The ‘Unspoken’ – Awareness for Mental Health Disparities In Our Community

7th Grade English Language Arts

Ms. Ram

*To participate in this unit, you must have a signed slip returned to the teacher for approval. 

 

Unit of Study: Poetry

In this unit titled 7th Grade CPV Mental Health, students will explore how the poem “Flying High” addresses an audience that struggles with various disparities in mental health. Through this exploration, you will learn and teach upon different ways to help those who struggle with different scenarios of mental health issues in our community.

 

INTRODUCTION

Middle School Students Are Hurting More Than Ever

Trauma is not easy to speak about. Trauma is not easy to deal with. Trauma, defined by the American Psychological Association (2015) is an emotional and psychological response to a terrible event. Traumatic experiences may include "physical or sexual abuse, neglect, [and or] experiencing or witnessing domestic violence" (Cavanaugh, 2016, p. 41).  Speaking about traumatic experiences is usually marked 'taboo', or, something that seems forbidden to address in classrooms because its nature is complex and very difficult to endure. Unfortunately, the reality is many classmates your age possibly fall into statistics of "two-thirds of children under the age of 16 in the United States [that] are exposed to a traumatic event" (Cavanaugh, 2016, p. 41).  This statistic reveals that there will most likely be a friend right next to you that has experienced a traumatic event. Therefore, these stats inform us that there needs to be awareness, practices and or ideas put in place to be able to raise awareness about these issues in our school community.

 

TASK

Time to take on a very serious role. Congratulations! The superintendent has implemented an initiative for students like you to voice their concerns and or interests in awareness of Mental Health for the month of May. As someone who now has a voice in Student Government, your role is to create potential character profiles that speak in awareness of topics within this category. These character profiles will highlight symptoms, causes, actions, and reflect potential victims in our community.

 

OBJECTIVES

●            YOU will be exploring the category of mental health by developing understanding through a teacher-created Culturally Political Vignette and reading informational articles.

●            YOU will explore this topic to develop enough information to answer the question: “Who is the targeted audience of “Flying High” and what kinds of things could they possibly be going through? 

●            YOU will look at how the target audience of “Flying High” can be portrayed with multiple different variations by creating character profiles/descriptions of who these people potentially may be.

 

We will be using the PPA Process, where you will follow the six steps to solving the problem of how to bring awareness towards those who may potentially be going through struggles.  The six steps of the PPA Process are: define the problem, gather the evidence, identify the cause, evaluate the existing policy, develop a solution, select the best solution.

 

6 Steps of PPA Process

Please refer to our previous work as a class in how to complete the PPA Process by figuring out how to solve Students Being Late to Class by clicking the link here.

Step 1: Define a Social Problem

Step 2: Gather the Evidence

Step 3: Analyze the data

Step 4: Identify the causes

            These steps will be completed by yourselves.

Step 5: Evaluate the existing policy

Step 6: Develop a solution

                These steps will be completed through class discussion.

 

1-WEEK of Analyzing, Developing, Speaking, etc…

 

  1. Step 1: Define a social problem

 

Please read the following Cultural and Political Vignette: “Your friend is thinking very low of themselves. They claim that they are "worthless" and they do not belong in the world because of fighting for so long. You do not understand why. You want to understand what is going on with your friend and give them good advice. What do you think happened to the friend? What could they possibly be going through?  How do you help them?

 

Please respond to this cultural political vignette through prior knowledge of the middle school experience.

 

We will begin reading the poem “Flying High” by Anonymous. We will then integrate knowledge of ideas by brainstorming who could be the potential audience and what possible scenarios could they be going through.

 

 

  1. Step 2: Gather the evidence

After investigating who the potential audience of the poem may be, you will have to do some research. You will go on Google and look up informational articles and information for any of the following potential issues to the audience this poem is speaking to:

Resources for Mental Health Articles Found Here

●       Anxiety

●       Depression

●       Bipolar Disorder

●       Post-Traumatic Stress DIsorder

●       Disruptive Behavior and DIssocial Disorders

●       Eating Disorder(s)

●       Anorexia

●       Bulimia

●       Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

●       Other Choice but must get approved by teacher first

 

  1. Step 3: What are the causes?

After finding your informational articles, you must identify what are the potential causes of this mental health category. Please write them down in your notes for your own reference. You must demonstrate you completed this step before moving onto the next one.

 

EVALUATION

You will synthesize information from the informational articles you researched and your knowledge on the audience “Flying High” targets to create “character profiles”. These character profiles are an assessment of how well the integrated information from the mental health article, “Flying High” and their understanding of “Who is the poet of “Flying High” speaking to and what kinds of things could they possibly be going through?

 

Assistance on how to Create Character Profile

 

Character Profiles Rubric:

 

Fish-Bowl Style:

Finally, you will present to other 7th graders to solve the last question on your “Character Profiles”: “How can you help support someone who is going through mental health issues? These profiles synthesize details that correspond to suggestive language in the poem “Flying High”. The purpose is to have you all explore the multiple perspectives of many kinds of people the poem “Flying High”signals at. . .

 

Fish Bowl style is where we listen in on conversations other classmates from my other 7th grade classes are having about these generated profiles utilizing “Flying High” and the informational article about mental health.

 

 

While presenting to other 7th graders your character profiles on the potential audience for the poem “Flying High”, you must answer the following questions:

  1. What are the existing methods in our community to solve this problem?
    1. Please refer to the steps you’ve taken in Step 2 + Step 3 in order to answer the following question.
  2. What policies can we create to solve this problem?
  3. What are the best policies to solve this problem?

 

CONCLUSION

Class Discussion: Listen in on the conversation utilizing character profiles to gain insight on how students respond to different situations where all “profiles” are going through something in regards to their mental health.

 

Individual Assessment:

3-2-1

3 things I learned this week

2 ways I can potentially help those who struggle with their mental health

1 takeaway I will implement in my own life tomorrow, or the next day

 

Follow Up: You will answer the final questions that were explored this week in this unit:

  1. What kinds of mental health struggles could the target audience for “Flying High” potentially go through? Use textual evidence to support your answer.
  2. What can we do to help those who are facing mental health struggles? Use textual evidence to support your answer.

 

 

STANDARDS

English Language Arts Standards

7R1: Cite textual evidence to support an analysis of what the text says explicitly/implicitly and make logical inferences. (RI&RL)

7R4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings. Analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning, tone, and mood, including words with multiple meanings. (RI&RL)

7R6: In literary texts, analyze how an author develops and contrasts the point of view and the perspectives of different characters or narrators. (RL)

7R9: Use established criteria to evaluate the quality of texts. Make connections to other texts, ideas, cultural perspectives, eras, and personal experiences. (RI&RL)

 

Social Emotional Learning Standards

 

Use social-awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships.

 

2A.3a. Predict others’ feelings and perspectives in various situations.

 

Demonstrate an ability to prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflicts in constructive ways.

 

2D.3a. Evaluate strategies for preventing and resolving interpersonal problems.