Title: How to Like Yourself: A Teen’s Guide to Quieting Your Inner Critic and Building Lasting Self-Esteem

Author: Cheryl M. Bradshaw

Publication Date: 2016

Publisher: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

Amazon link for How to Like Yourself

This self-help book for teens was published very recently (2016) and therefore is quite current compared to other non-fiction, self-help books available.  The fact that the book is current is important because a lot of issues related to self-esteem that teens face today involve cyber-bullying and other online interactions.  Beyond simply being new, this book caught my attention because of its extremely down-to-earth, conversational, and step-by-step advice for working through life’s difficult issues.  The book also address a topic that not all self-help books openly discuss: the way that we talk to ourselves inside our own minds.  I found that simply from the excerpt I read, I was compelled to continue to read the book myself, and I feel it could be equally helpful for any of my future students, especially in the tumultuous time that is middle school!

The excerpts I share below are from the Amazon free “preview” because I was unable to order the book.  However, just from reading these excerpts and a few more pages that you can get in the free preview, I was compelled to believe that this is a quality book that teens would be able to relate to.

Core Integration:

One of the things this book encourages is paying attention to your own thoughts and tracking when you use positive or negative self-talk.  I thought it would be interesting to have students read the book and then spend a day tallying how many times they think positive or negative things to themselves.  Students could then anonymously fill out slips with their tally and I could use those numbers to lead a data analysis lesson for the class.  In the lesson we would create a scatter plot and calculate the mean, minimum, maximum, and define where the middle 50% of results lie.  This would help students stay engaged in a math lesson because the data would be from their class.  Also, the activity would lead to an important discussion about how the results bring attention to the fact that a lot of people struggle with negative self-talk and that we can work as a class towards improving our mental health by saying positive things to ourselves and each other.

• CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.A.2: “Understand that a set of data collected to answer a statistical question has a distribution which can be described by its center, spread, and overall shape.”
• CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.4: “Display numerical data in plots on a number line, including dot plots, histograms, and box plots.”
• CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.5: “Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context, such as by:”
  • CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.5.A: “Reporting the number of observations.”
  • CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.5.B: “Describing the nature of the attribute under investigation, including how it was measured and its units of measurement.”
  • CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.5.C: “Giving quantitative measures of center (median and/or mean) and variability (interquartile range and/or mean absolute deviation), as well as describing any overall pattern and any striking deviations from the overall pattern with reference to the context in which the data were gathered.”
  • CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.5.D: “Relating the choice of measures of center and variability to the shape of the data distribution and the context in which the data were gathered.”

 Related National Health Education Standards and Healthy Behavior Outcomes

• HBO 1 “Express feelings in a healthy way.”
• HBO 2 “Engage in activities that are mentally and emotionally healthy.”
• HBO 4 “Prevent and manage emotional stress and anxiety in healthy ways.”
• MEH 1.8.1 “Describe the characteristics of a mentally and emotionally healthy person.”
• MEH 1.8.10 “Explain the importance of a positive body image.”
• MEH 1.8.12 “Describe how sharing or posting personal information electronically about self or others on social media sites can negatively impact mental and emotional health.”
• MEH 1.8.25 “Explain positive and negative ways of dealing with stress.”
• MEH 1.8.29 “Examine the importance of being aware of one’s own feelings and of being sensitive to the feelings of others.”
• MEH 2.8.1 “Examine how the family influences the health of adolescents.”
• MEH 2.8.2 “Describe the influence of culture on health beliefs, practices, and behaviors.”
• MEH 2.8.3 “Describe how peers influence healthy and unhealthy behaviors.”
• MEH 2.8.4 “Analyze how the school and community can affect personal health practices and behaviors.”
• MEH 2.8.5 “Analyze how messages from media influence health behaviors.”
• MEH 2.8.6 “Analyze the influence of technology on personal and family health.”
• MEH 2.8.7 “Explain how the perceptions of norms influence healthy and unhealthy behaviors.”
• MEH 2.8.8 “Explain the influence of personal values and beliefs on individual health practices and behaviors.”
• MEH 5.8.1 “Identify circumstances that can help or hinder healthy decision making.”
• MEH 5.8.6 “Choose healthy alternatives over unhealthy alternatives when making a decision.”
• MEH 5.8.7 “Analyze the outcomes of a health-related decision.”
• MEH 6.8.1 “Assess personal health practices.”
• MEH 6.8.2 “Develop a goal to adopt, maintain, or improve a personal health practice.”
• MEH 6.8.3 “Apply strategies and skills needed to attain a personal health goal.”
• MEH 6.8.4 “Describe how personal health goals can vary with changing abilities, priorities, and responsibilities.”
• MEH 7.8.1 “Explain the importance of assuming responsibility for personal health behaviors.”
• MEH 7.8.2 “Demonstrate healthy practices and behaviors that will maintain or improve the health of self and others.”
• MEH 7.8.3 “Demonstrate behaviors to avoid or reduce health risks to self and others.”
• MEH 8.8.2 “Demonstrate how to influence and support others to make positive health choices.”
• MEH 8.8.3 “Work cooperatively to advocate for healthy individuals, families, and schools.”