You Told Us, We Listened: New Video Dilemmas!

In our work with educators, we hear it’s become increasingly difficult to engage students in discussions. In a recent conversation, teachers told us that it might be helpful if there were more video dilemmas available on our website to help spark these conversations. Just in time for 2022, we now have two new video dilemmas [link here] available! 

For those working with The Good Project Lesson Plans [link here], these new dilemmas are drawn from Lesson 1.2, which asks students to use a “See, Think, and Wonder” routine to learn how to differentiate and understand the relationship between “good work” and just “work.”

The first dilemma, “The Meaning of Grades [link here],” explores a Professor of Engineering’s relationship with grade inflation and its impact on his students’ future prospects. The second dilemma, “When in Doubt… Make it Excellent [link here],” tells the story of a high school student who turns around his school’s journalism club’s culture of making things up.  

Take some time to review the dilemmas and try engaging in the See-Think-Wonder routine on your own. 

• What do you see in these narratives? What do you notice? How do you see these narratives relating to the 3 Es?

• What do these narratives make you think about? Do they relate at all to your own life? 

• What do these narratives make you wonder? Do you have unanswered questions?

The Good Project Website Video Dilemmas

Announcing The Good Project Fundamental Lessons

We are excited to announce The Good Project Fundamental Lessons, which can be found on our website here. 

This set of 16 lessons organized into 4 units serves as an introduction to the core concepts of The Good Project. Adapted from our longer 45-minute lessons (here), each fundamental lesson is approximately 15-minutes long. They are designed for secondary school students but are adaptable to middle school, and some lessons may well work with younger audiences.

Similar to our longer curriculum, the Fundamental Lessons include introductory material to familiarize teachers with The Good Project’s approach and theory of change. Each individual lesson includes an overarching goal, lists the core concepts covered in the lesson, and indicates any prerequisite lessons. The lesson instructions are detailed and broken down into separate steps with recommended timing in order to help adhere to the 15-minute window. All necessary worksheets and reading materials are also included. 

While we wish all students had the opportunity to delve deeply into the ideas and frameworks related to “good work”, we realize classroom time is at a premium. Our hope is that this abbreviated curriculum sparks interest in both students and educators, and that it provides enough of an overview for students to begin to think about how they might view themselves as “good workers.”

We would like to thank The Argosy Foundation for providing the generous funding that made this work possible. The Good Project has also received significant support from The Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, The Endeavour Foundation, and additional anonymous funders. 

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to connect as you implement these lessons with your students. We are available via our “contact us” page, which can be found here.