Life Success
For Students With Learning Disabilities:
A Teacher Guide

Proactivity: Secondary Grades

Introductory Activity

As you introduce proactivity, add it to the chart entitled “Keys to Success.”  (You will be adding more attributes to the chart later.)  Have class define “proactivity” in their own words.  Post word cards, posters, and lists brainstormed and created through classroom activities. Review at the beginning of each day or class period and infuse through the curriculum.  Reinforce and refer to each attribute using “teachable moments” throughout the school day.  Have students find examples of success attributes in current events, news stories, TV programs, peer experiences, and their own experiences, and create a bulletin board with the appropriate attribute as a label.

General Activities

• Present students with case examples of people facing problems in various contexts, and have them discuss or role-play action-oriented strategies for resolving the conflicts.
• Have students write down important decisions they made, the strategies they used to make the decisions, the outcomes and evaluations of the decisions.
• Present students with examples of people’s actions and outcomes, and discuss the extent to which the individual had control over the situation.
• Present students with a number of “risky” scenarios, and discuss the possible consequences of specific actions.

Extension Activities

Stand up for Yourself

• Write a few situations on the board that involve unfair treatment (cutting ahead of you in line, snatching away a book you are reading, etc.).
• Have students choose a partner and role-play various things they could say or do to stand up for themselves instead of asking a teacher for help.
• Switch off and have the other partner try a few solutions.
• Have students volunteer to replay especially good solutions they found for the whole group.

Solutions/Make it Work for You
(Use the “Solutions” and “Role Plays” handouts available in the Activities Worksheets section)

• Make a chart and “Solutions” handouts.
• Discuss the chart and go over the steps.
• Give an example of using it to solve a problem (e.g., forgot lunch, lost homework).
• Distribute the handouts, read the role plays, and have students choose one problem and solve it using the handouts.  (They can write/tape/dictate responses.)
• Leave the chart up and have copies of the handouts available under the chart.  As you see students having a problem, have them get a handout and try it on their problem.

Act or Pass

• Role-play (with students, if needed) several situations of being “active” and “passive” and ask students for words to describe each role-play.  Put them in two columns on the board.
• Put the word “active” on a large word card and post it on the board.  Another word card with the word “pro” is placed in front of it.
• Leads a discussion about what each word part means (“What does it mean to be pro active?”  “What are you pro or for?).
• Discuss the outcomes of being proactive in several situations and contrast with what would have happened if these people had remained passive.
• Have students make their own posters.  One side is labeled “active” and the other side is “passive.”  Have them fill each side with pictures, words, drawings, or diagrams showing the things about which they are either proactive or passive.
• Link this activity with students’ strengths/weaknesses by having students circle pictures/words on their chart that indicate areas of strength and box pictures/words that indicate areas of weakness.

Ask the Experts

• Assign each student to be an expert on at a particular thing, based on your own knowledge of the student and on past self-awareness exercises in which strengths and special talents are listed, or let students self-select.  (There could be a video game expert, comic book, skateboard experts, as well as experts in academic subjects.)
• Set aside a 10- or 15-minute time block when students can meet with experts to ask questions, get coaching, etc., in order to give each person the opportunity to be assertive by helping or informing others. Announce, “It’s ask the experts time. The comic book expert will be meeting at Table A, skateboard expert will be on the patio, math expert will be at Table B.”