Educational Media Reviews Online

Taking risks and making smart decisions is difficult enough for adults. Can you imagine what it must be like for high school students? As adults, we don’t really have to worry about peer pressure, looking cool and being accepted; for the most part we’ve out grown those concerns. But for today’s high school aged teens smart decision making is perhaps more important than ever before. In Human Relations Media’s Dangerous Decisions: Learning to Think Before You Act the producers have developed a film designed to help young adults with risk taking, decision making, and becoming independent thinkers and learners. Dangerous Decisions is the ideal resource for professionals who work with at-risk teens who grow up in households where there are no positive role models to help them make smart choices.

Secondary high school educators, librarians, parents and even social workers can benefit from having this title as part of their collection of informational/instructional resources. The film speaks to young people who may be struggling with peer pressure, fitting in, and just being cool.

Although this is an educational resource, it views like a short film that will keep young viewers engaged for the entire 20 minutes. The characters in the video play out scenarios and articulate the consequences of poor decision making on issues like drug use, alcohol consumption , teen pregnancy, cell phones and Internet use. For each of the issues addressed, young viewers are shown the consequences of poor decision making.

I was especially impressed with the term “healthy risk”, a concept that was introduced throughout the video. Healthy risks can build confidence and self esteem – perhaps even lead to avoiding poor choices in the first place. The video is packed full with teaching and learning opportunities. Teachers will be impressed with the ease of developing lesson plans into whole units of study. School librarians will be impressed with the plethora of student activities in the Teacher’s Resource Book that support information fluency. As an academic librarian I know how important it is for school media specialists to collaborate with faculty. Both the video and the Teacher’s Resource Book can be used to enhance library/teacher collaborative efforts. This is a must have for all professionals who work with young adults.