Session 4, Lesson Plan

GOALS: 

• To strengthen the ‘I am’ muscle – identifying character strengths in ourselves and others
• To understand that our perception of a situation affects the way we feel
• To identify some of the negative ways we interpret situations

YOU NEED:

• Slides for Session 4
• Student workbooks for Session 4
• YouTube video

  Introductory activity: Resilience gym: ‘I am’  

SLIDE 4.1

• Explain to the students that the ‘I am’ resilience muscle is about being aware of and using their strengths. Tell the students to look at the ‘Strengths’ page in their workbook, and ask them to decide which strengths they believe they have. 
• In pairs, ask the students to identify at least two strengths they have and to give a concrete example of the last time they used that strength.
• Then ask them to choose one strength that they see in the other person and explain why they have chosen that strength. They should add any new ones to the ‘I am’ section of their resilience portfolio.
• To further strengthen the ‘I am’ resilience muscle, tell the students to choose one strength that they want to use more during that week and how they want to use it, and write this in their workbook.

My Strengths: I am…

Brave: I do what I believe is right and try to deal with problems, difficult situations and pain, even if I am afraid or worried.

Cautious: I am careful and don’t take unnecessary risks.

Creative: I have lots of good ideas.

Curious: I like exploring new ideas, finding out about things and having new experiences.

Enthusiastic: I live my life with energy and excitement.

Fair: I treat everyone equally and don’t discriminate against others.

Forgiving: I forgive others when they upset me or behave badly towards me; I don’t hold grudges.

Grateful: I am grateful for many things in my life and I express my thanks to people.

Honest: I tell the truth to myself and others, and take responsibility for what I do.

Hopeful: I am optimistic, concentrating on the good things and confident I can reach my goals.

Humble: I know my own talents, but I don’t try to be the centre of attention and get all the recognition.

Humorous: I make others laugh and can find the funny side, even in difficult situations.

Keen to learn: I love learning new things and mastering new skills

Kind: I am helpful and caring to others, and do nice things for them without expecting favours in return.

Leader: I can lead a group successfully, and help people in the group get on with each other.

Loving: I have close, loving relationships that involve both giving and receiving love.

Persevering: I stick at tasks and see them through to the end, even if they are difficult.

Self-controlled: I can manage my feelings and actions and don’t let them control me.

Socially intelligent: I can fit easily into different social situations and understand what makes people tick.

Spiritual: I have beliefs about the universe and life that give me meaning and purpose.

Team player: I am good at working with others and contributing to team efforts.

Wise: I can make sense of things and give good advice to others.

  Recap on Practice at home  

• Ask the students how they got on with analysing situations with SPARK. Invite one example to be shared, or give your own example, and ask the students to briefly explain the situation and run through the S, the P, the A , the R and the K. Ask “How did they get from S to A?”. 
  

   Presentation: Introducing the Parrots of Perception  

• Looking at both Sophie and David’s Situation, remind the students that by the time they got to the A –Autopilot – they were in the grip of a strong emotion.
• Ask how did they get from S to A?
• Explain that it is not the Situation itself that triggers our A utopilot, but the way weperceive or interpret the situation. Our perception gives us one version of what is going on, but people can read the same situation quite differently. 

SLIDE 4.2

• Show a couple of optical illusions or double reading images to demonstrate this.
• To help students understand Perception, ask them to imagine that they have a parrot sitting on their shoulder, telling them what’s happening. Our Autopilot (feeling) usually kicks in straight away, so we don’t notice that it’s the result of the way we interpret the situation – or what the parrot tells us to make us feel that way.
• Give some examples (e.g. ‘Your mother tells you to go to bed; your parrot says, “It’s unfair, you haven’t finished the game”, and you feel angry’).
• To illustrate the parrot analogy, play a YouTube clip of a parrot sitting on the shoulder and talking.

  Presentation and discussion: The Negative Parrots  

• Our perceptions, the stories we tell ourselves, are represented by Parrots of Perception. Some are more negative and tend to make us feel bad, or uncomfortable, whereas other are more positive and can make us feel good, or better.
• This does not mean, however, that the uncomfortable ones are always bad and the comfortable ones are always good, as we will see later. We shall learn about the messages they are giving us and when we need to challenge them.
• Tell the students that in this session we will be looking at the more negative parrots, but that there are some positive ones to come in the next session.

SLIDES 4.3-4.7

• Using the PowerPoint slides, present each Negative Parrot in turn. For each one, ask:

• Does this parrot sound familiar to you?
• Can you think of a situation where this parrot might be talking to you?

N°1 – The Blamer 

	The Blamer spends its time blaming other people, and sometimes itself, for the situation. Typical language includes: ‘It’s all their fault.’ ‘It’s all my fault.’ ‘They always do that to me.’ ‘I always do that.’ ‘They need to think about what they do more carefully.’ ‘They are so stupid.’ When the Blamer parrot is about, we can often feel angry.

N°2 – The Judge

	The Judge is very concerned with what is fair in life and what is right. It can be quite uptight and cares about justice. It tends to use language such as: ‘That’s so unfair.’ ‘It’s not right.’ ‘You shouldn’t do that/you should do this.’ When the Judge parrot is very loud, we can feel critical, upset, angry or sulky.

N°3 – The Loser 

The Loser believes that everyone else is better at everything. It doesn’t like putting itself forwards and does not feel it is as good as other people. It uses language such as: ‘I’m useless.’ ‘Everyone hates me.’ ‘I’m not good enough.’ ‘I always do that; I always get it wrong.’ ‘I always get picked on.’ ‘Everyone’s better than me.’ With the Loser talking into our ear, we can feel sad, embarrassed and even depressed.

N°4 – The Worrier 

The Worrier – not surprisingly – worries about everything! This parrot is worried about the future and how things might go wrong. At its worst, the Worrier can catastrophise things. Typically, it says things like: ‘It's all going to go wrong’ 'It’s going to affect everything.’ ‘It’s going to be dreadful/awful/terrible.’ ‘We’re/I’m not going to cope.’ When the Worrier is too loud, we can feel anxious, scared and nervous.

N°5 – The Whatever 

	The Whatever doesn’t really care about much. Sometimes it’s over-optimistic (and thinks it will all turn out OK) and sometimes it’s a ‘drop out’ (who doesn’t care how it turns out). Either way, the Whatever is not really interested in the future.   It uses language such as: ‘Who cares?' ‘So what’ ‘It'll be fine’ ‘I'm not really that interested’ ‘Whatever ... as if I care’

   Summary    

• Recap the five negative parrots you have discussed.
• Tell the students to think back about the Sophie and/or David situation. Which parrots were squawking the most loudly in their ears?

Practice at home  

• Ask the students to listen out for their own parrots. Do they have any that spend more time than the others on their shoulder? Tell them to record a couple of occasions when they have noticed a particular parrot. What was it telling them?
• Remind them about strengthening their ‘I am’ muscle by using more of the particular strengths they chose at the start of the session.

 

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