Tough Issues, Tough Choices

Tough Issues, Tough Choices aims to help young people tackle challenging issues. It addresses the real problems facing young people in today's society, those who struggle with behavioural problems as well as those who don't, whilst aiming to promote the development of emotional literacy, equal opportunities and social justice

Written by Tina Rae and Brian Marris

Tough Issues, Tough Choices addresses some of the real concerns and agendas of teenagers today. While it fulfils many of the objectives of the KS3-4/PSHE curriculum, it also aims to promote the development of emotional literacy, equal opportunities and social justice. It is a comprehensive, photocopiable handbook for facilitating discussion on the issues, problems and concerns of teenagers in today’s increasingly diverse and complex society.

Tough Issues, Tough Choices is designed to encourage students to develop their own voice, to take ownership of their own behaviours, values and responses and to become reflective young adults who are able to effectively identify and challenge social injustice. A key aspect of such a challenge lies in developing the ability to counter the five faces of oppression: victimisation, marginalisation, violence, powerlessness and exploitation.

Tough Issues, Tough Choices will help you to:

• engage the hard to teach and hard to reach

• model a problem-solving approach to teenage dilemmas

• provide students with emotional resilience

• provide materials to assist SEAL development and for all those engaged with supporting students

• help your students in resisting unhelpful peer pressures

• mirror young people’s real experiences with teaching and learning resources

• support students in questioning their values and behaviours

• record your students’ opinions before and after working with them, which can be used in your school SEF.

Tough Issues, Tough Choices will help young people to:

• develop the ability to empathise with others and to respect and understand a different point of view

• consider the need to develop a healthy and safe lifestyle

• recognise and manage risk more effectively and begin to understand these risks and make safer choices

• feel positive about themselves and value themselves as members of the school and social communities

• gain the ability and personal power to make choices that are informed and make the most of opportunities that are presented to them

• promote a sense of ‘peer support’ and highlight the importance of both offering and receiving this kind of support

• develop the skills of emotional literacy – specifically the ability to label, identify and discuss the feelings they experience on a daily basis and in a range of contexts.

Easy to use – go straight to the issue you want to tackle

The handbook is divided into three sections and each section has a range of scenarios that tackle a variety of different issues;

Part one – Social IssuesPart one of Tough Issues, Tough Choices has stories tackling the following issues:

• car theft and accident

• teenage pregnancy

• ASBOs and home loss

• boys undermining/disrespecting females

• imprisonment and getting sentenced

• date rape

• mixed races

• prejudice against Travellers.

Part two – Emotional IssuesPart two has stories dealing with:

• homophobia

• anorexia

• dual culture

• bullying a SEN pupil to suicide

• body image

• the death of a family member

• a relationship split up and the pain involved

• obesity.

Part three – Behavioural IssuesPart three of the resource deals with:

• alcohol abuse

• bullying

• the consequences of happy slapping

• peer pressure and shoplifting

• buckling under peer pressure

• drug abuse

• arson

• aggressiveness and weapons.

The structure of Tough Issues, Tough Choices

Each session is divided into six parts: Student EvaluationThe students are initially presented with section A of the evaluation form, which records their attitudes to the key issues presented in the subsequent scenario.

Image CardThis is to provide a visual image and ice breaker to prompt questions prior to introducing the topic and helps to promote students’ thinking around the issue.

The ScenarioThe whole story is here. Students should be allocated characters beforehand and then act out the role play. As explained in the section – the group should pick a signal to stop the role play at any point during the story.

Questions and AnswersThe students are presented with a list of questions about the scenario as a small group activity. The facilliator can encourage groups to discuss and record their answers on the questions pages.

Student EvaluationStudents are asked to complete sections B and C of the evaluation form. Section B measures changes in attitude and thinking while section C measures the effectiveness of the programme and the relevance and usefulness (or otherwise) of the session. Take-home ActivityFinally, students are presented with a take-home activity intended to prompt further thinking around the issue.

Who will benefit from this resource?

The materials would be valuable for:

• head of PSHE

• head of behaviour support

• head of pastoral care

• SEAL coordinator

• school psychologist

• all support staff.