What was the situation?
On one occasion at Forest School Youth Club we had had quite a challenging morning that had started with negative comments from one young person to another. The atmosphere in the group was tense, and most of the young became increasingly disrespectful to each other and the staff.
What was the intervention?
At lunch time I explained we were going to do an exercise where we would get a chance to say how we were feeling in a safe space. I used a stick as the talk prop. Each person, including staff, when holding the stick, could say what they had felt about the morning freely and what they wanted to happen in the afternoon, no one was to interrupt, challenge or comment on what the speaker had said, we all just had to listen to each other.
What was the outcome?
This allowed everyone to express themselves without the fear of another argument starting and it cleared the air, we then had a very productive afternoon. The exercise was repeated at the end of the session as part of the daily reflection and all said the day had improved and we as a group put the talking stick on the fire as our gratitude activity.
