“ Being allowed to write about a personal connection is highly motivating for the students, and frequently results in impactful, memorable Chapel talks.”
Boys have chosen sports figures, actors, musicians, scientists, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients to research and write about: Arthur Ashe, Paul Newman, Jonas Salk, Medgar Evers, and William Wilberforce, to name a few. Sometimes, a student is inspired to learn more about a subject they recently learned about at school. The seventh-grade religion curriculum includes a unit about the Holocaust and stories about brave men and women who helped save Jews from the Nazis. One of my students chose to research Irena Sendler, a Polish humanitarian who served in the Underground Resistance during World War II. The student told me he chose Sendler to research because he“ wanted to learn more about the Holocaust and the people who really stepped up and helped.” Another student remarked that“ I did better work because I was able to choose someone I was actually interested in and was motivated to learn about.”
The other component of the Agents for the Good project is presenting a Chapel talk, which gives students another chance of choosing about whom to speak, giving them some autonomy in their choice, and empowering them to build connection and engage their intrinsic motivation. The headmaster works with all seventh graders in developing a message or moral that they would like to communicate about what it means to be an agent for the good-- tapping into formal research, the mission of the school, stories from the bible, and their personal experiences. He then asks them to choose three of these four elements to help illuminate, exemplify, and discuss the message, giving further agency. The Chapel talk component of the Agents for the Good unit culminates with the delivery of each boy’ s talk in Chapel before a live audience. The student is free to talk about a person he knows, a role model in his life, such as a parent or grandparent who is an example of an“ agent for the good.” Being allowed to write about a personal connection is highly motivating for the students, and frequently results in impactful, memorable Chapel talks.
Assignments such as these give students a voice in their decisions and moral formation. When students have the agency to choose, whether it’ s their research topic, their Chapel talk’ s focus, or their summer reading book, they know their decisions affect their own learning. •
1 https:// robertoclemente. com /
2
Merrill, Stephen and Gonser, Sara.“ The Importance of Student Choice Across All Grade Levels.” 16 September 2021. https:// www. edutopia. org / article / importancestudent-choice-across-all-grade-levels / Further reading on student agency: The Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education quarterly for this summer is all about student empowerment: https:// viewer. joomag. com / connections-quarterly-summer- 25 / 0112337001746045801? short & https:// theeducationhub. org. nz / agency / https:// selfdeterminationtheory. org / topics / application-education /
James Barbieri is a Seventh Grade Homeroom Teacher and Curricular Chair of Religion at Saint David’ s School.