south   bronx   educational   foundation

juntos podemos!                                                                                     together we can!

character development - sample activity

Communication

Purpose

The Communication activity (C) presents students with an occasion to develop a sense of trust in their peers and to exercise precise speech. Beyond this, C sheds light on the requirements for good common acts by focusing on leadership and docility to leadership. The activity is such that one player finds that he requires guidance, whereas the other must rely on his teammate’s “abilities” above his own. C contributes, as do all other Crotona activities, to character formation by providing the platform to better comprehend order, humility and detachment.

Execution (approximately 30 minutes for 12 students)

1.   The Group Leader (GL) begins by pairing students.

2.   One student is blindfolded and has to rely on his teammate to be his eyes.

3.   Each pair is given a bag of paper balls and should leave the room as the remaining students disperse throughout the room.

4.   When the students are situated, the pair reenters the room. The blindfolded player is fed the paper balls by his teammate and must rely on his teammate for direction, as his goal is to hit as many of the other students in the room as possible with the paper balls within the specified time frame – 60 seconds.

5.   At 30 seconds, the dispersed students are allowed to move for 5 seconds, after which they must remain fixed, as they were when the activity started. As the allotted time runs out, the GL should count down the last 10 seconds out loud so that the student pair feels the urgency to unload as many paper balls as possible with the time they have left.

6.   Each direct hit scored by the pair and acknowledged by the instructor or the assistant counts as one point (even those that ricochet off of a wall or piece of furniture). Each student pair goes twice, switching roles in their second turn, which immediately follows their first attempt.

7.   The team with the most points at the end wins. [If a team runs out of ammunition during their 60 seconds, they can gather paper balls on the ground while the count is running and then continue with their assault (note: blindfolded student must remain blindfolded at all times).]

Materials

One full bag of paper balls (at least 50) and one blindfold

Critique Points (not exhaustive, spend at least 15 minutes)

1)   Frequently students have difficulty directing the blindfolded student. Many times the direction they give is along the lines of “Right there! Throw it! Throw it! Come on! No! Right there!” The poor blindfolded student is left utterly in the dark, so to speak, regarding exactly where “right there” is. This is a clear sign that the student giving direction is not sensitive to his partner’s circumstance. Hence, he is not exercising proper leadership. The value of communication is preeminent: a person (a scientist for example) may possess by discovery, inspiration, etc., certain knowledge that may be highly beneficial for others to possess (in the case of a scientist, he may have discovered the cure for cancer).  However, if the scientist is not able to communicate that which he possesses within himself to others such that they share in the same truth of reality, then the scientist’s knowledge does little good. He must step outside of himself (detachment) and into his partner’s situation in order to attain the level of sensitivity necessary to properly direct him. With detachment a person is able to overcome internal pressure, such as his emotions, and external pressure, such as time limitation. This is essential for good leadership. The blindfolded student, on the other hand, must be willing to submit to his partner. This entails listening carefully and subordinating intuition to his teammate regarding the position of the targets. Without humility, a student may easily, despite his weak position and perhaps clearly known to others, fail to see the limitations in his situation and/or refuse to accept it. Instead, because of his stubbornness he may reject the advice and direction of his teammate.

2)   Individuals in a group must act in their proper relation (role) to execute a higher common act. Order is necessary for a person to fulfill his proper role, which in so doing leads to “success”. A person who acts orderly with respect to another person contributes to forming a degree of interpersonal communion in which both individuals act as one toward a good held in common by both. However, in order for a person to be ordered with respect to realities outside of himself, he must first have internal order. Without it, a person is at least hindered in, if not incapable of, moving himself to act in communion with others, regardless of his intention.

3)   A team will sometimes find a target and lock onto it, perhaps accumulating a significant number of points. Most student teams who experience this get bored with the “easy” target in a matter of seconds and tend to move to another one, which as a “new” challenge requires in some way an additional or new interpersonal communication – establishing (entering into) a new relationality with another (albeit in the case of this activity the “other” is a “target” to be hit with a paper ball). The GL may use this notion to discuss man’s natural inclination for expanding relationships in which interpersonal communion is enlarged through communication of self – the offering of self to another – and reciprocated communication, which is the fulfillment of the initiating communication. The formation of mutual self-offering is called dialogue – an expression of interpersonal communion. This “enlargement” is first and foremost an enlargement or intensification of one’s intention, of one’s willing. In this sense, a person must enlarge his heart to strengthen and expand his communion with others.

4)   Many Bronx youth wish to hold an activity’s main role, usually from a desire to stand out, to be noticed and praised by others ( to “look good”). C promotes the great and necessary value of serving another, of acting and being in a support role. The GL may emphasize that although the blindfolded student in the activity directly earns points, the teammate who specifies targets and passes the paper balls holds a necessary and prior position to that of the actual point scorer. This element of C is representative of the vast majority of interpersonal human activity done well – the person behind the scene, as it were, is more crucial to successfully accomplishing a common good than the immediate, external executor of it in that his action initiates and allows (sets up the proper conditions) for secondary action – in this case, hitting a target with a paper ball. A leader does precisely this above anything else. In his “initiating”, he lays the groundwork for another’s “success” and directs him toward the completion of what has already been started. All too often, youth seek the honor and glory of being supported, of scoring the points, rather than of preparing the conditions that permit the scoring and winning. C attempts to demonstrate that a true leader often does the less glamorous and more difficult task.

5)   The degree of perfection achieved in any human activity is normally dependent on the skill of those engaged in the activity. A skillful person with respect to a certain act has good technique in that act. However, a person frequently focuses on technique to such a degree that he forgets about the purpose of an act. That is to say, a person can easily get caught up in the “doing” without a sense of knowing how and why the “doing” fulfills the good pursued. In this context a person may easily move himself off course from the good initially sought because he does not keep sight of (keep cognizant) his purpose for acting. In the context of this activity, this error is most exemplified by students spending the majority of their allotted time on detailed descriptions of target locations such that the paper ball thrower takes few attempts to hit targets. Or, a person may be so focused on the end such that he fails to use the right means to reach his desired end. The right means are those that naturally lead to a desired consequence (end), such as the closing of one’s eyelids has the natural consequence of blocking light to the eyes. A common expression of this error in C consists of the unblindfolded teammate forgetting to have another paper ball ready to pass to the thrower from an excessive focus on the path of one particular paper ball – one potential score. The GL may draw out the common reality of these two errors in ordinary life: a student who spends too much time on one test question thereby not having sufficient time to answer other questions, desiring the beauty of a song so much that one steals the CD from another, pursuing material goods to such an extent that one neglects his family and religious commitments in order to spend maximum time generating wealth, etc.

6)   The students acting as targets must be at least visible. Oftentimes these students go to ridiculous lengths to hide from the paper balls. The GL and assistants should prevent them from, for example, crawling underneath furniture. After one warning, Demerit Points (DP) should be awarded for failing to follow simple instructions (10 DP) and for disobedience, which in the DP system is a form of arguing and therefore warrants 25 DP. Students should be warned not to throw the paper balls unless it is their turn to do so.  Failure to do so may result in DP. Students who quickly pick up the balls after a team’s turn do an act of service for their fellow students and may be awarded negative DP.