We saw a need for our students. Students needed to learn about healthy relationships and dating. In Korea, a majority of students start dating in high school. As a school, we created a small committee to see how our need could be met. Our committee decided that we would create a two day workshop that would discuss relationships and dating for our grade 10 students.
There was a lot of discussion on what it should and should not include in this topic. Relationships within itself is a huge topic not to mention dating! There is so much that can be discussed, where should we start?!? How do we do it justice in two days?!?
We discussed the absolute essentials when teaching about how to form healthy relationships. As a Christian school, God was not left out of that equation.
Another positive about many international schools is that married couples that work together are not in shortage. We used this to our advantage. We thought that listening to stories, real couples stories, real couples stories that the students know would be of interest. We planned for one couple to share their story and a Q&A panel with the students using their questions.
When the committee came to a consensus our enduring understandings were:
- In order to have a healthy relationship with others, I need to have a healthy relationship with myself
- In order to have a healthy relationship with others, I need to have a healthy relationship with God
The content knowledge included:
- What does God say about me?
- What does the media say about me?
- What does a healthy relationship look like?
- How do we build positive relationships?
- What are signs of a unhealthy relationship?
- What are my values?
- What are love languages and what is mine?
- How will I know I'm ready for a relationship?
- What does the opposite gender look for in a relationship?
Activities during these two days also included:
- Teacher Q&A Panel - Students were asked to write questions during breakfast
- A Real Teacher Relationship Story
- Cooking Class - learn how to make a full meal for that special someone in your life
- Bowling - forming deeper bonds with our friends and have fun
- Daily breakfast
Each session had a few restrictions set up in the beginning:
- Session should last 45-55 minutes so students will have breaks in between sessions.
- Sessions should have activities, media, and other engaging elements.
We really wanted each session to be engaging and genuinely interesting.
This was our first year planning this and although there is a long way to go, the feedback from the students was very positive! Of all the things they would change, the most common was more teacher couple stories. The students want to learn more from the people they learn from daily.
A recap of our workshop!
