WINDOWS AND MIRRORS
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Children
SESSION 7: LET'S TALK
BY BY GABRIELLE FARREL, NATALIE FENIMORE AND JENICE VIEW SUSAN LAWRENCE, MANAGING EDITOR/DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR AISHA HAUSER, CHILDREN AND FAMILIES PROGRAM DIRECTOR/DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR
© Copyright 2009 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 11/8/2014 11:48:59 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
SESSION OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides. — Rita Mae Brown, author and activist
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation. — Angela Carter, 20th-century British author
If we are to achieve the beloved community that liberal religion seeks to create, we must maintain a discipline of deep listening. Even though we may think of a smile as a universal affirmation, the activities and stories in this session demonstrate that we cannot make assumptions about what people mean to say, nor can we assume others will automatically understand us. Making the effort to communicate and understand one another is both a practical and spiritual task. This session guides participants to understand their responsibility to be both self-aware of their communications and aware of how others might receive them.
The Alternate Activities offer exploration of various forms of communication from music and movement to languages used with English, including Pig Latin, Morse code, and American Sign Language.
Consider inviting a bilingual guest to attend this session and translate the stories into another language as you read them aloud. It might be even more fun to have two guests, one a foreign language interpreter and another using American Sign Language.
GOALS
This session will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
SESSION-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Create Your Own Language and Gesture | 5 |
Activity 2: Story — The Curse of Babel | 5 |
Activity 3: Story — The Day of Pentecost | 10 |
Activity 4: Game — Let's Talk and Listen | 10 |
Activity 5: Ways to Communicate a Welcome | 5 |
Activity 6: Window/Mirror Panel | 15 |
Faith in Action: Practicing What We Speak | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Non-Verbal Survival Skills | 15 |
Alternate Activity 2: Language Audit | 10 |
Alternate Activity 3: Music as Language | 10 |
Alternate Activity 4: Translating the Familiar | 15 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Find a place where you can be quiet with your thoughts. Make yourself comfortable; light a candle to mark the time as different from your other activities. Close your eyes and breathe deeply and perhaps repeat one word or phrase to separate yourself from the activities of the day.
Think about how you talk and how you listen when you communicate with others. You might consider:
Consider how you can share your experiences and insights with the children in the session.
SESSION PLAN
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This ritual welcoming reminds participants of the relational nature of the group experience. Gather the children in a circle around the chalice. Invite them to take a deep breath and release it, and create a deep silence for a moment.
Ask a volunteer to take a reading from the Opening Words Basket and read it aloud. Invite another volunteer to light the chalice. Then, lead a greeting:
Now we will take a moment to greet the people next to us. If you are next to someone who is new to our group, offer a welcome, tell them your first and last name, and learn their name.
Lead the group in singing the hymn you have chosen. Singing a congregational favorite helps children grow in their sense of belonging in congregational life.
If you choose not to sing, use a bell to signal the group to still themselves for another moment of silence.
Ask the child who lit the chalice to extinguish it. Ask the child who read the opening words to return the reading to the Opening Words Basket.
Including All Participants
If you have a non-sighted participant who reads braille, obtain the braille version of Singing the Living Tradition from the UUA Bookstore. The bookstore orders from an outside publisher, so order several weeks ahead.
ACTIVITY 1: CREATE YOUR OWN LANGUAGE AND GESTURE (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite each child to select a slip of paper from the basket without showing it to anyone. When everyone has a slip of paper, ask the group to read their slips silently and make up their own language to communicate their phrase. Suggest children repeat the phrase in their new language several times to themselves, to memorize it. Distribute pencils to children who would like to jot down their phrase on their slip of paper.
Then gather the group in a circle. Ask the children to turn their backs to one another and make up a gesture to go with the phrase in their special language. Tell them that, for now, this is a secret gesture they should not show anyone else. Ask them to hold on to their slip of paper and remember their phrase and gesture for later in the session.
Including All Participants
Read the phrase on their slip of paper to any child who has difficulty reading.
ACTIVITY 2: STORY — THE CURSE OF BABEL (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Ring the chime (or other noisemaker), make eye contact with each participant and read or tell the story.
Sound the chime again at the end. Invite one or two volunteers to retell the story in their own words. Then, lead a discussion with these questions:
Point out that in the story, God took away a common language to keep humans limited in what they could accomplish together. Ask:
Help the group discover through discussion that "language" can mean one's mode of moving, singing, drawing, etc. You might say:
All forms of communication are in a language, not just writing and speaking. There are lots of ways to find common language—not just words, but also music, physical activities, artistic expression and simple things like a shared understanding of what a smile means.
ACTIVITY 3: STORY — THE DAY OF PENTECOST (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the group you will now share another story about communication. Ring the chime, make eye contact with each participant and read or tell the story.
Sound the chime again at the end. Then, lead a discussion about what it means to share language. You might ask:
Because this is the second story they will have heard, children may seem "talked out." If it is difficult to spark discussion, move to the next activity, Game — Let's Talk and Listen. You can return to these discussion questions when you process the game with the group.
ACTIVITY 4: GAME — LET'S TALK AND LISTEN (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Give children a moment to find their slip of paper from Activity 1. Ask them to remember how to say their phrase in their invented language and the gesture they created to go with it.
Gather the children in a circle. Tell them:
We are going to experience something like the Tower of Babel and Pentecost stories you have just heard. You will have a chance to try and communicate your phrase to the rest of us. You may repeat your phrase and gesture as much as you like in order to be understood, but do not translate into English.
Now invite the children to speak the phrases they created in their new languages, all at the same time. Allow them to attempt to communicate to the group this way for a minute or so. Then stop them and say:
Let's talk for a minute in English, without giving away our secret phrases just yet. How did that go? Has anyone understood anyone else?
Allow some comments. If anyone thinks they know another person's phrase, ask them what they think it is and why they think so—but do not reveal the correct phrase.
Now form pairs or triplets. Ask the children to take turns talking and gesturing to communicate their phrase to their partner(s). Give enough time for all partners to try communicating their phrase.
Re-gather the group and ask if being in a smaller group brought anyone closer to understanding another person's phrase (but don't reveal the phrases yet).
Now tell them you will give them a clue. Read aloud all six phrases from Leader Resource 1. Explain that everyone in the group is trying to communicate one of these. Invite a few volunteers to demonstrate their phrase and gesture for the whole group, one at a time, and see if participants are better able to guess. To conclude the game, ask each participant to share their gesture and the English version of their phrase.
Debrief the game with the children; ask what was surprising, fun, or challenging.
ACTIVITY 5: WAYS TO COMMUNICATE A WELCOME (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the group for discussion and ask:
If you do not share the same language as someone, how can you communicate and be absolutely sure that person understands you?
Allow some discussion. Affirm or make these points:
Now offer the example of welcoming others to our congregation, family, or group of friends. How might participants communicate "welcome" to someone who:
Allow some discussion. Affirm ideas for welcoming that express awareness of a newcomer's perspective or potential needs, such as asking a blind visitor whether they read braille and would like a braille hymnbook; offering to help an elderly person find a seat for worship, or asking a new child their name, where they are from and what school they go to. Say:
When people come to our congregation, we need to let them know they are welcome here, and we need to be sure they understand. The word "welcome" is not enough, but it would be a good start. It might be especially meaningful to make someone feel welcome who is more comfortable with a language other than spoken English.
Let's explore how to say "welcome" in a few different languages.
Distribute handouts you have prepared or direct participants' attention to the "welcomes" you have displayed. Encourage the children to experiment with these and help with pronunciation as needed. Also, invite participants to share translations of "welcome" that they may know.
Conclude by asking the children if they know of people in the congregation who use a language other than spoken/written English. Plan when children can share multilingual "welcomes" with some people who may especially like to hear them.
Including All Participants
If the group includes participants who know another language, including American Sign Language or braille, contact them before the session and ask if they are willing to teach the group the word "welcome" in their language.
ACTIVITY 6: WINDOW/MIRROR PANEL (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Ask the children to bring their Window/Mirror Panels to worktables. Distribute Window/Mirror panel basket(s) and other materials, such as special paper cut to a certain size.
Invite children to add signs to their Window/Mirror Panels that welcome people in one or more different languages.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that the session is almost over and we will now work together as a community to clean the meeting space. Ask everyone to first clean up their own area and the materials they were using, then clean another area or help someone else. No one should sit in the circle until the meeting space is clean.
Then bring the group back to the circle. Ask them to think about what happened today that was good or what they wish had gone better. If you are running short of time you can ask them for a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" on the session.
Invite each participant to say, in a word or sentence, why it is important for them to be a part of this faith community. You may go around the circle for responses, allowing individuals to speak or pass.
Then ask everyone to hold hands and say together:
Keep alert;
Stand firm in your faith;
Be courageous and strong;
Let all that you do be done in love. — 1 Corinthians 16
If this is the first time the group is using "namaste," briefly explain its origin and meaning. Then, lead the group in the word and bowing gesture. Or, substitute "thank you." Invite each participant to bow their head to the individuals on either side and then bow to the center of the circle and say "thank you" together.
Distribute the Taking It Home handout you have prepared. Thank and dismiss participants.
FAITH IN ACTION: PRACTICING WHAT WE SPEAK
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Tell the group they will do an experiment, between now and your next meeting, to put the session's lessons about faithful communication into practice.
Distribute handouts. Read the suggestions on the handout together. Invite each child to promise to do one activity before the next session and prepare to share briefly what they learned next time they meet.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Reflect on and discuss with your co-leader(s):
Approach your director of religious education for guidance, as needed.
TAKING IT HOME
Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides. — Rita Mae Brown, author and activist
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation. — Angela Carter, 20th-century British author
IN TODAY'S SESSION...
If we are to achieve the beloved community that liberal religion seeks to create, we must maintain a discipline of deep listening. This session guides participants to understand their responsibility to be both self-aware of their communications and aware of how others might receive them. The activities and stories in this session demonstrate that we cannot make assumptions about what people mean to say, nor can we assume others will automatically understand us. Making the effort to communicate and understand one another is both a practical and spiritual task. The group discussed communication approaches to make a newcomer to our congregation feel welcome and learned to say "welcome" in at least one language other than English.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Talk about...
Exposure to different languages can help children understand that language is only a representation of human experience, one that varies widely from culture to culture and from person to person. Where do your family members encounter written or spoken languages other than English? Do different members of your family "speak" different body languages and does that sometimes cause them to misunderstand one another?
EXTEND THE TOPIC. Try...
A FAMILY ADVENTURE
Family members can join in the children's Faith in Action project and commit to doing one of the following activities before Windows and Mirrors meets next:
A FAMILY GAME
Investigate body language communication patterns in your family. Encourage your child and other family members to pay attention during your conversations to how many times, and when, their listener(s) smiled or nodded their heads. Make a list of body language affirmations that are universally understood—at least in your family.
A FAMILY RITUAL
For a week, challenge family members to start each day by greeting one another with "Good morning" in a different language.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: NONVERBAL SURVIVAL SKILLS (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
The children will experience giving and receiving nonverbal affirmations. Form two groups—speakers and listeners—and pair each speaker with a listener. Now ask the listeners to count off by fours and come receive special instructions from you, out of the earshot of the speakers:
Make sure all understand what you mean by "nonverbal affirmation."
Send the listeners back to their speakers. Give the speakers a subject prompt, such as their favorite vacation or the funniest thing that ever happened to them. Allow the speakers one minute to speak to the listeners, who follow the directions for their subgroup.
Re-gather everyone and ask the speakers to evaluate the quality of their listener's listening, on a scale of one to ten. Discuss the mixed messages speakers received from some of the listeners. Say:
Now we are going to hear about an American Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria who faced a similar problem.
Ring the chime to begin the story.
After the story, ring the chime again.
Help the group identify Elizabeth 's nonverbal communication difficulty and the problems that ensued (head nod vs. head shake). Ask volunteers to identify the adaptations Elizabeth made to deal with this difficulty:
Ask the group:
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: LANGUAGE AUDIT (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the group and invite them to participate in a survey of the activities they like most. Tell them to raise their hand for each activity you name that they like to do. They can raise their hands for more than one activity.
Read the activities, one at a time, using tally marks to record the number of responses to each.
You may comment on the numbers when the list is done, but refrain from commenting on individuals' choices (e.g., "I'm surprised you like to dance, Mary.")
Form at least four groups according to the activities children say they like to do. (You may have to merge some activities into a broader category such as active sports, indoor games, traveling.) Then, invite the groups to think of the activity they chose as a language. Ask the small groups to come up with a way to say "welcome" in the language of reading, singing, building, etc. Give groups about five minutes to find a way to present their "welcome" to the larger group.
Allow each group a minute to present. Then, ask the group, "How in our congregation do we use these languages? What is the message we are giving in the way we read (dance, play, etc.)?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 3: MUSIC AS LANGUAGE (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
In this activity, children hear (and/or learn) a simple children's song in another language. After children hear a song, invite them to guess its meaning, based on the melody, tempo, voices singing, and mood of the song: Is it happy or sad, reverent or fun? Are children singing to one another, or adults to children? Does it sound as if the singers are counting, or saying people's names? If you choose to teach a song, ask the children to guess its meaning only after they have learned the song.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 4: TRANSLATING THE FAMILIAR (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
In this activity, two or three groups of children will translate the words to "Spirit of Life" into Morse code, Pig Latin and/or (optional) ASL. To save time, invite them to translate just the first line: "Spirit of Life, come unto me."
Form the groups and distribute the Morse code and Pig Latin newsprint and the ASL chart. Indicate where you have posted the words "Spirit of Life, come unto me."
Give groups five to seven minutes. Then invite each group to share their translation with the larger group. After each demonstration, ask the audience (the other group(s)) to determine which word, gesture or sound means "life" and imitate the word.
Together, ask the entire group to create a dance using the word, gesture, and sound for "life." Dance becomes yet another means of communicating.
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: SESSION 7:
STORY 1: THE CURSE OF BABEL
Adapted from Hebrew scripture, Genesis 11:1-9.
Tell the group this story comes from Hebrew scripture. In this bible story, God is a character that has a particular relationship with humans. Invite the children to be observant about that relationship as they hear the story.
Long ago, all the peoples of the Earth shared one language. They all spoke the same way and understood one another's words without a problem. This was true until one time, when a group of people journeying westward came to a place called Shinar , where they chose to settle down and build themselves a city. First they formed their bricks and burned them so they would be hard stones for building. Then they gathered wet clay to use for mortar.
The people planned a city with a tower that would reach into the heavens. They wanted their tower to be so grand that it would demonstrate how much human beings could accomplish, and so tall it would always call them home, even if, in future times, they scattered from Shinar far and wide across the Earth.
God came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. God was impressed, but concerned. "Behold," God said. "The people is one, and they have all one language. Look what they have built together! Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined they can do."
God gathered some helping spirits and said, "Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." Without a common language, the people's work on the tower came to a halt. They separated into groups and scattered away from Shinar , taking all their different languages with them.
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: SESSION 7:
STORY 2: THE DAY OF PENTECOST
Adapted from a June 6, 2004, sermon by Rev. Robert M. Hardies delivered at All Souls Church, Unitarian, Washington, DC. Used with permission.
Tell the group this story, "The Day of Pentecost," comes from Christian scripture. It is in the Book of Acts, 2:1-13. While God is mentioned in this story, the Holy Spirit is also mentioned. Ask children to notice the role the Holy Spirit plays in the story.
A group of Jesus' followers gathered together in Jerusalem, after Jesus' death. No sooner have they met than the wind starts kicking up, with a loud rushing sound. Then fire flashes down from out of the heavens, in the form of forked tongues, and a fiery forked tongue comes to sit and flicker on the head of everyone who is there. And they start to talk in strange languages. Languages no one ever heard before. Languages that should not make any sense.
Now, all this ruckus begins to attract attention. People from different cultures and languages start to gather 'round to see what is going on. They hear Jesus' followers talking in a strange language, yet they can each understand what is being said. Each and every one is bewildered, because each one hears the words in their own native language. Parthians, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, people from Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to the Cyrene, Cretans, Arabs and visitors from Rome "It is a miracle!" they say. "What does this mean? Is something magical translating the words so we can all understand?"
Some Christians call this story "the miracle of Pentecost." This story inspired a religious movement called Pentecostalism, whose followers see speaking in tongues as a gift from God. If you go to a Pentecostal church, you might hear worshippers utter ecstatic, unintelligible words. This is a way of showing that one has the Holy Spirit inside of them. Some believe the gift of tongues makes people better able to communicate with God, and with others.
Unitarian Universalists also care about understanding every person, no matter what language they speak. We do not want language barriers to stop us from bonding with others and sharing our love and care for our world. A Unitarian Universalist might say, "The wind and the fire and the strange languages are not the real miracles of Pentecost. The real miracle was that here you have all these people talking about what they believe, each in a different language, but EVERYONE who is listening hears them in their OWN language. They all ask: 'How is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?'"
What happened at Pentecost is sort of like what happens at the United Nations building. You know, one person gives a speech, but everyone else has those little earpieces on so they can hear in their own language...thanks to those frantic translators sitting in the glass booths. But in THIS story, it's the Spirit that's doing the translating. That's the miracle. The miracle of Pentecost is that a diverse group of people started talking about their faith in different languages, but they all understood one another. The miracle is the understanding. Not the tongues, the understanding.
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: SESSION 7:
STORY 3: ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN
By Elizabeth (Vernon) Kelley, published on the U.S. Peace Corps Coverdell World Wise Schools website. Used with permission.
"I'll have coffee," I tell the waitress at a cafe during my first week in Bulgaria . She shakes her head from side to side. "OK, tea," I say, thinking that maybe there's something wrong with the coffee machine. Again, she shakes her head. "Um... .cola?" Once more, she shakes her head. By now, she's looking at me like I'm crazy, and I'm totally confused. Then I remember: A shake of the head by a Bulgarian means "yes," and a nod, what the rest of the world does for "yes," means "no."
When I began teaching, all this head-bobbing made communication in the classroom interesting. Although I had made sure my students knew about this cultural difference on the first day of school, we all frequently forgot what we were doing. My students would answer a question correctly or say something really great, and I'd nod. A second later, they were trying to change their answer, since they thought the nod meant they had been wrong. But the confusion went both ways. Sometimes I'd ask a student a yes-or-no question and he or she would answer with a nod or a shake, without saying anything. Not remembering the difference, we'd have to go through the motions several times before I understood. Frequently I found myself saying: "Da or ne? just tell me one or the other!"
I've come to understand the importance of using all my senses in a new culture, and of not making assumptions that a gesture or other form of communication... means the same thing everywhere.... I must make sure I am really listening and watching for other clues when someone is communicating with me. Here, a sound along the lines of a cluck of the tongue often accompanies a "no," and being aware of that helps me steer clear of confusion. Tuning in to how the people around me communicate has brought me closer to the people and the culture here. And whenever we slip up and forget to control our heads, the laughter that follows brings us together. Luckily, a smile is a smile the world over.
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: SESSION 7:
HANDOUT 1: LET'S TALK... AND LISTEN
Make a promise to do at least one of these activities before the next time Windows and Mirrors meets. Be prepared to tell the group what you did and what happened.
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: SESSION 7:
HANDOUT 2: MORSE CODE AND PIG LATIN
Morse Code
Samuel F.B. Morse, a Unitarian, in the 1840s invented a code to use with electric telegraph machines. Morse code uses sound to create letters, numbers, punctuation and special characters. According to a Wikipedia article on Samuel Morse (at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code), International Morse code is composed of five elements:
short mark, dot or "dit" | () | one unit long |
longer mark, dash or "dah" | (—) | three units long |
intra-character gap | (between the dots and dashes within a character) | one unit long |
short gap | (between letters) | three units long |
medium gap | (between words) | seven units long |
Pig Latin
Pig Latin is a made-up language used throughout the English-speaking world.
The usual rules for changing standard English into igPay atinLay are:
For words that begin with consonant (at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant) sounds, move the initial consonant or consonant cluster (at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_cluster) to the end of the word and add "ay." Examples:
beast = east-bay
dough = ough-day
happy = appy-hay
three = ee-thray
trash = ash-tray
For words that begin with vowel (at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel) sounds (including silent consonants (at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_letter)), add the syllable, "ay," to the end of the word. In some dialects, to aid in pronunciation, an "h," "w," or "d" is added to the suffix; for instance, eagle could be eagle-hay, eagle-way, or eagle-day.
A hyphen or apostrophe is sometimes used to make retranslation to English easier; for instance: Ayspray is ambiguous, but ay-spray means "spray" and ays-pray means "prays."
WINDOWS AND MIRRORS: SESSION 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: FRIENDS PHRASES
Cut so each phrase is on a separate slip of paper.
Let's be friends.
Can we be friends?
I want to be your friend.
We are friends.
My friend!
I am your friend.
FIND OUT MORE
American Sign Language
Many non-hearing people use American Sign Language to communicate. It is its own language; it is not a literal translation of spoken English, and it is distinct from French Sign Language, Arabic Sign Language, Russian Sign Language and others. Some signs use one's entire upper body. ASL has gestures and movements for many words and concepts, and an alphabet for finger-spelling each letter of the American alphabet. The ASL Dictionary Project provides an American Sign Language alphabet chart (at www.masterstech-home.com/The_Library/ASL_Dictionary_Project/ASL_Tables/Alphabet.html) online.