Digital leadership & kindness

We have been spending a lot of time with some of our new freshmen friends and I have been reflecting a lot on those discussions and some of the challenges many of them face with trying to define who they are as people and to find their interests and passions. 

As we have worked toward developing a capstone project and also moving towards restorative discipline approaches (more to come on this in later posts), I wanted to share the below lesson plan idea(s) and materials as a thought for a meaningful mini-lesson for students as we end the decade and begin a new one after the holiday break. Perhaps as an opportunity to help students reflect on their growth and time to think about how they want to define 2020 (or even the decade ahead of them and putting this last one behind them in some cases). I also know we often have trouble keeping our students focused in the final few days before the break too...I still remember those struggles. 
(here is the twitter hashtag stream: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23oneword&src=typed_query&f=live that may also have some useful ideas or spins on this) 

Another option would be to have them post something on Twitter or SnapChat to #Gratitudesnaps (you can view the recent stream here which includes some reflections teachers have been having students do and this is also a nice exit ticket idea: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23gratitudesnaps&src=typed_query&f=live) and here's a short blog post from George Couros (one of my education hero's) about gratitude: https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/9073

And lastly, if you need some real inspiration to get through the last week before break and have not seen either of these yet they are worth a few minutes of your time (to watch and/or read): 

What has honestly struck me the most about the discussions we have been having with our students is how much they individually want to break the mold and instead of choosing kindness, they are choosing not so kind words & images on social media for each other. In unpacking this with them and after years spent invested in the digital leadership/literacy realm, I can't help but think that we could not teach them any lesson in high school right now that would be more impactful/relevant than to be digital leaders by showing the positive power of social media through messages of kindness and empathy by building each other up across all of the content area's. 

Please share your thoughts and ideas below. I’m still reflecting on my one word for 2020...

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