We used to do this every year with our middle school students. We'd present a series of 4-5 skits during the first week of school to encourage good behaviors.
I'd start out by meeting with the leadership team for the middle school (especially the Dean of Students or whoever's in charge of behavior management) and having them identify 4-5 observable behaviors that they want to change in their middle school students. For example, when our middle school students dropped their materials in the hallway/stairwell, their classmates were just stepping over them instead of helping to pick them up. On the first day of school, we presented a skit where one student dropped his books on the stairs, and another student helped pick them up. We saw a resounding uptick in that behavior after students watched the skit. (It also helps if you can link these skits to your middle school's core values. Our middle school promoted MAPP -- being Mindful, Achieving, Professional, and Prepared. We linked picking up a classmate's dropped materials to being mindful, which meant that every time a teacher saw a student picking up a classmate's dropped materials, she could easily say: "Thanks to [NAME] for being mindful and helping out.")
You may also want to mention to the middle school leadership team that teachers should be on the look-out for changes in student behavior and should reward those changes accordingly. (We gave out MAPP merits, which could be cashed in for items at the school store.) Skits can be helpful for demonstrating good behaviors, but they don't really make lasting changes without follow-up.
After you get the observable behaviors from middle school leadership, split your students up into groups and assign each group to a behavior. I can't emphasize enough that these should be behaviors that are observable AT school. So, for example, the cyber bullying skit shouldn't be about what students are doing at home. It should be about the actions that students can take at school -- either telling a teacher about cyber bullying that's been happening or inviting someone who's been the victim of cyber bullying to sit with them during lunch or confronting someone who's been cyber bullying in a respectful way. Those are all behaviors that are clearly visible to teachers and therefore can be held up as an example and rewarded.
We usually perform two versions of the same skit: one in which the student does the behavior that we're trying to change (student walks around dropped materials) and then one in which the student does the preferred behavior (student helps pick up dropped materials). We then have a brief conversation with the middle school students assembled: "Which one best demonstrates being mindful? Why do you think that?" You could even have students turn and talk to a partner for ten seconds about which one best demonstrates mindfulness to increase student engagement and get everyone thinking about their choices. (Just make sure that a middle school leader can get them back to silent quickly and easily.)
Each skit should be about 30-60 seconds in length. This is one of those situations where brevity makes for more effective theatre. I know, it's really challenging to make something that short (especially for high school students who frequently want to stretch out their performances as much as possible), but the shorter the skit, the clearer the behavior will be to the students. So one group should be scheduled as follows:
Skit #1 (unwanted behavior): 1 minute
Skit #2 (desired behavior): 1 minute
Conversation about Behavior: 2 minutes
(That leaves 1 minute for transitions)
If the session will be 30 minutes, you should be able to demonstrate 4-5 behaviors during that time.
Hopefully, this helps! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at any time at
vchatfield@nationalstudenttheatre.org. Good luck on your Wellness Day!
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Victoria Chatfield
Executive Director
National Theatre for Student Artists
www.nationalstudenttheatre.orgvchatfield@nationalstudenttheatre.org------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 10-13-2017 10:17
From: Dawn DeMaio
Subject: Wellness Day
Our high school Theater Program has been invited to perform scenes for our Middle School's Wellness Day.They have asked us to specifically address these issues:
- Anti-bullying, cyber bullying
- Peer pressure
- Good decision making
- Character education, being kind to others
- Being a positive contributor to the community
- Becoming the best you can be,
- Overcoming adversity, perseverance
I was thinking of having my students write their own scenes but I wanted to know if any of you had done this sort of thing before and ask if you had any suggestions or tips. 32 students will be performing for 30 minute sessions for grades 6-8.
Thank you!
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Dawn DeMaio
Theater Teacher/ Director
GW Hewlett High School
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