For the first time, I feel the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator lesson went particularly well. Rather than simply lecture on the topic and rather than have students take some watered-down, fake version of the MBTI online, I was able to leverage the full-version of the test which all of our students had already taken on Naviance as part of their college application process.
I began the lesson by reminding students of the four pairs of indicators, what each meant, and that there it’s never as simple as a binary choice between the pair.
Students then partnered with someone in the class that they knew well, and tried to guess that person’s psychological preferences. After each had made guesses about the other, they revealed their test results from Naviance, wrote their results on a Post-It, as shown above (I’m the INTJ), and wore the Post-It as a name tag.
Students then walked around the room, looking at each others’ “name tag”. Finally, students formed groups, collecting those with like preferences… those who ended up singletons had to spread out and stand alone. As a class, we ended by looking around at the groups and seeing which classmates shared MBTIs.
Students were able to review the Myers-Briggs, move around, and learn a bit more about each other — all in about 15-minutes. I count it as a successful activity all around.