Boyz 2 Men Day 4

Today, we had many things planned. We had a trust/obstacle game with the boys. The goal of the game is that the boys are supposed to go around obstacles with the instructions of their team members and obtain an item. If the participant were to touch any of the obstacles, he would have to start all over again. It became confusing when the boys were unsatisfied with the teams that were chosen. We didn’t allow them to pick their own teams because that would lead to some of the participants being left out. Jerry and I decided that we should talk to the kids about the topic of bullying. This was quite an interesting topic; first, we asked the boys what forms of bullying there were. We came to agree that there was physical bullying such as punching and kicking. There was a contemporary form of bullying called cyber bullying. It included the use of offensive remarks on web sites such as facebook, twitter, or the use of text messages. It’s remarkable that technology can bring such terrible side effects. It was kind of hard to get the idea through with some of the boys because some of the boys may be bullies, themselves. We talked about the tactics in which bullying could be avoided. We came up with the idea of avoidance, involvement of a third party, or a guidance councilor. As expected, some of the boys came up with idea of ‘bullying the bully’ into submission. Such tangential responses seem to lead the group off topic and restlessness follows. Despite the problems that we had, we were able to do a debriefing. Most of the boys retained much of the information taught to them during the program. Unfortunately, the performer that we were supposed to have would not be performing at a later time because we have other topics on our agenda.

-  James