Inside Out 2: Ride the Emotional Roller Coaster
Learn how to unlock social-emotional learning with Inside Out 2! Engage your students in fun SEL lessons using Pixar's newest hit film.
As a middle school English language arts teacher, there’s so much about the adolescent years that is hard to address with my students without seeming dramatic or overly sentimental. However, when writing Movie Magic in the Classroom a few years ago, I found that my test audience (my own children) responded very emotionally to the Pixar movie Inside Out and it provoked some great conversations. It made the cut, and is one of the movies I use to teach social and emotional learning skills to my middle schoolers in a less cringeworthy way (If you teach middle school, you’ll soon realize that they think everything we do is cringy, so we might as well lean in). If you are interested in using movies with your middle and high school students, you can read about the book here. If this sounds up your ally, then head to see Inside Outside 2, along with everyone else who claims dependents on their taxes; in other words, this movie is perfect for the younger crowd, but even my 19-year-old college student loved it. This movie is crushing it, with Forbes reporting $600 million in its second weekend, and it isn’t just a fluke. Inside Out 2 widens its audience, and the implications for our middle and high school classroom are incredible.
Inside Out 2 adds Anxiety (making a whirlwind entrance with their “baggage”), Ennui, Embarrassment and Envy to Riley’s brain activity. One of my favorite parts of the movie is the way that the emotions connect with each other. It’s no surprise that Sadness and Embarrassment find each other very relatable, as well as Fear and Anxiety. This isn’t a movie review per se, but rather a look at how we can use this particular film in teaching, so there won’t be any spoilers! Here are three ways you could use Inside Out 2 in the classroom:
Acknowledge that Growing Up Is a Roller Coaster
One of the first things my co-teacher and I do in the beginning days of the school year is to overtly and somewhat awkwardly offer ourselves up to be “their people” and our classroom to be “their place.” We acknowledge that it sounds weird, but we want students to know that growing up is a roller coaster. Sometimes, you actually even puke. Sometimes, you have good news that you are bursting to share with someone, and we are your people. We will always be proud of you and celebrate. Other times, just when you are feeling good about the ups, things come crashing down, and you need a shoulder to cry on. We share stories of middle schoolers dealing with embarrassment (ripped pants, calling one of us Mom, going to the wrong lunch period and getting your food before realizing it and getting stuck with a tray of food while you are accidentally skipping class, to name a few), as well as the obstacles we’ve watched some students overcome. If you are interested in creating classroom communities, this webinar explains how we do it.
Explicitly Teaching that Naming Is Taming
One of my favorite things to talk about as an ELA teacher, of course, is words. If I ask you about turning mean when you are hungry, most of you will know that I am talking about being “hangry.” What about if you have a person in your life who pretends to be a friend but is truly an enemy? Clearly, you have a “frenemy.” Students understand this concept of combining two seemingly unlike things to create a “mood” or to describe a situation. Much of their social media revolves around this conflation of emotions. Inside Out 2 explores this concept well as it expresses the nuanced relationship between Riley’s emotions. I particularly like the way Envy reacts to Riley’s potential social success while Anxiety plays out every potential problem and Joy is feeling optimistic. I think it is healthy for students to understand that the emotional roller coaster of growing up includes all of the emotions, sometimes simultaneously, and almost always awkwardly. The brain research that goes along with the concept of “naming is taming” is going to be in my lesson plans when I show Inside Out 2 next year. You can read about it in “Emotional Regulation: The (Simple) Neuroscience Behind the ‘Name it to Tame it’ Technique.” Check out this assignment that will hone research skills, neuroscience and SEL to be paired with this movie. The longer I teach, the more I realize that the “hook” is often in the form of media that my students relate to, and this is going to be a great way to combine skills and modalities.
Everyone Rides the Emotional Roller Coaster
Finally, I think that reflection is crucial for all students, but particularly around transition times, such as the end of the year. Our final exam this year included a reflection section that required students to write a letter to us that shared their emotional ups and the downs. We needed to measure their ability to write grammatically correct and cohesive paragraphs, but we recognize that we can combine that task with a final “check in” on our students and their well-being. If any of their final exam reflections show a great deal of anxiety or depression, we have resources both at the middle and high school that we can provide. Additionally, the reflections gave us feedback on the “ups” that we provided (The Outsiders unit was mentioned numerous times, as well as the Digital Citizenship unit I shared in this blog and will in my upcoming “Cellphone Situation” webinar), as well as the “downs” we can work on for next year. (Sorry though, grammar isn’t going anywhere!) As always, I’d love to hear how you use this lesson.
Disrupting the Cellphone Situation and Navigating Social Media in Your Classroom
Watch this webinar to explore practical strategies and solutions that will help you regain control and foster a more focused learning environment. Learn from classroom teacher, author and union leader Amber Chandler, who will share her insights on the classroom trend of digital distraction and how to respond in a more productive and relatable manner.
Amber Chandler is a National Board Certified middle school ELA teacher in Hamburg, New York with a Master’s Degree in Literature, as well as a School Building Leader certification. She is the 2018 Association for Middle Level Educators’ “Educator of the Year.” Amber has enjoyed a wide variety of... See More
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