From the Emotional Support Classroom of a Suburban Middle School and a Teacher Certified in Both Positive Peer Integration© and the LANGUAGE OF POWER©...

1.      What's Your Favorite Color?

2.      Assumptions

December 2018

                              What's Your Favorite Color?

I had a student who was using his strong religious beliefs to justify putting others down, and/or judge them harshly, and as this student was getting older the frequency of these incidents was also increasing.  For example, he would often state man's superiority over women while using the bible to justify this.  In group he would often make statements about how the opinions expressed by others were 'wrong' (think homosexual equality) based on his religion/god/bible.  This behavior had the cumulative effect of alienating this student from his peers, and frustration from both sides was high as judgments against others were a daily occurrence.  No amount of 'reasoning' could make this student understand that his belief system was a choice or opinion, and did not necessarily make it true for everyone else.

So after a few months of trying other ways of addressing this problem with no success I decided to attack it indirectly in group.  When the kids were ready for group that day I gave them a few simple instructions and a piece of paper, they were asked to write down their favorite color and a list of reasons why their color was the best.  When it was their turn to speak, they would have to verbally defend their position (why their color was the best) to the rest of the group, and then they would receive feedback on how they did in supporting their color of choice.  **This is where we had a little 'luck' in the group that day because the student who was picked to go first took the task very seriously, the student stood up and walked to the center of the group and addressed the other kids in group like they were in a court of law.  The first student got a bunch of positive feedback on their approach and the next student who went followed their lead and also addressed his/her peers like they were in a court of law (also stood up in the middle of the group circle). This went on for about 5 or 6 students, who were all making great points about their color and taking the task like a challenge to convince everyone else......Well after about the 5th or 6th student went, the student whose behavior we were attempting to indirectly address spoke out to the group and said, "this is stupid, having a favorite color is just an opinion, no one's color is any better than another."   At that point we had an 'aha' moment with a few of the staff members looking at him queerly saying 'really, you don't say,' and before we could say much else the student in question put two and two together and instantly knew what the group was about.  Over the next few days whenever he tried to use his religion to judge others or tell them their opinions were wrong, we simply asked him what his favorite color was and he stopped immediately.  After a few days he stopped using his religion to judge others almost entirely.  

Assumptions

Faced with a handful of 8th grade students who were new to my program (meaning they did not spend the last 2 years in my room to gain the experience of the culture) and who were being negatively subversive in exerting their power over the younger students in group because they had 'problems' (assumptions) and clearly this 8th grade clique did not, I needed to find a way to get them to think about the assumptions they were making about the other students and if these assumptions were worth anything.

So before group began I sorted the 'group' members into 3 different teams that were purposely diverse, each team had members from each grade and the negative leaders were also put on different teams.  When group started that day I simply listed the topic as 'Assumptions,' and then explained that we would be having a team competition, then to properly motivate the teams I had 3 envelopes hanging from the board, each of increasing size; on the largest envelope read 1st place, and a slightly smaller envelope read 2nd place, and the smallest envelope read 3rd place, I then opened the first envelope to show the teams that it contained an undisclosed amount of cash money (now they were excited to win).

Each team was then given a list of 8 competitive events and instructed to pick team members for each event with the rule that everyone on the team had to sign up for at least 2 of the competitions (each team had 4 members).  

The list of events was as follows and no further detail was given about them:

1. The tallest

2. The fastest

3. The smallest

4. The largest

5. The fastest

6. The longest

7. The best

8. The fastest

As I hoped, as soon as the teams looked at the lists they started asking questions about what the events were, the questions were answered by repeating the directions of signing up each member to 2 events with no other detail.

Once all the teams handed in their lists of competitors I began the competition by going to the center of the group and calling out the kids who signed up for the Tallest.  This was funny because each team sent out their tallest member and I had them all line up next to each other and place their hands on a table, I then asked them to stick their thumbs up and with a ruler measured their thumbs......groans from some of the teams could be heard.  By the time we got to the 4th event (The Largest, which turned out to be the largest bubble with bubble gum) the kids could see what was happening and started to guess at what the next events might be.

The event ended with the ceremony of handing out the prizes to the winning team who opened the winning envelope in front of the group and counted $4, one dollar for each member (they were excited), but then the second place team opened their envelope in front of the group and they also found $4 in their envelope.....by this time the third place team knew what their prize was going to be.  

Before the group ended we spent the last few minutes talking about how 'assumptions' played a part in picking events and how everyone took the competition so seriously even though they all ended up with the same prize.

The following group began with a challenge that was very difficult and played on the students' assumptions, and no one could solve it 'until' I reminded them that we were still talking about assumptions; then some of them were able to solve the challenge.  We spent the rest of that group talking about our experiences with assumptions and judging others based on them.

**The second challenge was just 9 dots placed in a square shape, and the challenge was to draw four straight lines that go through the middle of all the dots without taking your pencil off the paper.  The students immediately placed their own restrictions on the challenge (assumptions) and couldn't solve it until they removed their assumptions about the rules.......

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