"What Would You Do?"

 

In schools that are focused on academics, the opportunities to teach students about scholarship are ubiquitous—they come up in class, in individual meetings with students, and during conversations in the hallway and at the lunch table.  Helping students to become scholars permeates all we do at Bosque.  While the chance to help students understand how to be members of a community may not come as often, these opportunities do present themselves both in formal settings and spontaneously, whether it’s through our service learning programs, at morning meeting, or students supporting one another as each individual pursues his or her own passions.  

However, teaching young men and women how to be people of integrity requires a different approach.  We can discuss what makes plagiarism wrong, and why it’s important to be honest and attribute ideas and thoughts properly.  We can hold student-athletes to high standards of sportsmanship and hope they internalize that how one wins and loses is as important as the final score.  As we all know, though, lessons around integrity often come in the heat of the moment when one is faced with a difficult choice, and there may not be anyone around to say what is the right thing to do.  In the same way that a good coach prepares her athletes to operate on the field without the coach by her side, or an excellent teacher makes himself superfluous by preparing students to do research and present information independent of the teacher, guiding adolescents toward becoming people of character means readying them for those moments when they have to make important decisions on their own.  
 

With this in mind, I recently shared with students part of an episode of the ABC show What Would You Do? hosted by John Quiñones.  Mr. Quiñones will be speaking at Bosque on October 28 at 6:00 p.m. in Budagher Hall and signing his book, What would YOU DO?: Words of Wisdom About Doing the Right Thing. Tickets for this event are $50.00 for general admission and $25.00 for students.  All proceeds will benefit the E.E. Ford Matching Grant for financial aid.  Mr. Quiñones is very kindly donating his time and a percentage of his book sales to Bosque, and we hope you can join us.
 

In the episode that students watched (Episode 65 “Lost Money at Diner Taken by Patron,” which we started at frame 2:42), an obnoxious restaurant patron drops an envelope filled with cash as he leaves the restaurant.  A woman at another table spots the envelope and decides to keep it.  When other customers threaten to turn her in, she attempts to buy them off.  It was heartening to hear how upset our students were as they watched the woman lie and try to co-opt other people to not return the man’s money.  One of the questions that arose was, “Did the man’s poor behavior justify the woman’s actions?”  As I told the students, very often in life we are faced with ethical dilemmas which require us to make split-second decisions, and it is these decisions that define us and the kind of people we will be.  

You may enjoy watching the video and discussing it with your children.  Sometimes, it is these conversations that prompt students to consider what they would do when faced with a similar situation and prepares them to be the kind of adults we hope they will become.