Why Extracurricular Activities

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Why Extracurricular Activities (2:22)

“When I’m also interviewing and looking for a person, I’m looking for a person who has the ability to work well on a team, as well as to bring all their smarts to the group. So I need to know that there are other things and other extracurricular activities that you’re performing in order to come into our group and work as that whole person.”

Role models in order of appearance: Vanessa Wyche, Donna Blackshear-Reynolds, Stacy Shuker Reece, Shreya Dave, Gladys Henderson, and Erica Bozeman, Ph.D.

Quick Start

1) In the video we learn that extracurricular activities help you feel confident and boost your self-esteem. What do you think is meant by this statement? Give an example of how your extracurricular activities make you feel better about yourself and your skills.

2) By participating in extracurricular activities, you can “give back to your school.” What does it mean to give back to your school? How can your participation in extracurricular activities help you give back to your school—or to a different organization you might care about?

3) One role model said that when you participate in extracurricular activities, like the Girl Scouts or organized sports, you learn how to cooperate with others. She said this can help you attain a “common goal.” What is meant by a “common goal?” Can you think of a time you and others who belonged to an extracurricular effort worked together to attain a common goal?

4) Extracurricular activities can help you discover talents and skills you didn’t know you had. How could participating in an extracurricular activity help you discover more about yourself? Tell about a time you participated in an extracurricular activity and found out something new about yourself.

5) The skills you learn when participating in extracurricular activities will help you when you attend college and when you begin your career. How can skills you learn when you are young help you when you get older? What skills have you learned from participating in extracurricular activities that will help you for the rest of your life?

6) Participating in extracurricular activities will help you to become “well-rounded.” What do you think it means to be well-rounded? Why is it desirable to be well-rounded when it comes to your extracurricular skills and interests?

Video Transcript

Extracurricular activities are wonderful. They’re a great way of helping with you feeling confident. It helps you to boost your self-esteem.

I think it’s very important to do extracurricular activities because not only does it give back to the school, but it also allows you to make relationships with other people that you might not work with otherwise. And you can always learn something from every person that you need.

Organizations like Girl Scouts or organized sports can help you learn how to work with people, how to cooperate with people, how to influence people to gain a common goal.

Growing up, I played the violin, and I played the piano. And I don’t really play anymore, but those things gave really important skills to me, and they taught me to stick to it. They taught me to not give up when I was bad at something and to work through that. And they taught me the discipline of having to practice every day.

It gave me an opportunity to release some of the energy I have sitting in the classroom. But it also gave me an opportunity to discover some other talents and skills that I had.

And I think it’s very important for girls to stretch out and get out, do team sports so you learn how to work as a team. It’s very important when you go off to college and also when you go off into your careers to know how to be a team player, and sports helps you to know how to do that.

I think it’s always important to be a well-rounded individual. I can’t just be in the lab all day, or else I’ll probably go crazy. So definitely having other outlets, things that I find enjoyable, whether it’s just sitting at my piano playing for a few hours or getting together with a few friends and playing some basketball, I just think it just really helps me to be a better scientist because I’m more relaxed. And then when I come back into the lab, I’m more focused. I can really get a lot more done and be more productive.

When I’m also interviewing and looking for a person, I’m looking for a person who has the ability to work well on a team, as well as to bring all their smarts to the group. So I need to know that there are other things and other extracurricular activities that you’re performing in order to come into our group and work as that whole person.

Discussion Guide

Independent Learning Guide: This all-purpose guide can be used by educators, parents, and mentors to jumpstart a lively discussion about the importance of extracurricular activities.

Classroom Lesson Plan

What’s the best way to build skills for college and a career and have fun at the same time? Find out from the role models in this video how participating in extracurriculars like sports and music can do all that.

Classroom Lesson Plan: This step-by-step lesson plan is available to guide a more in-depth “before, during, and after” learning experience when viewing the video with students. This lesson plan is also suitable for use in after-school programs and other educational settings.

Empowerment Activities

Use Empowerment Activities as a fun way to reinforce the video topic and build community with your students.

Fun Page Activity

Fun Page Activity: What extracurriculars might be just right for you? Use this graphic organizer to take a look at activities you can try.