12 June '06 - Group work session #3 with children from Students' Care
This session was about anger management.
Activities included using one of the worksheets from one of the books we borrowed. It's called Counseling Children. Very good book, useful cos it doesn't just tell you the theories but shows you how they can be applied.
This time round, we used their territory. And it was a smaller group of 16 compared to the usual. The usually disruptive ones were not around, so those present were more or less the slightly angelic ones. Thank God!
I felt that WP and I were more prepared in terms of the tiny details and in terms of material. The kids were also more cooperative this time round and followed most of our instructions. One creative idea I liked was the balloon idea that WP suggested! I think that engaged the kids quite a bit!
However, having said that, I also wonder about the effectiveness of these group sessions. At different points, I felt we were running groups for the sake of running groups - no proper screening, we didn't know much about their background, only had verbal feedback from Sammi. I think when we talk about effectiveness, it comes back to what kind of results we want to see and then evaluate from there. Hmm, since this group sessions were designed with the intention of teaching them skills.. like managing your anger, relating to your peers, building your self-esteem. I wonder how much they brought back with them and more importantly, applied those skills into their lives. I also wonder how much is up to them and how much responsibility facilitators assume for the success (or the lack of it) for these group sessions.
It was disappointing to see that the very people we were trying to teach anger management to were also the ones that were so angry (cos they lost in the preceding games) that they refused to participate in the group work.
However, this 3rd session to me was good because, a significant majority were very participative and involved in the games and were attentive when WP and I were trying to bring across certain ideas.
Good job, WP!
posted by Ling @ 9:04 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Ling,
Its good to see you write about the group work experience. I sat in for a really short time but noticed the great difference between session 1 and session 3. Both of you were a lot more confident and i think the height advantage also helped them to concentrate on you. I was also glad to see that majority of the children were able to write down their style of managing anger. Perhaps something to look out for would be value statements like "that's not a good way to handle anger" when they share that they are the exploding kind. It causes them to feel shame and that they are not good enough. Alternatively, we can ask "what happens to the people around them when they explode" to bring across the awareness that others get hurt by their anger. I see that both of you are learning how to handle the issue of fairness and group dynamics better. All the best for the last session! ;)
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