As an adult, are there things you wish someone had told you earlier in life? To help young people be well-prepared on important life issues, CWEF is incorporating practical life lessons into its mental health course. CWEF partners teach this course to 250 migrant children at Bohua School in a rural area of Yunnan, China.
Connecting with the students through humor
Icebreakers before the start of class
Preparing for Adulthood. One of these recent mental health classes focused on preparing sixth grade students for many of the physical and emotional changes they will experience in puberty. At first the students shyly declined to speak. But under their teacher’s guidance, they eventually opened up about this normally-taboo subject. Through the class, teachers encouraged the students to also accept themselves and the changes they will experience. Teachers encouraged students to look forward to becoming adults.
Talking about the physical changes of puberty
Live intentionally. To help students be intentional with their futures, the teachers gave every student a paper which was folded into 10 sections. The students assumed, for the sake fo the exercise, that their lives would be 100 years long and that each section of the folded paper represented 10 years of their life. Then each student closed their eyes. They reflected on how they felt about the first ten years of their life, which is all the years that they’ve lived so far.
Writing down one of her dreams for the future
After this they tore off the first section of paper, wrote their feelings down, and put the torn off paper into a box. Then the teachers instructed them to take some time to think. Think about what they wanted to do with the 9 remaining sections of their lives. In this way, students appreciated how they can’t get the past back. But they also reflected on how they can make the most of the time they have left.
By supporting our work in Yunnan, you are providing migrant children with the opportunity to cultivate vision for their futures and learn practical life lessons that may pay out enormous dividends over their lives. THANK YOU for partnering with CWEF to educate and equip children from disadvantaged areas of China, helping them to become servant leaders in their own communities!
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