Course Outline General Information Program Objectives Submitting Assignments Your Mentor

Role Models

How we can Learn from Role Models

Role models are very important in our lives because they help us determine who and what we want to be. For example, a favourite teacher might be a role model for us, and this might lead us to activities involving helping people and eventually direct us toward the helping professions (such as teaching) for our career.

Role models often trigger an increase in interest in certain occupations. For example, in the early 1960s the beginnings of space travel (with astronauts like John Glenn as role models for many people) resulted in many students choosing the sciences for their career. Similarly, in the 1990s, the success of people like Bill Gates (of Microsoft) have pointed students toward careers in technology.

Choose one person you might consider as a role model and write down all of the things that you would like to "be" as reflected in this person. Place this information in a file called myrmdl.doc and place it in your Personal Portfolio.

Negative Role Models

We can sometimes make bad choices for role models in our lives. For example, Television and the other media constantly bombard us with the message that we must be slim in order to be popular. Some people are so enticed by these kinds of messages that they develop diseases such as anorexia nervosa (self-imposed starvation). Similar examples of negative role models as displayed by the media (especially television) involve automobile ads that depict fast and dangerous driving, and TV "heroes" that use violence to get what they want.

The next time you watch television, try looking for examples of negative role models and consider ways in which you can avoid having these models affect your life.

Activities:

There are two activities for this section.

1. Imagine you are a newspaper columnist and write an editorial about the negative effects of media advertising on role models for teenagers. (An editorial is an article by someone at the newspaper to decides the official point of view of the particular newspaper.) Post this document to your Personal Portfolio as editorial.doc.

2. List all of the attributes and skills of people you consider to be role models for your life (you might want to look at your Role Model Data Chart from Grade 8). Now highlight all of those skills and attributes that you already possess. Indicate how you intend to acquire/enhance those skills/attributes that are not already part of your "repertoire" of skills and attributes. Post the resulting analysis to your Personal Portfolio as attributes.doc.

Stories of Real Teenagers

There are two ways to explore the next section of the course. On the following page you will find images of 6 teenagers. By clicking on an image you will be taken to a story written by that person. The story will involve an important personal development problem and there will be links to the Internet or other sources to help you avoid this kind of situation or problem in your own life. Among the teenagers who have experienced personal problems in their lives, most now wish that someone had guided them down a different road. However, no-one can make your mistakes for you. If you do make mistakes, hopefully they will be small ones, because they will be made with all of the facts available to you.

The second way to explore this section is to go directly to the major topics listed in the sidebar. The major topics will lead you to sub-topics.

If you want to solve the mystery of the pictures on your own, then use the stories. If you want specific information about an important topic now, use the topics list. In any case, make sure you explore all of the topics in this section. Your browser should tell you which links you have explored and which you have not (we would advise you to set your "Links Expired after..." preference in your browser to about 30 days).

Next -->