Are Emotions OK? Philip Kerr writes about Ready to Run COVID-19 vlog
/Are emotions OK?
Philip Kerr looks at how authentic video can be used to explore social-emotional learning in English language teaching.
When you write material for coursebooks, as I do, you have to be very careful to avoid anything which might cause problems in class. Because you’re potentially writing for classes around the world, with very different students and teachers in them, the number of things which might be problematic is huge. COVID-19, as a topic for an English lesson, illustrates well the challenges that a materials writer faces. On the one hand, it is likely to be a topic on which many students will have a lot to say. On the other, it is impossible to write materials based on the topic that will be appropriate for all classes everywhere. For some classes, it is almost certainly a topic to avoid. Is there, for example, a student whose life has been turned completely upside down by the pandemic? Job losses in the family, severe financial difficulties, hospitalisation or worse? Extreme, but understandable, emotional reactions are going to get in the way of language learning, not help it.
But, still, there will be classes where COVID-19 is an appropriate topic. Off-the-shelf lesson plans, because they have not been written for particular groups of individual students, are unlikely to work. If teachers want to explore the issues surrounding the pandemic, they’ll need to customize their own lessons.
Ben’s vlog, ‘Emotions are OK’, steers clear of anything that is too contentious. His basic message is that it is okay if you are experiencing negative emotions during this time of crisis. If, he suggests, we accept our emotional reactions without beating ourselves up about them, we can learn from them and come to a better understanding of ourselves. The message is positive and important. There is widespread recognition that mental health problems – extreme anxiety, fear, depression – have rocketed in the last six months, and that the psychological effects of COVID-19 will last longer than the virus itself.
Reassuring though Ben is, his own experience of COVID lockdown appears to have been fairly trivial, and he interprets his own and his friends’ negative emotions as symptomatic of other underlying causes (a desire to change town or job), rather than as a reaction to the pandemic and its dramatic effect on his life. Because of this, I think, there is a danger that his positive message may not be received in the way that he intended. It’s easy for him to say that negative emotions are okay, because he’s had an easy time of it. But try telling that to someone who is now out of work and facing eviction from their flat or whose grandfather died in a care home!
It is precisely this tension that I would like to explore - with the right class. It’s the space between the importance of regulating our emotions and acknowledging that strong reactions may be perfectly justifiable, and that we may feel the need to do something … rather than simply accepting and reflecting on our emotional state.
The ideas that follow do not constitute a lesson plan. They are offered as suggestions for approaching the topic, and lead up to viewing and discussing Ben’s vlog. Precisely how you might exploit them will depend on the kind of class you have, how lessons take place (the blend of synchronous and asynchronous, for example) and the technology that you are using.
Before students talk about COVID-19 and people’s emotional reactions to the pandemic, it would be useful to have the language to talk about cause and effect. It may also make sense to talk about the pandemic and other people before opening it out to talk about themselves and people close to them. Here’s one way of doing this at B2 level with young adults / adults.
1 Use a dictionary to check you understand the words in bold.
1 It hasn’t affected me very much – my life hasn’t changed in important ways.
2 It will lead to big changes in my life in the next year or two.
3 The biggest effect it has had on my life is that I lost my job.
4 The financial implications for me of COVID-19 are very worrying.
5 It has had a huge impact on my life – everything has changed.
6 It’s brought about so many changes in my day-to-day life.
2 Work with a partner. In what ways do you think that COVID-19 has affected the lives of the following groups of people? Use the expressions in exercise 1.
film stars the homeless pensioners police officers professional musicians
restaurant and café workers school students Uber drivers
Film production stopped so there was no work for film stars, but COVID-19 probably didn’t have serious financial implications for people like that.
The next step is to look at some strong emotions that are related to COVID-19. There are three short videos I have found that I think would be useful. These are only suggestions, and you may well find others that are more contemporary and / or more closely related to where you live. Students watch one of these videos and then work with two others to (1) describe the video they have watched, (2) say what they think about the people in the video (and why).
1 Michigan State Capitol Overrun by Armed Lockdown Protesters (3 minutes 35 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_jWONaP-4U
A news report from Inside Edition which focuses mostly on protesters, some armed with semi-automatic weapons, who forced their way into to Michigan State Capitol to protest against COVID-19 lockdown measures. The protesters are supported by President Trump who says ‘These are good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again.’ The report is clearly supportive of lockdown measures, but also attempts to explain people’s anger. Similar news reports from around the world can easily be found.
2 Coronavirus outbreak: Miami spring breakers vow to keep partying amid pandemic (4 minutes 26 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkYRI48bXRw
A news report from Global News about university students having a spring break in Miami who are determined to have a good time and ‘live for the moment’, despite the COVID-19 restrictions. The students explain their reasons for ignoring medical advice and why having a good time is so important to them.
3 Ticked Off Vic: A Message to the Government (4 minutes 9 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=GLcNStHTDjM&feature=emb_logo
New Yorker, Vic Dibitetto, sits in his car and delivers an angry, expletive-laden rant in which he criticises the American government for its response to COVID-19. The more he talks, the angrier he gets, spraying spit out of his mouth and swearing more and more. Despite Vic’s anger, most people will find the video funny and it has had millions of views on YouTube. Because of the swearing, the video will not be appropriate for some classes, but the authenticity of Vic’s language (with captions to help understand) will fascinate many students.
Following up from this video viewing, it would also be useful for students to learn more about the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. This could again be done with YouTube videos. But rather than specifying which videos to watch, you could simply ask students to enter ‘covid mental health crisis’ into the YouTube search box. Tell them to select two or three short videos to watch. Having done this, they work with one or two other students to compare what they have learnt.
Finally, it is time to watch Ben’s vlog. The suggested task in the lesson notes that accompany this video asks learners to imagine they are one of Ben’s friends and to write a comment on his channel to encourage and support him. I would probably be less prescriptive, preferring to allow students to respond to the vlog in any way they choose. I would also want this to be a collaborative task, requiring discussion first.
If you would like to see more Ready to Run videos that can be used for social-emotional learning (SEL) in an ELT environment we have prepared this collection (password: Ready2Run) from our catalogue of 225 graded authentic video units.