Today we celebrated Positive School Climate Day at school.
It’s usually scheduled during the Week of Respect, and we spend the entire day
talking about – you guessed it - respect and bullying.
So what did we do in French class today? We talked about a father
and son whose language barrier prevented them from speaking for 20 years!
I first heard the story last week when I was on my way to
work listening to the podcast “This American Life”. It’s Act II of episode
#567, What’s Going On In There? You
can find it here.
It was a perfect activity for today. The story is less than
15 minutes long, which was short enough to keep my middle schoolers’ attention,
but long enough to provide some great discussion topics. Here’s some of the
discussion highlights:
-
private life vs. public life
-
the languages spoken in the kiddos own families
-
struggles faced by immigrants
-
the power of communication in conflict
-
language acquisition
Do you have something similar in your school? What do you
plan for those days?
