The Columbia High School Family Dynamics class taught by Mary Beth Buchanan wrapped up the first nine weeks with a project review on family crisis and how to build or rebuild a stronger family unit. Social and emotional learning, known as SEL, is an important component in education as it helps develop students’ emotional intelligence along with their academic growth. The hands-on project was an excellent example of how to bridge these two distinct types of learning.
Students were presented with a paper bag "present". They were excited to know the future of it and all the possibilities, much like the excitement of getting married and starting their own family. When they opened the bags, they found a clay pot and a marker. The clay pot represented a family, strong and supportive, ready to be filled up with something wonderful for the future. On the paper bag, they used the marker to list real events that could severely hurt a family. Then they put the clay pot back in the bag and gently tapped it with a rubber mallet to represent the events they had written. Some life events, represented by mallet strikes, damaged the pots severely, others did little damage. Eventually, with the pressure of different events (mallet strikes) the pots cracked and broke into several pieces.
Next was the hard part. The students learned they needed time, patience and resilience to put the clay pots, representing the family units, back together. They wrote real life harmful events on the broken pieces and used tape to mend the pot. They taped it back together with actions that could heal a family such as love, quality time and counseling. The students really enjoyed the project as they reviewed how harmful their negative actions and the negative actions of others can be to a family. They also learned that no family is perfect and all families have issues that can be harmful. Through love, patience, time, and resilience they could be put back together. The project will be ongoing as the students venture into the child development. The pots will be used to grow their families which will be represented by seeds and take care of by the students.
