Students engage in discussions and activities to develop awareness about themselves as individuals and document the qualities/traits that make them unique.

Purpose

Mentees review personal characteristics, preferences, interests and feelings.

Mentees and mentors discuss commonalities and differences among themselves.

Mentees identify the most important personal characteristics, preferences, interests and feelings Mentees learn to see themselves as unique individuals.

Materials

• Completed homework assignment with 7 Snapshot of Me fill-in-the-blank self-portrait frames
• Blank Snapshot of Me picture frames (categories: my goals; things I’m good at; my feelings; things I like; people who are important to me; favorite things I own; things that are hard for me)
• Completed Silhouette activity – reverse side of completed Silhouette poster will be used to complete the flag
• marker
• glue

Mentor Preparation

Mentors:

• review the Snapshot of Me assignment and completed sample Personal Flag
• prepare an introduction and collaborate to determine who will do what portion of the introduction
• prepare Snapshot of Me personal examples to share during the session
• prepare questions to ask mentees during the session

Activity

There are two sides to the Personal Flag. The first side consists of a personal photograph with multiple character trait cards from the previous Silhouette activity (insert picture side 1). The second side consists of the completed Snapshot of Me self-portrait frames, representing personal characteristics, preferences, interests and feelings that are most important to the mentee.

Self-Determination Program staff introduce the concept of a flag and help students make the connection that flags have symbol(s) that represent important things to a particular place, school, business, etc. For example:

“Every country around the world has a flag to represent their country. We have a flag for the United States with 50 stars which represent the different states and 13 stripes to represent the original 13 colonies. We also have a flag for The Bridge School with a rainbow, a bridge and people representing your school program. When people see these symbols on our flag, they know it’s The Bridge School!”

Mentors introduce the Personal Flag activity. For example:

“Each of you will create a flag that will represent how you see yourself and what’s important to you. There are two sides to your Personal Flag. You already made the first side! It has a photograph of you with your character trait cards from the Silhouette activity (insert picture). Today, as a group you will create the second side of your Personal Flag using information from your Snapshot of Me homework assignment that you did with your parents.”

The group reviews information for each category from the Snapshot of Me homework assignment. Mentors provide personal examples from each category and then ask students to share the information from their self-portrait frame. After mentees share information, mentors ask students to identify their most important personal characteristics, preferences, interests and feelings within a category. Self-Determination Program staff serve as scribes and document student answers.

Students decide where to paste the individual self-portrait frames and then share their completed flags with the group.

Adaptations

• Use an electronic version of the Snapshot of Me frames, so students can independently input text.