BrainWise-Savvy Teens Analyze Toy Story 5’s Characters

Posted On: July 31, 2026

For more than 15 years, high school students involved in Young Rotary community service projects have successfully taught and reinforced BrainWise lessons to elementary school students as well as their peers.

The teens’ reach has been extended with communication platforms such as Zoom. BrainWise-trained teens teach and reinforce the 10 Wise Ways to children and youth not only in their communities, but also across the country and internationally. Future newsletters will feature these growing initiatives.

Toy Story 5 and BrainWise. Popular books, animations, and movies become powerful teaching tools when children use the 10 Wise Ways to explain the Wizard Brain and Lizard Brain behaviors of characters. Toy Story 5 is the first film in the Pixar series to center its story on screens and tablets—highlighting struggles with screen time, strained relationships, tech addiction, digital distraction, and the emotional fallout that follows.

Supervised teen instructors guide students through selected scenes, using the 10 Wise Ways to highlight Wizard Brain and Lizard Brain thinking, recognize support resources, identify red flag warnings, and describe emotions and where they land on the emotions elevator. Other examples include separating facts from opinions, identifying choices, considering consequences, setting goals, and communicating effectively.

Impact of Teen Instructors. These powerful lessons have even greater impact because they are delivered by BrainWise-trained teens. Their ability to connect with younger students–proven by peer education research–transforms Toy Story 5 into more than a movie—it becomes a shared language to stop and think and builds and strengthens important brain connections. Through the teens’ guidance, children learn that they are not alone in their struggles and that they have practical tools to make wise choices in their own lives.

Read more about a future project which will involve Navajo, Colorado, and Irish high school students trained in BrainWise collaborating through platforms like Zoom to promote the use of teen suicide prevention hotlines. https://conta.cc/4wYE9vX

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