Earliest Messages
 
 
WORKSHOP: Earliest Messages Earliest Messages (50 minutes) Purpose: To help participants explore and compare their earliest beliefs about people who are different from themselves; to explore how those beliefs came about; to understand the origins of our personally held stereotypes. Instructions: • Explain the purpose. • Explain that this is a pair sharing activity. • Explain that you will be posing questions and that each pair of partners will have two minutes to respond, after one minute has passed you will say switch which is just to make sure that both parties have a chance to respond to the question. After each person has answered the question, you will switch partners and be given a different question. • Explain that we are asking participants to think back to their childhood and the messages they received on different topics/groups of people. Highlight that these messages come from many different sources and sometimes that information is not accurate, non-the-less we learned “things” about different people. Please try to set up a safe environment that participants will feel as comfortable as possible in answering these questions. • Next step: divide participants into two groups by counting off 1, 2, 1, 2 etc. and form concentric circles or parallel lines. • Ask the following questions: ϖ Ask participants to introduce themselves to each of their partners and tell them a little about themselves and their work (give about a minute for this. Try to do this every time participants change partners.) Ask participants to thank their partner and say goodbye at the end of each question and before switching partners. ϖ Ask participants to share with their partner: ♦ Their full name, any or all nicknames and any story they know about their name. Were they named after a relative or a friend or was it a trendy name at the time, etc? Was their name ever mispronounced? (This is an easy question to get everyone warmed up and to clarify any confusion with the logistics of the exercise. It can easily be used later on in the program around trans issues and name changes, etc.) ϖ For each of the following questions ask participants to think back to their childhood and remember what were some of the first things or messages – whether they were positive, negative, or neutral—they ever learned about people who are different from them (as listed below). How and by whom were those ideas and beliefs transmitted? • Race / Ethnicity • Religion • Economic class • People with physical or mental disabilities • Lesbian, gay and bisexual people • People whose gender identity/expression did not fit society’s gender norms. ϖ Ask participants to share with their partner: • A time in your life when someone made your ethnic background, or race, or religion (or another aspect of your diversity) a reason to pick on or bully you? What was happening and HOW DID YOU FEEL? • A time in your life when you were discouraged from doing something because of your gender? “A boy shouldn’t do that…” “A girl can’t do that…” What was happening and HOW DID YOU FEEL? • A time in your life when you felt like the “odd” person, when you felt like you didn’t fit in. What was happening and HOW DID YOU FEEL? Large Group Discussion Questions: ¬ What questions were easier to answer? Why? ¬ What questions were more difficult to answer? Why? ¬ Where, and from whom, do we pick up these messages about different groups of people? ¬ How do we unlearn negative messages and stereotypes about groups of people? ¬ To what degree have you internalized those earliest beliefs about different groups of people?
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