Quote for the Day 1/22/08

While making German potato salad with the German language class:

Ryan and Jared: We need 1 cup of water for our recipe and we forgot to bring it. Can we go home and get some?

Me: You are so pathetic.

Later:

Ryan (to the other students): We asked . . . and she said we were pathetic, and that hurt my feelings.

Me: Silly questions get silly answers.

(And yes, I did hear the conjecture in the kitchen about the next blog's contents.)

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For today's Merit Party, Mr. Schrock orchestrated the playing of a game with underlying lessons about good and bad ways of relating to other people. Ahead of time he made five hats out of newspaper. He also prepared ten signs to be placed on the hats. After he had solicited and gotten 10 volunteers, he divided them into two teams of five. By turns, each team lined up on chairs at the front. Other students sat in a group facing them. Then he gave the team an assignment. One team was to plan a youth activity, and later, the other team planned a student chapel.

When the first five students were situated, he placed a labeled hat on the head of each team member. The person wearing the hat could not see the label on his own hat. However, he could see all the other team members' hats, and he was to follow the instructions accordingly. Then the planning discussion began, and each team member was to try to discern what their own label said, based on how the others were treating him or her. The next team later followed the same sequence.

Here are the labels as I recall them:

Treat me like a child.
Treat me like a leader.
Be kind to me.
Turn away when I talk.
Interrupt me.

Laugh when I say something.
Ignore my input.
Encourage my input.
Contradict me.
?????

After some time of conversing, Mr. Schrock stopped the conversation and had each team member try to guess aloud what their hat said. If they couldn't guess, the game went on a little longer and everyone tried hard to make it even more obvious by how they treated the puzzled team member. For example, the "child" was told that he would probably have to have his mother bring him to the youth activity since he was too young to drive.

The game was great fun, but it was easy to see how un-fun it would be to be treated in real life like some of these students were being treated in jest.