Middle School Students Learn to Understand the Perspective of Others

How much do you really know about someone? 

Learning to understand people for who they are as individuals and taking the time to get to know them without judgment were some key lessons that George Fischer Middle School students learned during a recent assembly from Dr. Mykee Fowlin, “You Don’t Know Me Until You Know Me.” 

Mykee Fowlin on stage

The packed middle school auditorium was buzzing throughout Fowlin’s performance, which was part lecture and part comedy show with many interactive components.  

Fowlin started his presentation by telling students that scientists recently discovered that bumblebees cannot fly, which puzzled the audience as everyone knew that bumblebees do in fact fly. Fowlin explained that scientists had found that by all scientific explanations, it should be physically impossible for bumblebees to fly based on their body size to wing size ratio. 

Then why can the bumblebee fly? 

To answer the question, Fowlin quoted an 11-year-old student who attended a presentation of his in another school: “Because they do not know that they are not able to fly.” 

Fowlin added: “Bumble bees really don’t care about what everyone says they cannot do. They still do it.” 

Fowlin explained to the students that they reminded him of bumblebees, and he recognized that they may have even been told by someone in their life that they cannot do something for a variety of reasons. 

“I believe that every one of you sitting here right now has the same potential as the bumblebee to do those things that people say you cannot do, if you can understand one important factor,” said Fowlin. “It's not just what you are given, but it’s what you do with what you’ve got.” 

A few minutes later in his presentation, Fowlin had students reading different sayings printed on T-shirts he held up. Some were funny and some were meaningful. One shirt read “What I if told you that you read the first line wrong” – purposely switching the words “I” and “if,” which students did not even notice while reading. 

Fowlin used this as an example of how when we are first learning to read, we see every word in a sentence one by one, but as we grow and read more, our brains begin to group words together to make it easier and faster to read, so we start seeing less of each individual word. This is something our brains begin to do in other areas as well. 

“When we interact with each other, our brains don’t see the individual. Our brains treat people as part of a group,” said Fowlin. “I want to understand you based on your individual self, not as a group.” 

He explained that too often we group people by their outward characteristics or attributes such as height, gender, a sports team that they play on, where they live and many other grouping options. But, if we take the time to get to know someone for who they are, we often find them to be different than we thought. That was a powerful message for students. 

Fowlin then performed short skits in which he personified different characters with incredible backstories that were not obvious on the surface, while also sharing his personal experiences. His skit characters included a young boy dealing with harsh words from a class bully, a college football star who wants his legacy to be determined by more than his abilities on the field, and more. 

Through his use of humor and open conversation, Fowlin’s messages resonated with the students, and the positive energy he brought to the conversations left students thinking about his message even after the assembly ended. 

Near the end of his presentation, Fowlin shared a quote he once saw on a bumper sticker that resonated with him: “Let’s all make better mistakes tomorrow.” 

“It’s not about perfection,” said Fowlin. “It’s about doing better today than you did yesterday and doing a little bit better tomorrow than you are doing today. I think that we can all do that.”