This sub-organizer contains the following sections:
Prescribed Learning Outcomes
Suggested Instructional Strategies
Suggested Assessment Strategies
Recommended Learning Resources

It is expected that students will:

• identify factors that contribute to emotional health and well-being
• describe the characteristics of personal autonomy
• examine the influence that friends have on individuals' attitudes and behaviour

To view the prescribed learning outcomes for Personal Development (Mental Well-Being) in other grades click on an icon below.

SUGGESTED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

• Introduce the idea of balance as an important foundation of mental health. Ask students to identify aspects of life in which balance is desirable (e.g., work and leisure, autonomy and integration, dependence and independence, activity and contemplation, solitude and companionship). Have students in pairs illustrate balance by creating and displaying representations (e.g., time charts of work and leisure activities). Discuss the idea that a healthy balance for one person is not necessarily so for another.
• Have students debate the Aristotelian proposition that moderation in all things is the key to living well.
• Poll students to determine the most important mental health concerns for teenagers (e.g., stress, depression). Ask students to identify the signs, causes, and effects of the top five or six concerns and provide action plans to address them. Emphasize the importance of avoiding hasty conclusions about the behaviour of others or of making unwarranted diagnoses, especially when professional assistance might be required. Debrief by having students list those action plans that could make a positive contribution to one's lifestyle.
• As a class, brainstorm characteristics and indicators of personal autonomy (e.g., having one's own living space, being economically independent, taking responsibility for one's health). Elicit the ideas that personal autonomy might be expressed in various ways, involves a balance of rights and responsibilities (including respect for others), and is developed at different times by different people.
• Have students define and give examples of peer pressure. Ask them to provide options for responding to peer pressure and determine the best course of action in each case.

• After students have participated in a variety of activities related to emotional health and well-being (e.g., representing balance, debating), have them reflect on and assess their understanding by responding to questions such as:
  • What are the three most important factors that contribute to your own emotional health? How does each contribute?
  • Identify someone you know who exemplifies many qualities of emotional health and well-being.
  • Explain why you chose this person. Include at least three qualities this person displays, along with examples.
  • Describe how you see the quality of balance in this person's life.
  • Comment on one or two qualities, approaches, or other features that you would like to model or adapt in your own life.
• After students have brainstormed and discussed characteristics and indicators of personal autonomy, have them give four real or imaginary examples of people at different life stages and in different circumstances. Ask students to represent (in writing or in a visual form such as posters or cartoons) how personal autonomy might be expressed in each of the examples. Look for evidence that their examples:
  • show or describe characteristics or indicators, including roles and responsibilities, that are clearly associated with personal autonomy
  • show how indicators of autonomy can differ at different ages or in different circumstances
• When students discuss and illustrate instances of peer pressure, look for evidence that they can:
  • analyse situations to identify both direct pressure and some of the more subtle forms
  • identify some of the factors (both positive and negative) that cause friends to try to influence one another
  • describe the consequences (both intended and unintended) that can come from accepting or rejecting a friend's influence

• B.C. Life Skills
• Esteem Builders: A K-8 Self-esteem Curriculum for Improving Student Achievement, Behaviour and School Climate
• Mediation in the Schools Program Secondary - Training and Implementation Guide
• Taking Chances: Teens and Risk
• What Every Teenager Should Know About Peer Pressure
• Who I Am and Who I Want To Be
• Start-Up Multiculturalism
• Managing Anger
• Open Doors: A Gender Equity Instruction Kit - Unit 1
• Alien
• Second Step: A Violence Prevention Curriculum, Grades 6 - 8
• Taking a Stand: Crime and Violence Prevention Tool Kit, A Solution for Youth

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