An Open Letter to Michelle Rhee: In Response to the article in the December issue of Time

For the past four years, I have had the challenging experience of being an instructor in the Teach For America (TFA) Urban Teacher Master's and Certification Program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. While I have my doubts about the program and believe that it sometimes does more harm than good to recycle a model of inexperience in our nation's most challenging schools, I have nothing but admiration for the generation of young people who have answered the call to bring about substantive change in schools and to make a positive difference in the lives of children and adolescents. The young teachers I have met through GSE/TFA have been some of the hardest working, resilient and committed educators I have met in my 35 years as a teacher in the School District of Philadelphia.

Jessica Simon, the author of the letter I have reprinted below is one those teachers. She is smart, committed and impatient to see the real changes that need to happen in schools across the country. And she like many of her fellow former corp members has made the decision to stay in her school beyond her two year commitment to TFA.

Her letter, which is addressed to Washington D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee, and written in response to a Time Magazine profile of the controversial figure, challenges Ms. Rhee and those who support her slash and burn, take no prisoners approach to teacher and principal accountability to think more deeply about the problems facing students in poor and underfunded district and the impact of the dehumanizing obsession with measuring the students in those schools through the sole use of poorly designed standardized tests. Moreover, the culture of disrespect for teachers and their knowledge that Ms. Rhee has created and fosters only exacerbates the problem of teacher retention.

I applaud Jessica and support her in her efforts to get her voice heard. Add your voice to the conversation. Send your letter to Ms. Rhee or to other politicians who have hijacked our schools and who currently hold our children's and our county's future hostage to a narrow and ill-informed vision of what is possible.



January 19, 2009

An open letter to Michelle Rhee: (In response to article in December's issue of TIME)

As a Teach for America alumnus who is still in the classroom, I am deeply concerned about your approach to educational policy. The words you've used to describe teachers are offensive. The arguments that support your actions are just as limited as those that you abhor, and it is clear that you are not concerned nor do you value teacher retention and its relationship to achievement.

First, your first solution to the education crisis is higher salaries in exchange for test scores. Kids need to read. If poor kids could read, everything would be fine. Teachers who taught children for 30 years will be the first to tell you, if you cared to listen to them, that money is not what kept them in the classroom; children did. Even the kids who failed the class kept them there because children have lives, and teachers affect these lives. High salaries are helpful and necessary, but they are not a sustainability plan. My fellow Teach For America alumni who currently work for double the public school salary in "successful" charter schools like Uncommon Schools (where 95% of students from the same poor and minority backgrounds as public school students score Proficient or Advanced on state tests) are exhausted, frustrated, and want to quit teaching altogether. Numbers do not sustain teachers; kids do.

"Numbers will solve the problem" is your second argument. If all kids could just read, then they would succeed. Those who believe in this theory fail to take into account what happens when poor kids who achieve academically try to pursue a college degree. According to the New York Times, only 25% of those low-income students who begin college finish with a degree, with black and Latino graduation rates closer to 20%. The biggest indicator of who finishes four years of college is parental income. Creative projects like the documentary First Person, which chronicles the lives of six Philadelphia seniors, help to reveal why academic achievement of poor kids sometimes ends in tragedy all the same. Kurtis, a key character in First Person, is in the Temple University Scholars program because his achievement is high. However, he hangs out with friends who get into fights involving guns. By the time he is 17, he gets caught up in a fight and he is now locked up; test score and all. What stops a child from shooting a gun? Standardized reading textbooks? Poverty is not an excuse for why achievement does not happen; it is a reality that affects children's lives, and the consequences of it are conveniently ignored by policymakers who have stopped talking to children about what their lives are actually like.

The featured student in the Times article about you, Allante Rhodes, was upset when you fired his principal; his "mother, mentor, and teacher." It is possible that this "mother, mentor, and teacher" was one of the people who made him feel empowered enough to write to you about his education in the first place. My principal argues that "it is because of teachers like you who did what they wanted that got our children where they are today." She means teachers like me who push for creativity and tolerance education in the classroom alongside of curriculum skills-based learning have caused low reading scores. It is noteworthy to point out that the author of the Time article only mentions in passing the racist perceptions Allante Rhodes had of you as "petite, foreign, and under qualified" as if this is not an education issue. Teaching tolerance in schools is not trendy in the policy world right now as it was in the 60s, but we as a nation, must still consider whether or not we want our children thinking all Asians are under qualified, all Black people are lazy, or that all the Jews run the Earth. Do we believe that once students pass tests, they will magically get rid of stereotypes? Whose job is it to teach students about treating people equally? Is it the parent's job? If this is the case, we're in trouble. I teach in a racially isolated neighborhood where I get told I look like Anne Frank because I am Jewish, and where the only Asians around are those who run the Chinese food stores. Where will my students be taught tolerance? However, under your policies, if I were to lead a workshop about racism and critical thinking that involved reading, I could be fired for not engaging my students in what you call "real work." You are quoted in Time as lambasting "morning meetings" as not real work because these meetings don't relate to skill-based learning. Morning meetings are done to build community and teach tolerance. Maybe if Kurtis had been involved in morning meetings throughout his education, he would not have thought guns were an acceptable response to anger.

So far in this letter, I have addressed skills and tolerance education as mutually exclusive goals. I have done this because skills are the only aspect of education currently supported by policy makers as valuable, whereas tolerance is left to the few who still believe in teaching it. However, these two educational goals are not mutually exclusive at all. I can teach active reading skills and have a discussion about why Hamlet does not commit suicide. Of course, my students may still fail the test! And then of course, you will say I have failed. I do not necessarily agree. If when my students' parents both die of cancer when she is 20 years old, and if she thinks of our discussion of Hamlet, and remembers that maybe suicide isn't the best option, I did not fail. I can guarantee that during hard times, this student will not remember that one page handout about oysters that I used to teach inferences. But she will remember acting out monologues in class, and writing her own about "To Be or Not to Be" speech about conquering tragedy.

Teachers teach because of student's lives; not their numbers. Not because of 95% correct, or 4 brothers shot, or proficient according to 10 "education experts" in a room in Washington, or 5 friends pregnant, or 2 uncles dealing drugs, or 3 studies show teachers have no effect on children, or 10 classmates dropped out because no one knew their names, or 1 gay student beat up after school and left to rot. If you don't understand this idea, then you don't know why I teach or what it means to "do your job." And it seems to me that you would fire me for valuing children's lives over their test scores. What keeps a kid fighting to get a four year degree despite the odds? Can you measure it? What keeps a kid in school despite being beat up every day; can you measure it? What makes a student feel inspired? Since these things cannot be put into an excel chart, you, Teach For America, No Child Left Behind advocates, administrators under pressure, and principals and teachers about to lose their jobs push these issues aside as unimportant. Alternatively, those things we can measure are propped up as the solution to the "problem" of educating poor children. Once they can read, they'll be fine. Calculations say it and the best experts say it so it must be true, right? Right?

Sincerely,

Jessica G. Simon

Jessica Simon is a Teach For America alumnus (2006 Philadelphia Corps) and high school English teacher at The Young Women's Leadership School at Rhodes High School.

Opportunity for Women Teachers Who Write

For my entire career as a teacher of English, I have supported the writing of others. I have provided them with tools they needed to shape their vision and I have learned how to form supportive and nurturing writing communities.

Two summers ago, I gave myself a wonderful gift. I applied to attend the 2007 Writers Retreat for Committed Women Writers. sponsored by A Room of Her Own Foundation
To my surprise and delight I was accepted and traveled to Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

At this retreat, I found a talented and supportive group of women, writers all, who came together in this beautiful, inspiring setting to write, share what we'd written with each other and provide thoughtful feedback in a positive, generous and generative community.

I met many women at the retreat and listened to their stories. I learned of the roles that writing plays in their lives. I met women whose work had been published to acclaim and women whose words had yet to reach an audience. Each woman spoke of the importance of this time and space to think, to feel, to write, to connect, to listen, to dive into our selves, to discover ourselves anew.

For me it was especially important that this was a writing retreat for women only. It was a "room of our own" - a space where we could be together not only as writers, but as women -- whose struggles to find our voices or to steal the time to write from our other responsibilities as mothers or partners or daughters -- were not considered trivial or beside the point, but very much at the center of our identities.

I also met other teachers. Many of them were from from independent schools whose administrations had paid their tuition and expenses for the retreat. As part of a policy of professional development, these schools invest in the personal and professional growth of their teachers with an unwavering belief that if they nurture their teachers, their students will benefit as well. No such opportunities that I know of, exist for teachers in under-funded urban and rural public schools.


On the final night of the retreat, all of the women gathered together. There was a reading by some of the women and then we were all invited to share our thoughts about the experience. At that time, overwhelmed by the energy in the room and grateful that I had been able to be part of such an amazing experience, I vowed to raise money for a scholarship for a public school teacher to attend the next retreat in 2009.

The biannual retreat is being held August 10-16 2009. I am happy to say that through the donations of friends and family, I have raised enough money to make this scholarship a reality.

I invite you to look at the website for A Room of Her Own Foundation, and the 2009 Writers Retreat

Here is the information about the scholarship as it appears on the AROHO web-site:

The Pincus Scholarship for Public School Teachers was created by Marsha Pincus, who recently retired from teaching after thirty four years. A retreatant at the 2007 Writers’ Retreat, Marsha was inspired “to create a scholarship for a public school teacher from an under-funded district to come and have this experience.” She says, “I gave myself a gift coming here. I would like to give that gift to other teachers.” The scholarship will provide workshop tuition, room and board, as well as an additional stipend to offset transportation costs.

If you are someone who has been spending so much of your creative energy nurturing the writing of others and you have always wanted to have others nurture and support you, and you teach in a district that does not support your professional growth through study and travel grants, I encourage you to review the materials on the AROHO website and apply for the retreat and the scholarship. You should follow the guidelines for the application to the retreat and complete the additional text field for the scholarship, explaining why you think you qualify, outlining your writing history, writing goals, the potential benefit of the scholarship to you and a statement of financial need. Applications are due by March 5 and the final decision will be made by the AROHO committee by the end of the month.

If you have any questions feel free to email me at mrpincus@comcast.net

Please circulate this information to any listserve, teacher network or individual you think might be interested.

Beyond Wiggle Room

I am establishing this space on my blog to post materials related to the upcoming publication of my chapter in Alison Cook-Sather's handbook on student voice entitled Student Learning from the Student’s Perspective: A Methods Sourcebook for Effective Teaching. Paradigm Publishers, forthcoming.
There are additional materials related to the chapter that I will publish here at a later time.

Teachers Dreaming - Only Connect

Anyone who has ever taught school for more than a year has had this dream. It usually arrives mid August, though in some especially stressful years, it can come as early as July, virtually ruining the rest of the summer. There is always a teacher in the dream and the teacher is always the person dreaming. Sometimes, when I have this dream, the teacher in the dream looks like me. Sometimes, she is physically unfamiliar – I don’t know exactly who she is but I do know that I am the person feeling the physical effects of the emotions she is experiencing in the dream – embarrassment, fear, frustration, despair.

The common element in all of these dreams is that no one (and there are usually dozens of people in the dream’s hallways, lunchrooms, school yards gymnasiums) seems to see or hear the teacher. Maybe there are no words coming out of the teacher’s mouth though in the dream the dreamer feels herself strain to speak. Her throat tightens and the sweat begins to form on her forehead, her hands turn cold and wet and in her sleep she reaches towards her face and clamps both of her cheeks with her fingers as her nails dig into the clammy skin.

In the morning she will see the scratches on her face and vaguely remember…

Sometimes she is in the wrong room. There is someone else's handwriting on the board, someone else’s books on the shelves, a periodic chart or a large map of India on the wall instead of her portraits of Shakespeare and the Globe Theater.

Once she was in a gymnasium, the only teacher in a room filled with five hundred students all milling about, forming and reforming tight circles while screaming their greetings to each other across the hot room. There are no windows in this gym though the ceiling is high. She is the one who is supposed to bring this group to order, get them under control. She is shorter than most of them and she feels herself shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller the hotter it gets. The voices in the gym swell to a thunderous roar that engulfs her and lifts her high above the shiny wooden floor and carries her through the ceiling which has just opened up to reveal the grey skies. As the noise subsides, she freezes high above the school, hangs suspended in mid air until she feels herself hurtling through space.

She awakens before she can hit the ground…

What we are suffering from here is a failure to communicate.

Disinterested students who ignore you.

Smart students who excoriate you publicly, flaying you with their questions and serving your organs up raw to the bloodthirsty class.

Teaching as a blood sport.


On a good day, though, I see this work as a sacred trust.

There are souls in the classroom.

And I don’t say this lightly or without deep careful thought. The whole concept of Soul is one of a mystical connectedness that comes from a kabbalistic belief in tikkun olam - the understanding that we are all pieces of the ONE that split apart after creation, and that we must each work to repair the world to reconnect all of the pieces of the Soul. So each time a teacher walks into a classroom, the possibility exists for disconnection and alienation or for tikkun olam.

This kind of connection is thwarted by Ego -- the overwhelming urge of the individual psyche to assert itself over others. A teacher’s ego may make her chase after power, both petty and grand; a student may be craving attention, wanting to aggrandize himself at the expense of others.

Here then is a theory of practice that comes from the Soul where the driving force behind every word or deed in the classroom comes from the need to connect with others in a meaningful way.

These teacher dreams, night terrors that begin as early as July and don’t let up until September really expose our fear of being alone – alienated – isolated – invisible – frantically trying to make the connection… to encounter and be encountered by the Soul..

To teach with integrity is to teach with all parts of you….and to be humble in the face of other people’s lives… their journeys… their struggles to connect.

People who cannot see beyond their own needs and thoughts are struggling with a handicap. Weighted down by their own ego, constrained by their own selfish desires, they are missing out on the awesome apprehension of the majestic complexity of the universe. When we see that – when we get it -- when we can hear the music and know our song and how it reverberates with others’ … or wake up to sound of our voice singing in concert with the voices of others… step into our body moving and swelling – joyful in the knowledge that what makes us unique – those very things that we have cherished as ours and ours alone – are felt by others too.

So when I write or share my experiences and send them out into the universe, they reverberate for someone else. Yes, you might say. This is what it feels like to… This is what it looks like to.. Your words have shown me… Your words have touched me… Your words have moved me out of myself into a new and initially frightening place…Your words have taken me somewhere I needed to go then led me right back to myself.


As teachers we need to embrace the night terrors that come to us in the summer and welcome them into our lives, grateful for the reminder that there is still so much work that needs to be done to keep the Ego in check – to banish it to our sleep where our dreams remind us of the primordial rule of teaching – of all human interaction – only connect.

Teachers and Autoworkers -- Connecting the Dots

I was heartened to read Bob Herbert's column ( link included below) in today's New York Times in which he compares the plight of American teachers and the public perception of the American Federation of Teachers to the plight of the auto workers and the perception of the UAW. I have often thought about these two groups of working Americans who have been vilified by the so called liberal press and demonized by the American public. By juxtaposing the situations of American public school teachers and American autoworkers, Herbert exposes the dangers of blaming these workers for the economic downturn and the consequences for all of us if we insist that they alone bear all of the weight through unreasonable concessions.

American teachers have been called lazy, unqualified and caring only about our bottom lines ( as if that's a crime!!!) by the likes of Michelle Rhee and corporate cronies who want to take over public schools and run them like businesses ( another great idea -- see Wall Street -- Why is it okay for then to think about their bottom lines?)

I have been trying to express my consternation at the ways in which the auto workers are being hauled over the coals for being greedy enough to demand job security and health care when executives and investors in the industry expect and and take ridiculously high dividends, salaries, bonuses?

Herbert compares the plight of the workers themselves -- teachers who spend their own money on materials the system doesn't supply, who take students on field trips on the week-ends, who stay up past mid-night every night preparing lessons for and grading papers of over 165 students ( 5 classes of 33 students each) -- and auto workers who labor in factories their entire adult lives only to be told to get off their "high horses" when they demand health care and job security. Why, Herbert asks, are ordinary working Americans like teachers and auto workers expected to make the largest sacrifices during an economic downturn which is hurting them more directly than it's hurting the executives and investment bankers in their respective abilities to take care of their families and secure their futures.

In the column Herbert goes on to discuss the concessions that unions must make, particularly in these difficult times and I find myself agreeing with this also.
Years ago, my colleagues and I were stymied in our efforts to institute real school reform in Philadelphia because the union leadership refused to budge on seniority rights in staffing. The union has since moved away from this pig-headed position of the mid-nineties to one of supporting site selection of staff -- but not until many of the successful small schools within a school that were established in the 1990's collapsed because they were forced to accept the appointment of teachers who did not wish to work as part of a team. Through it all, I never lost faith in the union - just its antiquated and short sighted leadership.

In the piece Herbert focuses on AFT's president Randi Weingarten's defense of teachers as hard working, dedicated people who make personal sacrifices for their students. But he also notes her willingness to make concessions about tenure, teacher assignment and merit pay. He goes on to make the comparison to AUW's president Ron Gettelfinger and the concessions that his union has already made and the ones that still need to happen. But, and this is the point of his column as I see it -- those concessions should only happen within a context in which all parties -- executives, investors, suppliers, dealers etc --- adjust their expectations for compensation and profit as well.

Do we really want to blast American workers out of the middle class?


Why is it for instance that the media finds it untenable that people who labored on assembly lines for 35 years of their lives have health care when they retire? Would it be more American if as Herbert writes, "after 30 or 35 years on the assembly line, those retirees had been considerate enough to die prematurely in poverty, unable to pay for the medical services that could have saved them?" While I applaud Herbert's shining a light on this incongruity, I don't think he goes far enough in pointing out the hypocrisy --- no -- the absurdity of expecting the auto workers to pay the greatest price for the failure of the auto industry, while the executives have earned obscenely high pay and bonuses.

There will be no fair concessions in any union contract without a public appreciation not only for the work that teachers and auto workers do, but the contributions we make to the stability of our communities.

Thank you Bob Herbert for connecting the dots in this increasingly complex picture.





A Race to the Bottom by Bob Herbert
New York Times Op-Ed Page
December 23, 2008

Teachers and Students Sharing Stories

A couple of years ago, students in the Peer-Counseling group put on a play for the student body about some of the problems facing students in high school. There is nothing unique about this -- it happens in schools all over the country every year. What was special about this play was that the students asked the teachers to provide the material for the script based on our experiences as students navigating our way through high school. It was a wonderful project. Not only did it help the students see their teachers as real people, but, by being asked to revisit our high school selves, the teachers were able to better empathize with our students. Below is my submission to the play.



When I was a teen-ager, school was my salvation. It provided a structure and predictability that the rest of my life lacked. While some people hated the monotony of the routine, I reveled in the sameness of it all…. The same locker, the same classes, the same teachers, the same friends. Plus, I was good in school. It was something I could do – Get A’s that is… I couldn’t do much else – couldn’t keep my parents from divorcing, couldn’t stop the war in Viet Nam, couldn’t make my boyfriend stop doing drugs – but I could write a damned good paper on the stoicism of the Hemingway hero. And that felt good.

Anyway, I went to this huge high school where there were almost 1000 people in my graduating class. And what they did to control us was to divide us into tracks based on how smart they thought we were… there was the academic track, the commercial track and the vocational track. And if that weren’t enough, there were levels within the tracks…Academic A, B, and C, Commercial A, B, and C and so on.. you get the picture.

Well, I was in Academic A, but all of my friends including Randy and June were in Academic B. That meant I had AP classes along with all of the other “smart” kids. My friends were still college prep – they took algebra and foreign language (unlike the kids in commercial who took typing or bookkeeping or the ones in vocational who took shop) only they weren’t considered “smart” by some of the teachers. Never mind that Randy and June were two of the funniest and most clever people I had ever met and they were always exciting to be around.

My 11th grade French teacher, Madamoiselle Gitlin taught in all of the tracks. She of course preferred to teach in the A track and was always complaining to us about how much she hated teaching the kids in the B and C track.. One day she asked me to come to see her after school. I remember going to her office and feeling really strange… wondering what she could possibly want to talk to me about. She asked me to sit down and looked at me with this really earnest look on her face… like she really cared about me or something… Then she got all serious and moved in close to me and told me that I should stop hanging around with Randy and June. That they were bad influences on me and that I was being brought down by them and I should separate myself from them before it was too late.

At the time, I just stared at her dumbfounded. I was shocked and angry, but I didn’t say a word. I sat there in stony silence until she told me I could go.

Years later, when I became I teacher, I vowed that I would never talk to any student about any other student – and I would never question someone’s choice of a friend.
See what really bothers me about this story today is – why wasn’t she concerned about Randy and June? If she thought they were headed in the wrong direction, why didn’t she try to help them? Just because they weren’t good in French, they weren’t worth the trouble?

Through Students' Eyes - Establishing Community in the Classroom

Sometimes, if we're lucky, we get to see our classrooms through our students' eyes. The statement below, by my former student Ogadi, describes her recollection of English class in 11th grade and the impact of a particular community building activity we did early in the year. Too often, educators forget that we are teaching human beings who need to feel valued and affirmed before they can open up to take the risks that learning new things demands. We start the year by handing out our syllabi and reviewing our rules. We want to assert our authority in the classroom, and make sure our students respect us. One day, many years ago, at the end of the first day of school, I asked one of my students how his day had gone. He told me that he started the day with high expectations for a good year, but by the end of the day, he was convinced that this year was going to be as boring as the years before. He had sat through SEVEN classes and in EACH one, the teachers had done the same thing. From that moment on, I vowed to start my classes differently -- to create welcoming activities that would let the students know that my classroom was a place where they were valued, where we would build on each others' strengths and where we would all become part of a social and intellectual community. At the end of Ogadi's statement, I will share a description of the activity she refers to in her narrative. As with any good teaching idea, adapt it to make it your own.




Ogadinma Anyanwu
English Class Statement
The first day of school, I got my roster and compared it with my friends’ in advisory to see who would be in my class. I did not have any classes with the people within my comfort group except for gym class. When I arrived to my first period English class, I could see why. AP US History changed the entire roster. I was in a room surrounded with people who were considered “smart math students”, people with whom I have never connected during my years at Masterman. I did not like it; I was entirely withdrawn from my classmates. To top it off, my English teacher was a loud, fearless, powerful, intimidating woman. From the start, you let us know the year was structured with classroom dialog: conversations, discussions, debates, and arguments. I was not pleased because I felt so out of place. Immediately I found Rodeeia and Caasi to bond with to maintain comfort.
Early on, you did the most memorable class project. The project was to give and receive positive comments about qualities of our peers that we recognized. In order for this project to properly function, interaction, movement and communication were necessary. The theory of it all excited me, but I was hesitant and afraid of the generic comments I would receive: really good runner, nice voice, fast, good vocals… Initially I stood in one spot, waiting for people to come to me. But I did not feel as if I was benefiting from any of it, rarely anyone approached me! So, I took some deep breaths, a couple of steps and tried to make some moves. The reward was priceless. The cycle of giving then receiving, receiving then giving was, for lack of better words, intense.
Time was provided to read, smile, laugh and absorb the comments. The one that blew me away was Meryl’s comment. She told me I am inspirational. Me, inspirational? I am smiling as I write now because I remember feeling so appreciated and valued. That one comment made my day. It made me feel like I had a chance this year after all. Through small class projects, I slowly strengthened as an individual. You always encouraged me to get involved in and out of the classroom environment.
Mrs. Pincus, in class, you gave me room to grow as an individual. I admire the passion you put behind all of your work. I cannot tell you how appreciative I am towards your dedication. When I compare my writing style now to that of the beginning of junior year, I see better structure, organization, sentence fluidity and balance. I remember repeatedly saying, “Writing essays has always been my weak point,” and you replied, “No it’s not. You have many things to say and need to work on focusing it on paper”. The guidance and lessons you provided enabled me to utilize my weaknesses as potential strengths. In the Beloved unit, we probed deeply into difficult passages and worked at uncovering the message Toni Morrison wanted to express. You allowed me to explore a complicated novel both creatively and logically.
Not only have my abilities as a writer, reader, and critical thinker advanced, I have learned something that I keep with me in my senior year and that I plan to bring to college and beyond. In your class, I learned to use my voice. I learned to reaffirm ways to use writing as self-expression. I know this may sound a little over the top, but you showed the path to womanhood and my identity. I am truly humbled by all of your teachings and stories. Thank you.



Community Building Activity - First Week of School or Later
This activity worked early in the year at my school because all of the students had been together for the past six years. If you are teaching students who do not know each other very well, save this activity for later in the year.

I think I said something like this.

"Everyone needs to stand up and have your notebook and pencil with you. You are going to walk around the room and seek people out to tell them something you admire about them, value about them or have learned from them. As people tell you these attributes about yourself, write them down. When someone says something to you, say thank you and you may choose to say something about them in return. Keep seeking people out and tell them their positive attributes. If you feel awkward or shy, or you're afraid of being left out, the way to deal with that is to find people to say something nice to. We'll do this for the next twenty minutes or so, then we'll return to our seats and debrief."

The activity usually lasts more than 20 minutes and sometimes they beg me not to stop them. When I see that someone is standing alone, I go up to them and say something positive to them about themselves. Sometimes the class asks me to grab my notebook so they can say positive things to me. Invariably, at least one student says, "I value the fact that you created this activity for us to do."