I would’ve liked to have written this reflection a few days ago, right after finishing the topic of disordered eating, but I was felled by the flu, and am just now, three days later, regaining my feet.

Changes

Survey

In conversation with my Department Chair and the Assistant Principal of Academics, the APA suggested that we survey the AP Psychology students regarding the prevalence of eating disorders amongst them. Of 74 respondents, 5% report being diagnosed with an eating disorder, 45% report a close friend or family member with a diagnosed eating disorder, and another 18% report thinking they might have an undiagnosed eating disorder. (The full, anonymous survey results are available.)

As expected, this is a higher prevalence than the 0.5%–1% of the wider American population estimated to have disordered eating. In advance of our main/ planned class on disordered eating, Yosup found a pair of websites with helpful information. From one of these sites, HealthyWithin.org, we were both struck by a particular passage:

Do not show movies of persons with eating disorders even though the movie may show them dying. The majority of people with eating disorders will tell you that they learned their tricks on what to do from the movies. They are imitating the steps the person took in the movies. Most people who develop anorexia or bulimia will say they knew the purpose of the movie was to deter them from developing an eating disorder. They just left with a message that here was a brand new way to lose weight they had never thought of before. If you are showing movies as part of the health curriculum, STOP NOW!

This was in direct opposition to something that we have been doing for years: showing clips from news and talk show segments and documentaries. We quickly scrambled to change up our slide decks, removing those video clips. Instead, we both showed two clips focusing attention on how Media fosters disordered eating by presenting the unreal as real and attainable.

Videos

I started showing the opening scenes to a “commercial” — and then would pause it after a few seconds to ask if they could guess what the product is. Guesses varied: cover-up, blush, lipstick, shampoo, and skin wash. After doing this two or three times, someone in each class guessed: Photoshop. Students were amazed that photo-manipulation could change video — they knew they should distrust still images, but this was some new terror. (Students did chuckle and laugh during the video; it did release some of the tension that had been building in the room.) The second video that I showed was by [Dove][dove], and this was met with more solemnity — especially after the photoshoot, when the model’s picture was digitally manipulated. I froze the video with the model’s picture on the billboard, and we had a brief conversation about what being surrounded by such images does to the thinking of a young boy or girl. The message that I wanted to leave students with is: nobody looks like that; not even the people you see in various Media.

Conclusion

I’d really like to do a survey of the students, or have some third-party go into the room and debrief them on how the lessons on disordered eating went. That should’ve happened last week, when the lessons were fresh in the students’ minds; it can’t happen on Day 1 this coming week, because that’s when we have a test on the Emotion & Motivation Unit. So this is a note-to-self for next year: arrange a lesson-ending debriefing of the students (preferably in person, by a third-party, maybe Paul Molinelli?) A second note-to-self, and area for improvement next year is related to how I end the lesson. I don’t think I was as clear, as explicit, as I wanted to be. I wanted to communicate: “This is a rough topic for many because it touches close to home, either personally or as it relates to a close friend or family member. If it stirred up any strong feelings or thoughts, and you’d like to talk to someone, I hope you do — I hope you go to a trusted adult, and talk to them about this. It can certainly be Mr Joo or I, another teacher that you’re close to, a coach, someone in Campus Ministry, or obviously your counselor. We don’t care who you talk to, we just want you to talk to someone if this has been hard for you.” I talked around that, but I didn’t say those exact words — and I wish I had. Having said that, I feel that the lesson went well; better than previous years, at least. I think the curricular goals were accomplished in terms of students learning about the major eating disorders and their causes (we’ll circle around again to the treatment of eating disorders when we get to Disorders and Therapy). Further, I think we achieved our hidden curriculum of validating the feelings of struggle that many of our students face, and building a community of trust and support.