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My Town Tutors is a great resource for parents & teachers. Check out our Guest Blogs for Education, Parents, Travel, Tutoring, Sports, Music and College.
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Teaching should involve making connections between students and their experiences. In April 2025 there was a new Ice Bucket Challenge for mental health. Many high school students are active in the campaign.
Two themes to develop lessons around:
- Compare and Contrast ALS Challenge vs. Speak Your Mind Challenge
- Continuity and Change
Students should be aware of the origins of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Nancy Frates, the mom of BC Baseball player Peter Frates, gave a TedTalk on her’s family’s journey and the evolution of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.
Steps for Educations
- Speech Transcript: Copy and paste the text of the speech. This will allow a teacher to highlight main points, stop the speech for a discussion, and create writing prompts for class discussion.
- Preview the speech: It is always good practice to preview all video clips before showing to students. The only interesting part is Paul Bissonnette’s glacier video. He has an interesting bathing suit, but it should be ok to share.
- Make Connections: There are some great ways to make connection to high school students’ lives. Each teacher will hear the speech differently and have different points of emphasis.
Charities: “Do you know to date the ALS Association has raised 125 million dollars.” Have students identify charities that they or their family support. Teachers also can present local causes of interest. Be sure to identity the mission. The mission should be clear and simple to explain.
Finding and Following a Passion: “You know, Mom, I don’t know, selling group insurance is just not my passion… I’m just not as passionate about my job as I am about baseball.” In a high school psychology course, this should be a great part of a motivation unit.
Reaching One’s Potential: “I just don’t feel I’m living up to my potential. I don’t feel this is my mission in life.” This fits great with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
“Adversity will Rock your World.” “I don’t know how to tell a 27-year-old this: Pete, you have ALS.,, there’s no treatment and there’s no cure.” What Makes the Great One’s Great is a great interview series by Don Yaeger. In his interview with Warrick Dunn, this is the main theme that was stressed bu Dunn’s mother.
Leadership and Being Positive: But then our leader, Pete, set the vision, and talked to us just like we were his new team. He said, “There will be no wallowing, people.” He goes, “We’re not looking back, we’re looking forward.”
Seize an Opportunity: “What an amazing opportunity we have to change the world.”
Setting a Goal: I’m going to change the face of this unacceptable situation of ALS. We’re going to move the needle, and I’m going to get it in front of philanthropists like Bill Gates.”
Identifying Gifts and Sharing:
Team Frate Train. (Your Gifts)
- Uncle Dave, he was the webmaster;
- Uncle Artie, he was the accountant;
- Auntie Dana, she was the graphic artist; and
- my youngest son, Andrew, quit his job, left his apartment in Charlestown and says, “I’m going to take care of Pete and be his caregiver.”
Introduce the elephant in the room: And it was that point that I realized that I had talked about the elephant in the room.
Body Language: “But I do have to tell you that I’m watching your body language and I’m listening to what you’re saying. It just doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of collaboration going on here.
Taking the 1st Step: Thus my mission had begun.
Technology: Bleacher Report eye gazer technology He talks with and a speech generating device