Student Council Elections and a Lesson About Not Making Judgments/Assumptions

I am not sure if everyone knows, but in addition to all my work as a school counselor, I also run OHE's Student Council! This week was a busy and exciting week for Student Council, as we had our 2014-2015 elections! Student's were able to campaign all this week and presented their speeches today to the student body, who then had a chance to vote. Everyone who was in the running did such an amazing job!! Here are some photos from campaigning in the halls this week and our campaign parade!

 

 

 

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They made sure to stick their stickers all over me, too!! :-)

 

 

 





















Watching the students prepare for their speeches today was also fun and they all did such a great job!

It's always a little hard finding out you didn't win, but they all left feeling like winners because they are all still Student Council members AND eight runner ups get to be part of my No Place for Hate Coalition, which I also run. This is also a lot of fun and I know they will love it! Congratulations to all that were elected!

In addition to all the Student Council work this week, I still gave guidance lessons to all 2nd and 3rd grade classes!! Phew...what a BUSY, but fun week! 2nd Grade did the same lesson on being a good listener as you saw in last week's blog, but 3rd grades got to listen to a story called, "Mr. Peabody's Apples," which was actually written by Madonna!! I asked all of the classes if they knew who Madonna was and not a lot did, so now I am really feeling older!!! ;-/

This is a wonderful story about a man who is wrongfully accused of stealing because one child in the story made an assumption or judgment too quickly and spread a rumor about this man throughout the whole town. By the time they learned the truth and that he wasn't actually stealing, but had paid in advance, the damage had already been done. He could apologize for spreading the rumor, but he could never completely take everything back and fix it. We talked about making assumptions and spreading rumors and how most times rumors aren't even true and can be very hurtful. We learned, when in doubt ASK! Do NOT assume anything without knowing the 100% truth. Many kids offered the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover" and I would say that is a great saying to live by.

We then played a game of "Telephone" to show how easily a message from one person to another can get messed up. Every time I started the message, it got messed up by the last kid who received the message in the circle and we talked about how that is usually how rumors work, too! Too many people hear something and spread it around and things get changed from being a true statement to a made up or embellished statement. The kids had fun playing this game and loved tying it to the book!

Next week I will be in 4th and 5th grade classrooms and we will do the same lesson with "Mr. Peabody's Apples." Have a fabulous weekend!!