Fun with Character: It’s Not What You Think
The purpose of this exercise is to help students understand that we each have our own way of looking at things based on our own experiences. To be compassionate towards someone else, we must look at their situations from their point of view. The first part of the exercise helps us understand our preconceived ideas that prevent us from solving the problems. For each example below, read the puzzle and ask for answers. Let them think awhile before you call for an answer. Some students may be familiar with these puzzles and you do not want a correct answer right away. Once you either get the right answer or give the answer, then ask them to identify the assumption that prevented getting the right answer right away.
Puzzle: A man and his son are in a car crash. The father is killed and the child is taken to hospital gravely injured. When he gets there, the surgeon says, ‘I can’t operate on this boy – for he is my son!!!’ How can this possibly be?
Solution: The surgeon is his mother.
Puzzle: How could a baby fall out of a twenty-story building onto the ground and live?
Solution: The baby fell out of a ground floor window.
Puzzle: A man is wearing black. Black shoes, socks, trousers, coat, gloves and ski mask. He is walking down a back street with all the street lamps off. A black car is coming towards him with its headlights off but somehow manages to stop in time. How did the driver see the man?
Solution: It was daytime.
Puzzle: A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day of the same year. But they were not twins. How could this be so?
Solution: They were 2 boys of triplets.
The next step of this lesson is to apply it to being compassionate towards others. We need to understand their pain from their point of view and seek ways to help them. Being compassionate also calls us to be understanding when bad things happen to others or when bad things happen to us as a result of someone else. Divide the students into groups of 4 – 7 students. Their assignment is to come up with scenarios where we can choose to be compassionate. Use this as an example: a student is walking fast through the halls, winding among the students all heading for class. The student bumps into you, causing you to lose your balance but you recover without falling down. You can choose to get angry or you can give them the “benefit of the doubt”. (Be sure to quiz the students to determine if they know the meaning of that phrase.) Now ask them to brainstorm ideas that could justify this person’s need to walk faster than the crowd. (Heading for the bathroom, found something in a classroom that someone forgot and they are trying to catch up to give it to them, etc.). Each group should construct a scenario like this example and come up with 1 or 2 reasons for the behavior. After each group has written their scenario, they will read it to the class and ask for ideas.
When finished, process the reading with these or similar questions:
Were the puzzles fun to decipher?
Was it a challenge to justify other’s behavior?
Have you ever been in a situation where something happened to you and it looked bad but that was not the intent? Were you able to forgive easily?
Have you ever hurt someone without meaning to? Were you forgiven easily?
The next time something happens will you consider that there could be more than one reason for the behavior? Learning something new?