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Ann C's avatar

Funny story: When we were kids one of my siblings started a "brave club." The club only had 2 members... said sibling who served as president, and our youngest sibling who served as, well, the rest of the club membership. My sibling who served as president wanted to do brave things, but I guess needed a reason to do them, so the purpose of the club was to provide a forum where she was tasked/assigned (by the youngest sibling) to attempt feats or bravery. The only one I remember is walking along the top of the wall that ran along one side of our yard. My sibling probably would have loved this sort of an assignment.

In a big picture sense, I love the idea of a classroom community where a wide range of student personalities/abilities/etc could feel so safe that they could take on something like this. I would love it if every student felt this seen and supported in their learning environment. But I have to say my scope of practice radar is going off over here. For some students (I'm specifically thinking of a number of neurodivergent students who I know very well) I have some concerns that without good guardrails in place type of assignment could easily creep out of the scope of practice for teachers. So you would need to have some very clear guardrails and training for what kind of guiding questions teachers could/should use, etc. and how to facilitate this process. (As an aside and for context, I am certified in Equine Facilitated Learning and one of the things that was drilled into us in our training was that we are NOT Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy certified and that therefore there's a level of processing/questions/etc and line in the sand that we SHOULD NOT cross because t we are simply not trained or qualified to enter that psychological territory with a client and could do damage/cause trauma as a result. I would apply the same logic here to teachers.)

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Ernest N. Prabhakar, PhD's avatar

The inverse "How this might go wrong."

Kids will only share "socially acceptable" fears that they hope won't trigger their peers or teachers.

Thus, we end up with psychology theater that makes teachers feel like they are solving the problem,

but actually teaches kids to totally distrust anyone who claims they want to help,

and bury their actual fears even deeper inside.

[Why yes, I am still slightly bitter about religion, thanks for asking]

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