The Rights of the Child

Printer-friendly version

Lesson Overview
Team Harmony taught other students about the UN's Declaration on the Rights of a Child during social studies classes. From there, team members prompted conversations about the school's need for its own bill of rights and solicited input from every student in the school as to what those rights should be. Through a "United Teams Conference" (a planned gathering of Team Harmony members and student volunteers), the submissions generated in social studies classes were reduced to a core set of rights. The "Rights of the AMS Community" program culminated in the creation of a hallway display that spotlights our new bill of rights.

For background information to Team Harmony and this particular lesson, read Sandy Nevens’ introduction.

Sandy Nevens is the dean of students at Auburn (Maine) Middle School. He and Drea Beale, a Poland Regional High School teacher, served as advisors to Team Harmony last year.

Step #1: Student-Led Social Studies Lesson
1. In social studies classes, Team Harmony members introduced the group's overall mission and the day's assignment: an exploration of children's rights and the rights of the Auburn Middle School community.

2. As an attempt to create a commitment to the rights of children, Harmony students presented the United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Using an overhead projector, the students showed the 10 core rights defined in the document. (See the sidebar to the right.)

Team Harmony members then discussed the issues the Declaration raises in the world and in the U.S. In Kosovo, for example, how many of these rights did the Albanian refugee children lack? Although most people assume that American children have these rights, do all Americans enjoy them? Are there young people in our country, for example, who do not have access to adequate nutrition and medical care? Do all U.S. children experience affection, love and understanding?

3. Team Harmony then focused the conversation on the school community and introduced the day's main assignment: the creation of a set of rights that would apply to our school. Harmony members explained that these rights should include four core values used by teachers in our school -- respect, responsibility, honesty and compassion -- and offer ways we could treat one another better. They asked their peers, "What rights do we all need to be safe in our school?"

4. After giving students the opportunity to reflect on their own about the possible rights for Auburn Middle School, Team members divided the class into groups of four and asked each group to narrow their individual lists to four or five rights that could represent the group's view. The small groups wrote down their final selections and then shared them with the entire class verbally. The class then worked to choose five to ten rights from the small group lists.

5. At the end of the class, the Harmony members invited students to attend a United Teams Conference, during which the rights from all 27 classes would be condensed to a list of rights that represented all students in the school. Students who wished to attend the United Teams Conference were asked to sign a pledge sheet that identified them as students committed to the Rights of AMS.

Step #2: The United Teams Conference
Although it did not draw as many students as Team Harmony had hoped, the United Teams Conference succeeded in its mission to flesh out a "Bill of Rights of the Auburn Middle School Community." Working from lists generated in the 27 class discussions, a small group of students selected what they considered to be "core" rights that promoted not just safety but also tolerance. They are:

• The right to be safe from physical and emotional harm;
• The right to give and receive respect without labeling;
• The right to learn without interruption;
• The right to have a voice in all aspects of Auburn Middle School;
• The right to a balanced student-teacher relationship in and out of the classroom;
• The right to an appropriate setting to discuss conflicts; and
• The right to be free from harassment.

Step #3: A Permanent Display
Team Harmony's final goal for the "Rights of the Auburn Middle School" program was to create a permanent display of the rights. After Harmony student Pam Yomoah designed a logo for the campaign -- a human figure with rainbow hair -- the students used a 4-by-5-foot board to construct a display that featured the list of rights, the four core values (respect, responsibility, honesty and compassion) and the new logo.

With the principal's permission, Team Harmony will place the Rights of the AMS Community on aprominent wall in the school's entry hall in December 1999 so that all who enter our school will see the commitment our students have to the issues of tolerance and community.

For students on Team Harmony, the experience solidified what has become their ongoing commitment toward the creation of a more tolerant world. "I loved the feeling I got when I started teaching kids my own age about diversity and how to tolerate it in our schools," says Sarah Gardiner, now an 8th grader. "I believe we changed some hearts and opened some minds to the problems kids face with discrimination. I'm very proud of being a Team Harmony member because I'm part of an active group trying to make a difference."