Fatherhood

It's been a little over a decade since I purchased a VCR tape (remember those?) of a 60 Minutes program titled "Delinquents". The segment was about the biggest big brother program in the world involving elephants. Every year I've shown the video in the Child Development classes and now to my teen parents in the GRADS Program. I have yet to find a better way to stress the importance of fathers taking an active role in the lives of their children. The behavior of the adolescent bull elephants is strikingly similar to teen boys without a father figure.  Before viewing the video students complete Word Description of Father

After the video we went back to the Word Descriptions of Father. Students discussed the words that describe the father elephants. 

Then students viewed several pictures of fathers interacting with children (from magazines) and wrote the dialog they imagined the father was having with the children. The speech bubbles were added and posted in the classroom. We discussed why it is important for fathers to take the time to communicate with their children.