signewhitson

Six students from the Freetown Elementary School in Maryland recently completed the How to Be Angry curriculum.  They were kind enough to share with me their feedback on the activities, lessons, and games and gave me permission, in turn, to share it with you!  Special thanks to Aimee Meyer, their teacher who led the lessons, and all of the kids who are such gracious and enthusiastic learners!

Most important thing I’ve learned so far …

•   “Bullies are not cool.”
•   “I learned how to use I messages instead of you messages all the time.” 
•   “I learned about passive-aggressive behavior.  That’s what I do.” 
  • When prompted for more information, the student said “You know, like when I mope around, shuffle real slow down the hall, soft-talk and work real slow or not at all.  Now I know how to calm down better.”
•   “I learned that you don’t have to take things out on someone else all the time.  I only knew how to do that.”

What I have enjoyed the most about these lessons …

• “I liked when we did the activity with putting magnets underneath the types of anger. The magnets told us what the types of anger looked like and what we could do when we feel these.” 
• “I’m moving to different parts of the room when we gained our opinions to something. We learned how to respect others’ opinions and that it’s okay to have different opinions.”
• “I really liked the game where we lined up by our birthday but we couldn’t talk. It was hard and we had to use our hands, fingers and faces to do it.  We learned about nonverbal communication. It’s important.”
• “I liked how there were a lot of games. There was one at the beginning of each lesson and they were pretty fun.”

If I could improve on this book in one way I would …

• “Add more games. They are a lot of fun and active.”
• “Give the kids a workbook so they each have their own.”
• “Add pictures and colors to the worksheets or a Kid’s Workbook.”

Note for Educators:  Handouts for kids in How to Be Angry are reproducible!  You may feel free to make kids their own workbook to use as you are conducting each session.  The kids recommend it and so do I!

Thanks again, kids!

All the best–                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Signe