SQUABBLES® TV Classroom Curriculum

Objective: Students will be able to change their perspective about a disappointing event by moving across the 3 emoji-meter questions.

1. After watching “Chris in the Classroom Episode 1”, review the 4 main types of emotions using the Resilience Meter image: Mad, Sad, Meh, Glad.

2. Ask the students:

• Which emotional state would be more difficult to think rationally (clearly) about a bummer (bad experience)?  Mad/Sad  Why?
• Which emotional state would be easier to think rationally (clearly) about a bummer situation?  Meh/Glad  Why?

3. Open discussion:  (Teachers - feel free to share your relevant experiences with the students to help kickstart discussions.)  Have the students share a time where they were mad about something and found it very difficult to think clearly.  (Repeat the same process for “sad”).*

• What happened? 
• How did you feel? 
• What made it so difficult to think clearly?
• What were some of your thoughts while you were mad? 
• How/when did you calm down?   
• Did those emotions (mad/sad) help or hurt your ability to feel better?

4. Have the students share a time where they experienced a bummer, but remained relatively unfazed (meh).*   (Teachers - feel free to share your relevant experiences with the students to help kickstart discussions.)

• How did you remain calm during that time? 
• What were some of your thoughts during that situation? 
• How did you keep things in perspective? 
• Did that affect the outcome of the situation at all?

5. Have your child share a time where they experienced a bummer, but were actually glad that it happened?*   (Teachers - feel free to share your relevant experiences with the students to help kickstart discussions.)

• Why were you glad? 
• What were some of your thoughts when everything was taking place? 
• How did your thinking shape your emotions? 
• Did that affect the outcome of the situation at all? 
• Have you used that strategy with other bummers in life? 
• How can you apply that to future situations?

*These questions also lend themselves quite well for independent writing activities.

Reinforce (Activity)

For the remaining days of the week, use the following activities to reinforce the lesson.

Each day, choose at least bummer from the list below. For each bummer, ask the students to answer each of the 3 questions in order.  Feel free to take several answers from the class as many different perspectives can be helpful. 

1. How could this be worse?
2. Why won’t this matter in your future?
3. How could this turn out for your good?

Bummer situations:

• My friends didn’t invite me to their party.
• Someone called me a rude name.
• Someone said I didn’t have a good singing voice.
• I lost my $20 bill.
• My sibling jumped on my bed while I was sleeping.
• Everyone is talking about my ugly shoes.
• If real-life situations arise with students, feel free to use those instead of the examples provided.

Objective: Students will be able to identify situations in which someone is using verbal indirect aggression in an online video and the potential hurting motivation behind the behavior. Additionally, they'll discuss resilient responses. (Total lesson length: 15-20 minutes)

Materials: SQUABBLES® on Social Media, Lesson 4 (above)

Procedures:

1. View the corresponding SQUABBLES® video.  (Length: 5:53 minutes).
   
2. Pause the video in the two places, following the on-screen instructions. Read the questions aloud.
3. Discuss how Marissa showed resilience. (She found new friends instead of trying to make things work with the friend group who excluded her).
4. Discuss how different people may respond to this same situation. (Some may not be as positive as Marissa was. Some may not be as bold as Drew.)
5. Discuss legitimate reasons why we exclude others (Different interests, beliefs, skills, locations)
6. Ask students to imagine themselves in Marissa's position, after viewing Drew's viral video on TikTok talking about their friends excluding them. Choose 1-2 students to respond to each of these questions:
   
   1. How could it be worse? (They could have stayed silent and I'd never know how my friends really felt.)
   2. Why won't this matter in the future? (I can find new friends that appreciate me. There will be other birthday parties that I can attend.)
   3. How could this turn out for your good? (After this, I know who I can/can't trust)
7. Instruct students to identify one person in their life that sometimes excludes them. Ask them to rate how healthy the relationship is on a scale of 1-5 (one is not healthy at all, 5 is perfect). Next, ask them to privately journal responses to the three questions in step 6. 

Closing: Remind students that exclusion is part of life and choosing whether or not to include others is their choice. Also remind them that they have the ability to end relationships that are unhealthy and the ability to cope when excluded.