respect, or diversity.  I recently saw a video on YouTube that gave me the idea to have our students create a similar video.  It is entitled "A Pep Talk From Kid President to You"

I am excited to see what our students can create!   Stay tuned for the next step of this journey to becoming a digital counselor

Dustin Favinger
9-12 Counselor
Cozad High School