Educational Media Reviews Online

Anger scenarios, consequences, and solutions are the focus of this kit. Blow-Ups and Rages uses the words of high school students to talk about times they have been angry and how they have overcome their anger problems. As stated in the package, some of the kit’s learning objectives are to help students recognize the physical and emotional signs of anger; define the types of anger; understand triggers; discover healthy ways to express angry feelings; establish cool-down techniques; and learn how to listen more effectively.

The kit’s strength is that it includes both student and professional viewpoints on coping with anger. Interviews with a clinical psychologist are interspersed between the student scenes. Each of the four student actors describes a situation in which they lost their “cool” and expressed their anger in a way they later regretted. For example, one actor plays the role of a basketball player who flies into a rage after he loses a shot during a championship game. Later in the DVD he talks about how he has learned to control his anger by recognizing the negative consequences, and by learning to express his anger with effective communication skills. The psychologist then explains the physical side of anger and how a counselor can teach alternative coping skills.

I recommend this kit because it reaches the stated learning objectives and provides excellent student activities to use in the classroom. One of the activities is to analyze a real celebrity melt-down and discuss how it could have been avoided. Fact sheets are also provided in the kit. This kit is appropriate for school counselor collections and academic libraries that have K-12 curriculum collections.