Mirror Mirror Pitch

In 1999 I had one foot in Marketing and the other foot in a Master's Degree.  All the theory and reading was enlightening but deep down I wanted to just get to work with the kids.  Over the summer I signed up for a 1-credit, intensive weekend workshop with The Center for Social and Emotional Learning.  There I met the Principal of Winston Preparatory School who hired me the week after and that took care of the foot that was still in Marketing.

Fast forward 14 years and I am still a proponent of explicit incorporation of social and emotional lessons into a community's curriculum.  We do not currently have a middle school homeroom or pastoral care program so I decided to create my global project to address the following questions that I believe all middle school students should be thinking and rethinking about:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, Who Am I and How Do I Portray Myself to Others?

Following the Project Planning Tool from Julie Lindsay and Vicki A. Davis I have put together global project  that I am calling Mirror Mirror.

The primary aims are as follows:

• Students create a visual representation of who they are
• Together with students from other schools around the world they create a wiki page that teaches tolerance
• Students then take the visual representation someone else made and interpret it in their own artistic way (poem, song, visual art, video)

Of course students will have the chance to use various Web 2.0 tools as well as other technology to communicate, collaborate and create.  I recently discovered the power of student choice and so am planning on incorporating that into the project somewhere.

I would be grateful to get feedback and thoughts on how this global project would entice you as a teacher to sign up and participate with your middle school students.  What would you like to see?  What would make you hesitate to participate?