Powerful Choices : Series Two : Choose Courage

Courage is necessary when being assertive — stand up for yourself and defend your beliefs!

CHARACTER TRAIT:

Courage can be hard when one’s boundaries are challenged, but it is necessary if one wishes to retain their boundaries and self-respect. Learning the appropriate and proper use of self-assertiveness will help to retain self-respect and the respect of others. Having courage means that you do what’s right even if it is scary or uncomfortable at the time.

LESSON:

Through discussions with a guest speaker and/or in group work finishing scenarios of situations requiring courage, youth will learn creative and relevant ways to resist the pressures of negative influence, especially from peers and popular media.

Students will:

• Experience listening to and discussing with a guest speaker his/her personal encounter with developing courage, or discuss episodes in the lives of persons who had to use courage
• Define and distinguish the differences among passive, assertive, and aggressive behaviors
• Identify effective courageous skills to resist the pressures of peers and culture
• Define “courage”

Activities: (these include review of the previous lesson and this lesson’s poster)

• Interact with guest speaker through stories, demonstrations, and question & answer time
• Brainstorm the endings of scenarios that demonstrate effective techniques of refusing pressure in situations commonly experienced by local youth
• Discuss and define passive, aggressive, and assertive responses to situations
• Discuss how refusal skills relate to sexual pressure
• Assignments include identifying five ways of being assertive and developing a fictional situation where sexual pressure exist and creating courageous exit plans