Advice needed for a student obituary lesson...?

Question

I teach high school students who are not easily motivated educationally and have difficulty finding direction in their lives. I was wondering if creating a lesson where the students are assigned the task of writing their own obituary would be appropriate. I would tell them that the focus is not how they died or at what specific age but what they were able to accomplish during their life time and what they would be remembered for. Is this lesson too morbid?

Answer 1

It's a great assignment for getting them thinking about their choices in life.

I had to do this assignment in a journalism class and she had us do our obit if we died today, another if we died in five years, another for 25 years hence, and one for "if we died at the age we wanted to die." Very illuminating in terms of goals and aspirations.

I agree that you need to show them good examples. My local paper includes a feature article on the obits page written for an ordinary, everyday person, but long and in-depth, written by a journalist, like the ones they write for celebrities and other famous people. Every time I read one of them I consider what mine would sound like and whether I'd be proud of what it said.

As for whether this is morbid - consider your audience. This is a group of people who have seen every kind of death in movies, games, on the web, and on TV news (sometimes even about their own communities dealing with death). Do people remember that Columbine is a high school??

Conversely, having them write their obituary brings home the fact and somber personal reality of death - that it happens to all of us, but we get to decide what kind of life we want to lead in the meantime. It just might give them a greater respect for what life really means.

Answer 2

I would give the obituary lesson a shot. And I would also try other things as well.

I personally don't think we use enough motivation and self-help books in schools. Some good books that I gave my students to read for book reports are "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson, or "Life Strategies" by Dr. Phil McGraw. You can ask the students a lot of personal motivation questions from those books like which quotes did you find most useful, and why? I've also been thinking about getting my school to buy some Tony Robbins tapes to see if I can use them in class.

The way I see it. If the best motivational speakers in the world like Tony Robbins can not motivate the students, would I be able to do any better? So use the books and techniques by the most motivated people in the world.

I personally believe teachers should go thru sales and management training like the ones corporate executives attend. Corporate executives job is to motivate the workers. Isn't that a skill that is applicable for the teachers to motivate their students?

Answer 3

I think it is very appropriate. It's a lesson in goal setting. Find some examples of a few very good obituaries to show an example. Find someone that was able to accomplish a lot in their lives verus someone who did very little. It's a like a long range goal setting session. I recently had to write an obituary and it made me stop and think a lot as the person I wrote about had many friends and had done a lot in his lifetime, many of the things he did benefitted other people.

Answer 4

Dude, that sucks that they withdrew the money. Even if you are not eligible for aid, anyone who files a fafsa, or federal aid form is eligible for student loans, they do not have to be with sallie mae. But I would go the fin aid office and see if they can make loans available to you. If that fails, bank of america and wachovia bank both offer student loans. You can defer payments on the loans but remember they accrue interest. If you dont want to do that, I say open a credit card that gives you 0% financing,(get your mom to cosign) and apply for the credit card, but DO NOT put any other charge on it. I am a college student as well and have put up w/this for four years. I will tell you that education is worht the cost, so barrow from where ever you have to . Good luck

Answer 5

If the idea is to motivate the students, I would suggest the obituaries should concern people in their lives who motivate them, in their world. You may end up with obits on rock stars and celebrities, but at least you would have students interested in the assignment.

Answer 6

It sounds like a good idea, I did a speech in college on the same topic. A good intro to the assignment would be the poem about how people live the dash, or the time between their birth and death. Here's a link to the poem if you'd like to take a look.

http://www.lindaslyrics.com/the%20dash%20poem.html

Answer 7

No! My daughter had to do a similar project in one of her classes her freshman year. She had to do an obituary and a presentation of what she'd accomplished in life and family. It was pretty cool to see what her dreams are and what she'd managed to accomplish.

Answer 8

i think that it is way to morbid! i mean you could just ask them to write a paper on what they want to be remembered for. In the process of asking them to write about that you are also asking them to write about how they are going to die and when! i know that i don't want to think about leaving this world right now. Plus they're just kids!

Answer 9

It may freak some students out... I think they may focus on how they die way too much-our culture is all about gore and murder-just watch tv. maybe an encyclopedia insert about themselves instead telling what they did in their life? good luck

Answer 10

Stick with self-promoting biographies.