Difficult Questions
 
 
WORKSHOP: Difficult Questions 60 min Difficult Questions – Part I (Pair share role-plays) (60 minutes) Purpose: To provide practice in responding to the difficult questions that may arise in a discussion about LGBT issues in schools; to help educators recognize that they can have a wide range of personal and religious beliefs about homosexuality and trans issues, and can still be supportive and proactive in ensuring that actual and perceived LGBT students have a safe and supportive school environment in which to learn and succeed. Instructions: • Set-up this part of the exercise as a parallel lines activity with chairs. Have at least two chairs set-up facing each other as an example. Try to space the chairs with some distance between pairs so that participants are not distracted by their neighbors. • Explain to participants that this is the skill building part of the day. • Ask participants to count of 1, 2, 1, 2, etc. • Ask all #1’s to take their chairs to form a line. • Ask the #2’s to take their chair and find a partner to face. Help participants make this happen. • Explain to participants that this is a role-play exercise. Explain that you will assign each line a role to play and then will give them a Difficult Question. One goal of the activity is to imagine this as a real interaction! Recommend that the antagonist not give in easily. • Allow 3 - 4 minutes per question. • After each question, ask participants what was said that worked well, lead a short group discussion so that participants can learn from each other good techniques. • After processing the first question, have everyone say goodbye to their partner. Have one person at the end of row one to get up and move to the first seat at the other end of the row. Ask participants to move one seat over and greet their new partner. (switching partners) • Assign roles and ask Difficult Question #2. Continue the process through at least 3 or 4 questions. Processing what worked well after each question. • Have participants move back to the original U-shaped chair set-up. • Wait to process this activity as a large group until after the large group role-play. Difficult Questions – Part II (Large group role-plays) (15 minutes) Purpose: To continue to provide practice and skill building in handling difficult questions and conversations. Instructions: • Set-up this part of the activity as one role-play in the front of the room. • Ask for two volunteers to work on one Difficult Question. Assign each person a role. • Explain to all participants that at any point during the role-play they can say “FREEZE” and take the place of either of the two role-play participants. • Ask for new volunteers to switch places with one of the role-play participants. • Let the role-play continue until you feel the question has been fully explored. • Depending on time, do one to three role-plays. Large Group Discussion Questions: ¬ How was this activity for you? Was it, indeed, difficult, or relatively easy to answer the questions? ¬ Do you have any other questions that might be difficult to handle that you would like to discuss now? ¬ Are there any other strategies that you think are successful tools that you would like to share with the group?
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