Seasoned Middle School teacher Karen Lowe has had her fair share of introductions over the last two decades of molding young minds. To kick off the school year, she tried a new tactic called “The Baggage Activity” to get kids to open up and share with their new classmates. When she first decided to try the activity, Karen had no idea the incredible doors it would open for understanding and respect in her classroom.
A couple of years ago, on the first day of school, Karen asked her students what it meant to have baggage.
“They mostly said it was hurtful stuff you carry around on your shoulders,” Karen wrote on Facebook.
This starts my 22nd year of teaching middle school. Yesterday was quite possibly one of the most impactful days I have…
Posted by Karen Wunderlich Loewe on Friday, August 23, 2019
To do the activity, she had each of them write down something they were carrying.
“I asked them to write down on a piece of paper what was bothering them, what was heavy on their heart, what was hurting them, etc.”
No names were to be on the paper, and when they finished writing their baggage, they wadded up the paper and threw it across the room.
One by one, each student picked up a piece of paper and took turns reading out loud what their classmate wrote.
The baggage these students are carrying is HEAVY.
“Things like suicide, parents in prison, drugs in their family, being left by their parents, death, cancer…and on and on.”
Karen says in her 22 years of teaching middle school kids, she’s never been so moved to tears, listening to her students open up and share their burdens with the class.
“The kids who read the papers would cry because what they were reading was tough. The person who shared (if they chose to tell us it was them) would cry sometimes too.”
“It was an emotionally draining day, but I firmly believe my kids will judge a little less, love a little more, and forgive a little faster.”
She didn’t know it at the time, but doing the baggage activity would radically change the way Karen and her students LIVE this school year. That small little activity changed lives in her classroom and beyond—and that was just the sixth day of school.