Lesson Idea: Alcohol Stories (Using Web 2.0)

I'm always looking for ways to bring class content and skills alive in my health classroom. I first heard of this lesson from one of my undergraduate professors, Dr. Shannon Whalen, who shared it during a methods class during my junior year. The lesson initially appeared in the American Journal of Health Education in their July/August issue from 2007 (in an article written by Dr. Whalen with Suanne Maurer-Starks), and if you have access to a research database it's pretty easy to find the article. If you're an AAHPERD member and subscribe to the American Journal of Health Education, you can log on to the AAHPERD website and read the article for free.

I will not go into detail about discussion questions or the way in which Dr. Whalen completed this assignment. For that, you will have to find the article I mentioned above. The basic premise of the activity is for students to share stories relating to alcohol and how it had affected their life, specifically the consequences of binge drinking. The story just needs to be true and something that happened to the student or someone they know. Dr. Whalen would have college students submit their responses with a cover page, which was then torn off and counted for credit. The stories are shuffled and students take one randomly.

A screenshot of instructions on the Google Form 

Well, middle school students generally don't have the alcohol experience that college students have. I liked the idea of the lesson and wanted to adapt it to use in my middle school classroom, with the hope of injecting a little dose of reality into our alcohol unit. So, I reached out via social media to see how people I connect with online could help me out.  First, I created a simple Google Form for people to fill out anonymously. I shared this link via my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, where I mentioned that I was looking for anonymous stories relating to alcohol use or abuse. There was no way for personally identifiable information to be included unless the person decided to write it in their story (no one did). I received twenty three responses; I am not sure who responded although some people did comment that they filled out a response. I did take out one that I felt was not appropriate to share with middle school age students. I did this over two separate occasions: May 2011 and January 2012. If I were to do it again, I would be more specific about using different hashtags on Twitter; I probably would not put it on Facebook again. With Twitter, I have never met most of my followers in person and I think the anonymity makes it easier for people to decide to write a story.

I simply have to print out the stories to share with my students. I cut them up into strips of paper and place them into a box/bag, and we create a circle of chairs around the room. We go around the circle and students pick a random story from the box/bag and read them aloud. At this point in the unit students already have basic knowledge of alcohol, and some of them point that out as we go through certain stories. I will briefly summarize certain aspects of each story as we go through them, but generally I save the discussion for the end; I make notes as we go through the activity so I remember to highlight certain points.

Below is a screencast showing the Google Form I created, as well as a brief scan through all of the responses I received. If you would like to fill out the form to contribute to how I use this lesson in my classroom, please click this link. This activity is adaptable to a variety of content areas, including other ATOD topics but also bullying. I would caution having current students completing this type of activity only because there might be legal ramifications as well as varying comfort levels to address.



As always, please feel free to e-mail me with questions, comments, or concerns.

Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth

The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (abbreviated CAMY) is a must-know resource for any health educator. Part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, CAMY "monitors the marketing practices of the alcohol industry to focus attention and action on industry practices that jeopardize the health and safety of America's youth." The CAMY website is an incredible resource for any teacher, whether their goal is to find information for lesson planning, reading advocacy reports, staying on top of political updates and news reports, or the reading latest research on alcohol advertising.

CAMY contains an expansive section of print alcohol advertisements grouped by brand name or product, and a separate section of television commercials that are similarly grouped. CAMY provides these advertisements with the hope that they will "stimulate discussion, comment, criticism, and public concern about alcohol marketing and youth." I've used alcohol advertisements provided by CAMY in my seventh grade health classes when we deconstruct tobacco and alcohol advertisements. In the past, I have selected a handful of advertisements and used them in a carousel activity. Advertisements are hung around the room, and groups of students go to each one and try to deconstruct the advertisements before we discuss them. This is typically after we have examined advertising techniques, and we expand upon this by critiquing advertisements and analyzing how they effect health behavior. This is an important skill for students to learn because it is one of the National Health Education Standards, and the performance indicators under those standards, which are part of any exemplary health education program.

We haven't entered that part of our curriculum yet this year, but when we do I'll write a detailed post about the actual lesson itself.

Some of the information on the CAMY website might be a little too in-depth for middle school students, but the reports and research provided by CAMY are great opportunities to extend a lesson for students able to continue further than their classmates, or to use in high school as an expansion to what was learned in middle school. Some of the summary brochures and fact sheets are dated, so care should be taken when certain statistics are used in the classroom. The organization has received some criticism from a group that has also criticized Mothers Against Drunk Driving, The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, and The American Medical Association. I'll let the reader make up their own mind about those criticisms. With any topic, it's important to examine information critically, from multiple viewpoints, especially as a teacher. I feel that I don't need a website trying to discredit organizations (especially ones listed above) to make my own judgements based on the information I have available.

College Drinking: More Than Just a Problem (Infographic)

DegreeScout is a website geared towards students who are applying to colleges, with a goal of helping students make informed decisions about various challenges students may encounter during the search for the right school, especially when it comes to online learning.

I found this infographic while checking up on what is quickly becoming my favorite blog, Free Technology for Teachers. I've mentioned this before, but if you are a teacher you need to follow this blog! The amount of information can be a tad overwhelming, but it's easy to sift through what you know you can use in your classroom and what you can't based on your technology set up.

But, back to the topic: drinking in college. As a middle school health educator, I'm able to give students the facts/knowledge about the dangerous affects of alcohol abuse long before they enroll in college. Ideally, I also provide them with skills they choose to use to promote a healthy lifestyle as well.

When I was in undergrad, I was a resident assistant for a year and a half in a co-ed, all-freshman residence hall (we weren't allowed to call them "dorms"). Part of my job responsibility was to enforce college policies (especially alcohol policies) but another large component was to run "educationals" for my floor each month. We were never allowed to run one on safe alcohol consumption, because then we would technically be promoting an illegal activity. We could bring in campus police, or the awesome people from the Drug & Alcohol Education Center (I think that's what it was called) but these presentations were simply on the dangers of alcohol. All important information, for sure, but not always what college students wanted to hear.

I do not want to condone underage alcohol use or irresponsible alcohol use, but many kids have no idea what they're doing when it comes to consuming alcohol. The conversation about safe, responsible drinking needs to take place with every college student, and I would venture to say younger as well. Look, kids will drink. I wasn't into that scene in high school or college but plenty of friends of mine were. There's really no right answer to this issue, but I don't even see the conversation taking place in many schools, at any level.

The infographic was displayed with the following paragraph: .

"The team at DegreeScout.com was pretty shocked when these statistics surfaced about life at traditional colleges and universities. Even with the funny stick men, it is still unnerving. At first glance, it seems strange to draw the conclusion that attending a traditional college can dramatically up one’s chances of being assaulted, committing suicide, driving drunk or having a penchant for graffiti. It made us wonder: Do career colleges and online programs shield students from these unfortunate scenarios? Or is the spike in crime and drinking simply a product of youth, in which case, traditional colleges just house a large population of young (and arguably irresponsible) students? What do you think? Can these situations be avoided by enrolling in online education courses?"

Certainly food for thought, but I do think they are drawing hasty conclusions and that attending an online school is definitely not an answer to this problem. I wouldn't trade my college experience for anything in the world: I was a three season athlete, involved in many student activities and clubs on campus, presented with professors at conferences, and learned an incredible amount in and out of the classroom. I think ScoutDegree, while providing important and somewhat startling information, is making a blanket statement about traditional colleges. However, they are stimulating conversation in some way, so I can't complain about that.

The infograph is embedded below. I'm going to tie this into my classes and will also use it through a new initiative my district is undertaking with all the athletic teams at the high school. More posts on that as the fall season begins.


EDIT: I have tried to embed the infograph, but the link provided by the website doesn't seem to work. Check it out here.

Via: Online Degrees

Interactive Activities: ATOD Unit (Part Two)

Today I'm going to post a link to the lesson plan that may be my favorite classroom activity. This activity was partly developed by one of my outstanding professors at Springfield, Dr. Shannon Whalen. The activity, "Alcohol Simulation Stations" is located in a book she co-wrote with Dominick Splendorio and Sal Chiarello entitled, Tools for Teaching Health. I used this book during undergrad and I've used different lessons from it in my job, too. It's located at Amazon.com for purchase; if you would like a preview of the book Google Books has a few pages scanned in. I really hope that she writes another book in the future. She has so many great ideas!!

When talking about alcohol, it's easy to list, lecture, or show videos demonstrating the short-term effects alcohol has on the body. With such a captivating topic, who wants to sit and lecture to students?! (Lectures do have their place, sometimes) Wouldn't it be better if they could actually experience those effects in a safe, controlled manner? The simulation stations combine activities from many sources in order for students to see how alcohol can effect them in the short term. Some of these activities I have seen in Tom Jackson's books, one of which I mentioned in my last post. Others, I'm sure the Dr. Whalen and her colleagues came up with themselves.

This activity requires extensive preparation, and I highly recommend that you try out the activities yourself beforehand. This lesson definitely deserves a test run before you teach it. If you're short on classroom time, simply select a number of activities that will fit your schedule. You may need to adapt it in other ways, too: I would never bring in sewing needle into my classroom, so for the station needing a needle I just have students thread a button with string sans-needle.

I've taught this lesson to colleagues at the MAHPERD Conference and to college freshmen as a senior during undergrad, as well as an adapted lesson to eighth grade students in middle school. I find this activity ideal for high school age students. Each time, it was well received.

As a side note, the formatting on the PDF might be off. As always, personalize the document! Revamp the accompanying worksheet to make it yours. I always reformat documents with my own unique style. Lastly, I feel okay posting this for many reasons. One, Dr. Whalen always said the best teachers were the best stealers. Two, we passed out lesson plans for this lesson at MAHPERD in 2007.

Also, for me the post-activity discussion was when the light bulbs went off. It's so important to debrief the activity and emphasize the dangers of what could happen if students consume alcohol (or, for a college crowd of of-age drinkers, if they consume it irresponsibly). Connecting the effects with their resulting dangers is a main point of this lesson.

So, here it is! Click here for a PDF of "Alcohol Simulation Stations." If you use this in your classroom of want any pointers, let me know!