BLACK MARRIAGE DAY

VIRTUAL ACTIVITY FOR TEENS!

Objective:  To help teens consider the importance of healthy interpersonal relationships, develop awareness about their interpersonal values and goals, and consider the skills necessary to achieve their goals.

Background: Research shows that most teenagers place a high value on having a good marriage and family life. But far fewer expect these outcomes for themselves. Healthy relationship skills are fundamental to all healthy relationships, including marriage, and teens can learn and develop these skills.

Fine literature illustrates life’s complexities. It is a wonderful vehicle to stimulate students to explore and consider how stories and issues link up to their own lives and experiences.

Activity:

1. Copy the poem “Alone” by nationally renowned African American artist,  Maya Angelou, and her biography.

2. Read the short biography to your students and tell them you are going to read “Alone” in honor of Black Marriage Day and that they’ll be discussing their impressions of it. Pass out copies of the poem or display it, and read it to the students.

“Alone” has over 200,000 references on the Internet – testimony to the compelling interest people have in this topic and a powerful argument for relationship education.

3. Open discussion about the poem, using the questions below as conversation starters. 

• What does it mean to be alone and how does it feel?
• Why doesn’t the author think you can make it alone?
• What qualities are required to form supportive and satisfying interpersonal relationships?

More outstanding stories for teens about relationships of all kinds are available in the anthology, The Art of Loving Well:  A Character Education Curriculum for Today’s Teenagers  (grades 8 – 12).

The Art of Loving Well is a nationally acclaimed, literature based relationship skills curriculum from Boston University.  This program teachers students about the complexities and joys of a wide variety of relationships, including friendships and family, infatuations and first romances, enduring commitments and marriage.  Studying short stories, poems, essays, folk tales, and myths empower teachers to help students connect ideas in literature to choices in real life and the skills necessary to achieve healthy relationships.  Forty-one ethnically diverse selections hips teens develop stronger personal ideas and more successful relationships.  Each reading is accompanied by questions, activities, and discussion topics that encourage students to reflect on the situations in their own lives.