Humanities Topic: The Flip Mask and Being Yourself

Objectives:
1. The students will demonstrate that they understand why a person pretends to be someone other than who they are.
2. The students will demonstrate that they understand why they should be themself.

Resources/Materials: white paper

Introductory Role Play:
Before class ask a student to walk into the class late and pretend that he or she is a cool bad boy/girl;
Have student perform role play.
Freeze role play and Ask students to describe what happened.
 
Follow up questions:
1. Why do people pretend to be someone other than who they are?
Answer:
- the person may not like who he or she is
- the person may want others to like them, and they believe that pretending to be someone else is an appropriate solution
2. What or who will they pretend to be?
Answer: cool, a superstar, dumb, a fool, bad, normal, humble, sophisticated, happy
3. As an estimate, how many people today, pretend to be someone other that who they are?
Answer: Millions3.
4. Does pretending to be someone else take energy?
Answer: Yes, it can be mentally draining.

Assignment:
Part One:
Have students draw a picture of a head (it should be slightly smalller than the size of a real head) and write words on to head; words that represent who a person may pretend to be. For instance, the head may have the following phrases written on it:
"I'm cool."   "I'm bad."   "I'm tough."
Part Two:
Have students cut the above picture out and trace this head and draw a picture of a the same head on to the picture that they just traced. They then cut out this head.
 
Part Three:
Have the students trace a head with one of the other two heads; this paper should be lined paper though. On this paper they write out why people pretend to be someone other than who they are, as well as the solution. The final step is to staple the three heads in the following order:
- the fake person on top
- the real person (head) in the middle
- the paragraph (the explanation) on the bottom
 
Then hang all the heads on the classroom wall.

Follow up Activity:
During the school year, refer to the heads and ask the students what they mean.