Yesterday, I posted about how I was thinking of using part of President Obama’s commencement speech for a lesson on not blaming others.

Since that time, I’ve developed a simple hand-out that some of my colleagues and I are going to use this Friday. It’s a half-day, and all of our classes are much shorter.

You can download the sheet here.

Here is what it says:

TAKING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

3) Next time you feel like blaming someone, what could you do instead? What could help you remember to do this?

I’m planning on beginning the short lesson by explaining that when things don’t go well for us, we can easily try to blame it on someone else. I’ll then say that President Obama spoke at a high school graduation ceremony earlier this week, and he commented on that tendency.

I’ll put the quote under the document camera, and then read it.

Next, I’ll review each question, and quickly give my own answer to each one as a model.

Then, I’ll pass out the sheets and ask students to answer each question (I may need to encourage them with a few ideas/suggestions). After a few minutes, I’ll ask them to share their responses verbally with a partner. While that’s going on, I’ll circulate and look for particularly insightful answers, and tell those students that I’ll be calling on them to share what they wrote with the entire class in a few minutes.

After partners are done sharing, I’ll call on those particular students, and then ask if others would like to tell the class what they wrote.

With a quick wrap-up, we should be done.

Any suggestions on how to make it better are welcome.

I’ll write about how it goes…

President Obama gave the commencement address today at Kalamazoo Central High School today.

It didn’t seem especially great (you can read the entire transcript here and see videos here and here), but there was a portion that I’ll be using in a lesson next year.

I’m planning a lesson on the problem of blaming others, and have written about it a couple of times already — see Creating A Lesson On “Blaming Others” & Need Your Help and Looking For Movie/TV Scenes Showing People Taking Personal Responsibility).

The President made some comments related to that topic that I’ll use as part of it:

That brings me to my second piece of advice, and it’s a very simple one: Don’t make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes, but for your failures as well.

And when that happens, it’s the easiest thing in the world to start looking around for someone to blame. Your professor was too hard; your boss was a jerk; the coach was playing favorites; your friend just didn’t understand.

Showing students this short video clip, and asking them to first think of times when they have blamed someone else for their mistake and, then, asking them to think of times when they’ve taken responsibility for them, might be a good piece to include in that lesson.

And, speaking of blaming others, here are two recent articles on this subject that I might have students read or, at least, use in my lesson plan:

How To Stop the Blame Game

Blame is Contagious, Except When People Have High Self-Worth

Even though we still have a week-and-a-half of school left, I figure it’s never too early (or late!) to be reflecting on how I can become a better teacher for my students.

So I’ve begun to think about what I might want to do differently next school year. I’ll be turning my thoughts into both a blog post here and an article for “Teacher Magazine.”

I’d like to include ideas from readers of this blog, too.

So, please, as briefly as you can, share in the comments section of this post one or two things you want to do differently next school year — along with sharing what is prompting you to want to make that change and why.

I’ll include everybody’s plans in the blog post I write, and select a few to include in the article.

In your comment, please include how you would like to be described.

I’m making July 1st the deadline for sharing your ideas, and look forward to hearing from you!