Education United States Project #52283

Anti-bias body image curriculum for high schools

by Be Real USA NFP

Project Report | Dec 28, 2021
Winter 2022

By Denise Hamburger | Executive Director

Dear Friends of BE REAL,

BE REAL has had a very productive 2021. Your donations have has funded everything we do! We hope you will keep us on your giving list for 2021 and 2022! All 2021 and 2022 donations will go directly to creating our Be Real BodyKind curriculum for high school students.

This summer we had 8 fabulous interns join us from the University of Chicago and Harvard University. These are some of the projects they helped us with:

1) We are working with a team of academics from Ireland, Australia, and the University of North Carolina creating Be Real’s BodyKind body image curriculum for high school students. We are testing this in February in Brooklyn Community Schools in Minnesota. The curriculum is called Be Real's BodyKind. I taught this curriculum over the summer and this fall, learning more every day about the best ways for students to benefit from our evidence-based material.

2) Spreading our Body Confident Schools (BCS) workshop around the country. We are working with eating disorder non-profits in Georgia, Iowa, and Minnesota on bringing Body Confident Schools to their communities. We have different strategies for different states. These strategies include giving free webinars to educators as well as training non-profit staff to deliver the workshop.

- We have given our BCS Workshop 80 times to over 1500 educators

- I’ve spoken at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, the Center for Disease Control, Choate Hall, and Amazon

3) Our Instagram account #BEREAL featured our #UNDERSTANDING OTHERS series. We collected stories from people with different lived experience. We posted these stories to Instagram and gave background research on the issues discussed in our human stories.

4) Student interns researched the body image problems people suffer due to “appearance bias” based on a person's race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, size, ability, and socio-economic status.

5) We gathered material for a campaign to stop schools from taking students' BMI in schools. We have joined forces with The Student Body movie creator Baily Weber for our campaign.

6) We talked to Illinois lawmakers Rep.Robyn Gabel and Sen. Laura Fine about legislation keeping Diet Pills and Muscle Building Supplements Out of Illinois Kids' Hands.

7) I joined the Body Freedom Project, a coalition devoted to creating civil rights for people in larger bodies.

8) I've taken a leadership role in the Collaborative of Eating Disorder Organizations (CEDO), formed from the former NEDA Network of eating disorder organizations.

Thank you for your past support. We 100% rely on donations to keep our work going. If you haven't yet contributed in 2021, all 2021 and 2022 donations will go directly to creating our Be Real BodyKind curriculum for high school students.

Confidently yours,

Denise Hamburger

Executive Director of BE REAL

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Sep 2, 2021
Fall 2021

By Denise Hamburger | Founder and Executive Director, BE REAL

We are thrilled to report that Understanding Others, BE REAL's body image and anti-bias high school curriculum, is completed. We have done trials on the curriculum over the summer, and will be piloting the curriculum in the Chicago Public Schools this fall.

These are the lesson summaries:

Appearance Ideals and Appearance Bias - Students analyze their own body experiences and determine what has influenced their beliefs about what they are “supposed to” look like. They think about messages they have received from their family, friends, and the media/culture. This includes bias they may have experienced in society because of their appearance. Students listen to other people's body stories, gaining an awareness of how people of different sizes and abilities, with different skin tones, facial features, and gender representations experience the world. We discuss the impact of how appearance ideals and appearance bias have pressured people to look a very specific way. We analyze the costs of responding to appearance pressure in their environment.

Social Media, Comparisons, and Self-Compassion - Once students become aware of appearance pressures, we analyze how these pressures show up in our lives and in the media we consume. We discuss how self-compassion is an effective tool to cope with the negative comparisons we all make to the pictures we see on social media. Experiential exercises reframe the negative comparisons we make in our minds to kinder, more self-compassionate thoughts that will ultimately serve us better.

Compassion for Others - Lesson 3 teaches students how to apply compassion to other people. Students discuss how to create a kinder environment by quitting "body talk" and recognizing that bodies function fine in all shades, shapes, and sizes. We analyze how students' thoughts, feelings, and actions are more positive in a kinder environment.

Social Justice - In Lesson 4 students are given the tools to become change agents. They focus on steps they can take to create a better world. We help students create their own roadmap for taking an idea from an issue to action. They will learn tested, tangible steps to create an action plan on an issue they feel strongly about, empowering them to make positive changes in their communities.

Thank you to everyone who helped us create this valuable resource. If you have any questions, please contact us.

Links:

BE REAL's website

Attachments:

2 Attachments

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