The resource guide was designed by Living Become in conjunction with the Dracut High School English Department. The idea is to provide English teachers with a resource to help them connect with their students and for students to develop social and emotional intelligence without burdening either with additional curriculum. *The toolkit can be customized for individual school systems*.
The toolkit consists of talking points, questions, exercises and materials based on the 9th-12th grade reading list implemented at Dracut High School. The resource guide centers on connecting the students to the characters they are introduced to throughout their four years with compassion, empathy and kindness. Identifying how the characters within the stories and the students themselves behave through adversity, multiple challenges and hardships along with a focus on resilience, creativity, talent, and determination highlights similarities and connects the students to the characters.
The acronym, BECOME is central within the toolkit and teaching students to be bold, energized, compassionate, open-hearted, mindful and empowered develops self-aware and self-confident individuals ready to participate in their respective communities as changemakers just like the characters they meet. The hope is for the toolkit to be organically incorporated into the existing English curriculum as an additional perspective to enhance the overall development and learning of the student while providing the educator with fun and creative ways to engage their students.