Stand Up Activity 3 - I Don't Like This - I Don't Like You

I DON’T LIKE THIS

I DON’T LIKE YOU

12 months. 6 activities.

1 global movement.

junior branch

Introduction Welcome to Step 3 of Stand Up! This activity is focused on understanding how much different conflicts are based on the dispute in question (such as who has which role in a group, or how a certain resource is to be distributed), and the relationship between the people involved. To be able to reach a positive solution to a conflict, it’s important to focus on maintaining a good relationship as well as resolving the dispute. The activity is based on the idea of relationship conflicts vs disputes.

Before the main activity starts, the participants will think of their own history of conflict, which will be used later. The participants will be divided into groups who will each receive a story about a conflict, which they will read through and analyze/reflect upon. In the generalization part, the facilitator(s) explain the differences between relationship conflicts and disputes, and the participants will discuss the differences in resolving them.

To apply their newfound knowledge, participants will finally analyze their own conflicts from this perspective, so that if they find themselves in a conflict that’s about to escalate, they will see the warning signs ahead of time.

Activity’s Goal:

To make participants aware of how conflicts can take different forms and encourage them to focus on the conflict and not the other person/people.

A S K

Attitudes

• Willingness to deal with conflict and to approach it constructively.

• Willingness to see conflict as a way to develop social skills.

• Willingness to realize one’s own contribution to conflict.

Skills

• Ability to manage conflict that may arise in a group setting.

• Ability to use different strategies of conflict resolution.

• Ability to analyze your previous behaviours using a conflict resolution tool.

Knowledge

• Knowledge of how conflict can arise and escalate in groups, such as CISV camps.

• Knowledge of how disputes may turn into relationship conflicts if they are not being dealt with.

• Understanding how your actions can produce different results in situations of conflict.

The Activity Time: 80 minutes Recommended Number of Participants: 10-40

Materials

• Small (A5/half a printer paper) sized papers (1 per participant, plus a few extra) • Pens (1 per participant) • Printed conflict stories + timeline (1 story per group of participants, found in the Appendices)

Preparations

To prepare for this activity you should do the following: • Give each participant a slip of paper and a pen • Make sure you have the stories ready to hand out

Do: 25 minutes • Ask participants to remember a conflict that they have been a part of, and write it down on a slip of paper. A suggestion is to either write it like a story, or as a bullet point list. (5 min)

Split the participants into groups of 5 people.

• Give each group a conflict story. (see Appendices for these stories and timelines, ready to print) • Ask groups to choose at least 3 important events of the conflict and mark them on the timeline.

• After groups have picked their 3 important events, tell participants: “In every conflict, there is an event that causes the conflict to escalate from minor/healthy/small to a large/unhealthy/major conflict. This point is called the tipping point. Where is the tipping point in the story you were given?”

Have the participants discuss this tipping point within their group

Reflect: 15 minutes After participants have identified the tipping points of their stories, have everyone come back together for a large group discussion.

It is a good idea to encourage every group to voice their opinions; however, this may take some time so use your good facilitation judgement! Ideally, you would like to hear anwers to all to these questions in the discussion, so a suggestion is to begin with the first question, and then asking the others as needed. • What about the 3 events made you pick them as significant? • Was it hard to come to an agreement about where the 3 important events were and where the tipping point was? Why or why not? • Did you recognise yourself in the emotions or opinions expressed by the characters in the stories?

Generalize: 20 minutes Before you move on to the Generalize part, explain the idea of relationship conflicts vs disputes based on the following explanation:

As conflict escalates, it tends to go through a crucial stage, where the focus shifts from being about the points of issue; a dispute, to being about the people involved; a relationship conflict.

Signs that a conflict is a dispute could be the people involved saying things like “I couldn’t sleep because someone was talking in the bedroom”.

It’s focused on the issue at hand, and how it affected the person.

If this conflict had escalated further, you could have heard the same person say: “X is a complete idiot and doesn’t care about anyone but themselves!” The focus is now on the other person, and loses track of the original issue and could be very hurtful for the other to listen to.

Ask the participants if they have understood, and if they haven’t, try to explain anything that wasn’t clear.

Let the participants discuss the following question in pairs for 1-2 minutes:

• What are the differences between resolving a relationship conflict compared to a dispute?

Facilitate sharing and discussion with the entire group, approximately 10-15 minutes.

Apply: 20 minutes Tell the participants that they will now be working on their own conflicts. They will look at their own personal conflict they wrote about at the beginning of the activity and create a timeline for this conflict the same way they did in the Do part. In this portion, participants have the option to self-reflect or discuss in small groups (3 people or less).

This is to accommodate people of different learning styles, based on their preferences.

The instructions are:

• Draw up the timeline for their, or one of their group members’ conflict.

(Use the back of the paper, or ask for a new one) • Choose and mark three important events in the conflict and draw a distinct line where the tipping point is.

• For each important event, answer these questions: –– What did you say/do?

–– What did they say/do?

–– Did the actions/words lean more towards a dispute, or a relationship conflict?

–– What other way(s) could you have acted to make the situation better, or worse?

Tips for the Facilitators Make sure you have read through the entire activity document and have a fair idea of what happens when.

Pay extra attention to how you will present and explain the dispute/ relationship conflict model so that you fully understand it and are able to explain it clearly to the participants.

The relationship conflict versus dispute idea that we’re introducing is generalised to simplify the activity. There are several other aspects of the idea that we aren’t bringing up. Encourage discussion, maintaining the outlook that there is no right or wrong opinion.

Explanation of Stand Up After the activity is over, please remember to present Stand Up to the group, so they can understand the educational purpose of the project and the content area of the year.

For example: Stand up aims to create educational activities for CISV’s 2015 content area, Conflict and Resolution. There will be six ready-to-run activities released over the course of the year for chapters, JBs, schools, and anyone else who wants to run them!

Take pictures!

Stand Up is an international project, part of the global movement that is Junior Branch. Let us know whenever you use a Stand Up activity in your chapter, or at any other event by taking pictures and sending them to: standup@ijb.cisv.org. Please also let us know how many people participated. These pictures will be shared on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/cisvstandup

Feedback The Stand Up team is always looking for feedback about the activities.

Send any pictures you have to standup@ijb.cisv.org, along with the number of participants who completed the activity.

We would appreciate if facilitators filled out this short evaluation: http://goo.gl/S2kABi

Record video!

Send us a clip of you facilitating or p articipating in a Stand Up activity!

• The movie needs to be in landscape format • Every clip should be maximum 1 minute long.

(Don’t worry, you can send in more than one) • The deadline for sending it in is 31th October!

–– Send it to standup@ijb.cisv.org

Further reading CONFRONTING CONFLICTS A Toolbox for Understanding and Managing Conflicts

Confronting Conflicts: A Toolbox for Understanding and Managing Conflicts

http://www.cisv.org/EasysiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=1903

Stand Up Facebook Page

http://www.facebook.com/cisvstandup

Instagram Updates

http://instagram.com/cisvstandup

APPENDICES

Story #1 Laura is a first-time leader at a village. The group of leaders is a cheerful bunch and everybody is getting along well from the beginning.

They joke a lot, stay up late getting to know each other, and plan fun and interesting activities together. Laura becomes renown for her energetic nature and acting skills.

As they reach the middle of the camp, some leaders express their concern over not reaching all the goals of the camp. The atmosphere in the leader group changes and people start showing stress symptoms. The leaders seize from playing during nights and the camp becomes more about work and less about having fun.

To Laura this sudden change is a disappointment. She agrees that the goals should be reached, but resents the “all work, no play” atmosphere.

She is the youngest leader and doesn’t want the other leaders to think that she only came to the camp to play around. Therefore she refrains from saying anything.

These feelings bottle up inside of Laura, and only show passiveaggressively. For instance, when her food in the fridge is eaten by someone, she walks out and slams the door behind her. She starts counting the days until the end of the camp. Other leaders notice how her energy is fading and try to ask about it. But she doesn’t want to appear childish, so she keeps her thoughts to herself.

After the camp Laura returns to her home country and has recurring nightmares about the camp. She doesn’t attend any CISV related events for over a year because of the bad experience.

Beginning of conflict

Now/End of conflict

Story #2 Erik is just about to start working on the latest partner assignment in school. The teacher has paired him up with Linda, a girl he has barely spoken to at all. On their first meeting, Erik and Linda decide they should divide the work and write one part each. They divide the work equally, both having to do some studying and then write a text for their next meeting, where they will put them both together.

Erik is ambitious and puts a lot effort into this assignment, reading it through several times and trying out different formulations to make the text feel “right”. When they meet back up two days later to put their work together Erik is happy with what he produced. Linda quickly picks up the “leader”-role in duo, which is a role Erik is used to have. When they are going through eachothers’ texts, Linda start commenting on Eriks’. She says she wants to cut out almost one third of everything Erik has written because it feels irrelevant. “I really think we should try to keep on the subject, or the teacher will give us a bad grade”. Erik had put a lot of effort in to the text and was very satisfied with what he had written. He thinks to him self that maybe she’s right, but it is her text that goes in a completely different direction than his. He figures that they could just as well cut large parts of what Linda has written and tries to find errors and irrelevancies in Lindas text. When he suggests cutting large chunks of Lindas text, she argees to some of it, but still thinks Erik’s text is way too straggly and could definately be shortened a lot. Erik says “I got the better grade on our last assignment, which proves I clearly have the better judgement”. “This is a completely different subject,” Linda counters, “and this paragaph doesnt even make sense!”.

“What do you mean doesn’t make sense? I put a lot of effort in this and the phrasing especially. If you don’t understand my superior writing you must be dumb!” Erik replies while scratching out half a page of Lindas writing with a permanent marker. Linda responds with throwing Erik’s papers in his face. “You’re so immature. Write your own bloody text if you’re unwilling to take advice!” Linda shouts and leaves the room.

Beginning of conflict

Now/End of conflict

Story #3 Valeria is a JC at a village. She is so excited to relive her village experience from when she was 11. Upon arrival at camp, she gets along with the adult group really well. When it’s time to start planning activities, everyone forms planning groups, except for 3 of the 6 JCs who decide that if they don’t have to be a part of the planning, they don’t want to.

For the first week of camp, she doesn’t really think much of the 3 JCs isolating themselves from the rest of the leader group, since they love hanging out with the kids. But as the camp goes on, the 3 JCs keep removing themselves from the group, and eventually showing that disrespect in front of the kids as well. They don’t come to flag time, they don’t participate in kiitos, they laugh during lullabies, and they distract kids while other leaders are explaining activities.

After the second homestay weekend in the middle of camp, the leader group decides to put on the traditional village game of ‘Peace War Peace’. The JCs discussed together the importance of the activity for the camp, and everyone was on board to ensure the activity had the intended impact. But, as the game was beginning, the 3 JCs let out the secret that eventually the kids would be destroying each other’s towns.

This made the rest of the JCs and some of the leaders quite angry.

During the leaders meeting that night there ended up being a very heated discussion filled with screaming at each other about how these 3 JCs never cooperated and were ruining the camp.

For the rest of the village, there was an unspoken tension within the leader group. The 3 JCs isolated themselves even more from the rest of the group, until the end of the camp when they kept speaking of how excited they were to return home. This in turn caused many of the kids to feel homesick and look forward to going home as well. Since the village ended, neither of those 3 JCs returned to anything CISV related.

Beginning of conflict

Now/End of conflict

Story #4 Yoichi was playing cards with a couple of his classmates, when Yuri sat down to join them. He explained the rules quickly and Yuri nodded.

After playing a round of the game, Yuri suggested changing the rules. “It would be more fun!” she said, excited about contributing. Yoichi replied, “But we’ve always played like this, we can’t just change the game! That would be confusing, don’t you see?” Yuri looked down, disappointed, and the next round started.

The game went on for some time, and Yoichi kept winning almost every round, loudly celebrating each time. Yuri looked more and more upset, and eventually burst out, “Can you PLEASE stop doing that?” “Doing what?” said Yoichi, shocked by Yuri’s reaction. “Stop bragging every time you win, it’s not funny”, she replied, her face red. “Oh come on,” Yoichi said with a tired voice. “Don’t be such a loser!” Some of the others giggled a little, but quickly went quiet when they saw the the tears in Yuri’s eyes. She put down her cards, stood up, and left the group.

The next day, at lunch, Yoichi came to play cards with the others as usual. When he got there, the circle of people went quiet. Yuri was in the circle, staring at him. “You can’t play with us”, she said. “Why not?

That’s not fair!” Yoichi replied. “Because we are playing a new game, and you’re too stupid to understand the rules.” Yuri looked down again and kept playing. Yoichi got really angry. “You’re such a loser! You can’t beat me in a card game, so you just make up your own! I’m going to tell everyone!” he screamed, as he took the deck of cards from the table and threw them in the air.

Beginning of conflict

Now/End of conflict

Story #5 Phil and Celina are dating. They were good friends before they started dating so they were in the same clique and have the same friends. After three months of dating, Phil breaks up with Celina. There is some tension in the clique, but things are civil and tame. Celina and Phil avoid each other, but still have the same friends.

After two weeks of being broken up, Celina starts dating Phil’s best friend, Oliver. Phil is surprised at Celina because he feels that she should have talked to him about it first. Celina doesn’t feel she needed to talk to him because he broke up with her.

Phil: “So… you and Oliver are dating now…?” Celina: “Yep.” Phil: “Were you going to tell me about it?” Celina: “I didn’t think I needed to. You broke up with me.” Phil: “Okay, cool.” Celina: “Cool.”

They walk away both a little angry with each other.

A few days later Phil’s anger has gotten bigger and he confronts Celina after school one day. Phil: “How could you do this to me!?” Celina: “You broke up with me I can do what I want!” Phil: “But he’s my best friend!”

Celina: “So what?! Just because you were stupid enough to throw all this away doesn’t mean other people have to make the same mistake.” Phil: “You’re a idiot!” Celina: “You’re a jerk!”

Every time they see each other in the hall they yell “I HATE YOU!” at each other. They have a class in common every day and sometimes they’ll yell insults at each other from across the room and the teacher sends them to the principal’s office. Phil and Oliver are no longer friends. Phil and Celina’s friends start to take sides and burn bridges with those on the opposite side.

Beginning of conflict

Now/End of conflict