A Place for Healthy Risk-Taking
At Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School,
Wellness classes combine challenge and choice
to help adolescent students grow.
Laura Warner
Eating sushi. Talking with your parents about drugs or alcohol. Playing basketball. After each of these prompts, the students in my Wellness
class rearrange themselves in a series of
concentric circles that indicate their
comfort level with the action described.
I use this activity, called challenge
circles, in the first week of school to set
the stage for the coming year.
First, I create three concentric circles
using ropes or cones on the floor. The
inner circle is comfort, the middle is
stretch or risk, and the outer circle is
panic. Then I ask students to stand in
the circle that represents their comfort
level when asked to do a range of activities. We start off with relatively
innocuous activities (eating pizza) and
then ramp it up (talking with your parents
about sex; telling a close friend you
disagree with him or her). Finally, I
connect it back to Wellness class and to
physical activity using such prompts as
running the mile for fitness testing or
getting sweaty in class.
At the end of this activity, students
have seen the wide range of comfort
levels within our class. One student
might feel completely at ease taking free
throws but be sent right into the panic
zone by something like swimming in
the ocean. Playing soccer, with those
hard balls flying through the air, is scary
for many students, but it can be a place
of true comfort for an athlete. Challenge
circles are a great reminder for middle
school students that what is true for
PHOTOS COURTESY OF FRANCIS W. PARKER CHARTER ESSENTIAL SCHOOL
