Inside the Classroom: All About Psychology class
By Naomi Sweeney-Feldman
“Think about that.” Coach Kintigh uses this phrase often to get students to think deeper about the current subject and think outside the box. Kintigh relates many of his assignments to the psyche of athletes and the psychology of our society today.
Last week, students watched and analyzed “Remember the Titans” a movie based on a true story about a two schools that became racially integrated in Virginia in 1971, when they merged their once separate black and white football teams into one. The moral of the movie is about overcoming racial prejudice and putting your differences aside to accomplish one goal. Before watching ‘Remember the Titans’, students were taught certain psychology terms to recognize in the movie. Then the class discussed how some things in the film are similar to our world today. Alyssa DiDomenicio was a student who expressed that this film, “helps me understand more about group dynamics, discrimination, and how we go towards things were familiar with.”
Then, Kintigh read the Dr Seuss book, ‘The Sneetches’ to the class. Watching a serious intense movie like ‘Remember the Titans and then reading a Dr Seuss book may seem vastly different but in many ways, they were quite similar. In this book ,the Star-bellies were entitled. They discriminated against the non-star- bellies In the book ‘The Sneetches’ with no stars switched and got stars put on their bellies. In the end it didn't matter because nobody knew who had a star originally, and who didn't. After reading the book and watching the movie students split into groups and compared both and saw how they are similar to today and how connected they are. DiDomenicio says. “This helped me apply psychological concepts to the real world, and also helped me see how psych theories connect to reality between types of behavior, types of decisions a person will make, and why.”
When leaving Psych class every day, you are always left with a message that you didn't know before you walked in. “Self-confidence.” Is something that Kintigh hopes people leave with after taking his class for the semester. Besides “Think about that.” another common phrase said by Kintigh every day is “Positive attitude plus positive effort equals improvement. In his opinion Psych “ goes to better understanding of society's trends.” just like his trend of saying “Think about that.