How Can a Kangaroo Protect Students From Peer Pressure... and make you a hero in the process!
The 7 Essentials: #3 - A Culture of Purpose
No, I'm not talking about boxing lessons; I'm talking about the power of curiosity! The third building block in the Rhinehart Hierarchy of People Empowerment (RHOPE) strategy, is a culture of purpose. This answers the question, “Why Am I Here?” When children discover their personal interests and talents, they discover how they fit into the big picture of life.
What does this have to do with a kangaroo? Children often don't know what they are interested in until they are exposed to it. We might not be able to take our students to the zoo due to budget cuts, but we can still bring experiences to our classrooms. As children are exposured to new experiences, they begin to develop interests... and once a child has an interest in something, it motivates them to learn more about it.
No one knows the life-course of a child, but it's important to not leave them to circumstances or chance. Many children graduate unprepared and with no direction. As the saying goes, those who fail to plan, plan to fail. Our goal-driven brain wants a plan so it knows what to do to achieve it... and that's where a culture of purpose comes in.
"When children have a sense of who they are and where they are going, their brain goes to work devising plans and strategies for their success."
A Culture of Purpose helps defuses peer pressure because children who develop their interests and talents gain a stronger sense of purpose and appreciation of their unique place in the world. These children are far less affected by conformity and more likely to make life choices consistent with their life mission.
Your Action Item
The best way to create a culture of purpose in your classroom is to nurture and celebrate talents and interests. We do this through lessons and venues of exploration. Championeers! helps you with this by bringing experiences to you through the thematic units. Broaden these themes and pull them into your other subjects. In the case of Caveman Rock, turn your room into a pre-historic wonderland. Use art period to make palm trees, use PVC pipe in science lab to build a dinosaur model. Pull in some archeology with a sandbox (AKA, cardboard box or tiny child's swimming pool) and buried prehistoric stuff, make fossils, play drum music in the background of study time, watch dinosaur movies, read dinosaur books, make dino-dough, and incorporate bones into your math problems. Anything you can find to expand your schemas from the ESE unit into your classroom will build "happy" neural pathways that increase both academic and social problem-solving skills, as well as release endorphins. These in turn, build interests, and interests build life-paths defined by purpose... and purpose makes for happy, healthy, self-motivated, self-governed students.
Together, we can do this!
Deanna
There are 7 Essential Elements required for children to be emotionally safe. When these are satisfied, your children are much less likely to succumb to peer pressure because they are empowered with tools to meet their emotional needs. We call these 7 Elements The RHOPE Strategy; Rinehart’s Hierarchy of Peer Empowerment.
(c) 2015 Championeers.
