Last week, the 7th graders in our Building Better Leader's program at Scottsboro Junior High School learned an important lesson on teamwork. And not only teamwork, but how necessary is it for leaders to understand that sometimes communication - both in what you say and how you listen can make all of the difference. As we continue this semester learning about what it means to develop our leadership skills as we work toward a path for future careers, I have found it important to put my students in some fun predicaments.
This past week we used our meeting to play the game "Hot Chocolate River." It is called many different things and you can take the game and make the story line fit what you want it to be. The concept of the game is simple: the floor is not a hot chocolate river and you have to make it across the river without falling into it. The only way across is for your to use marshmallows (for us we made Frisbee's work) and you step across the river that way. However, here is the catch - you must be touching the marshmallows at all times. If you are not touching them, then they float away down the river and you are out of luck. The goal is to get all of your team members across the river.
While the students wanted it to be a competition to have the best time, I reminded them that the importance wasn't the best time. It was making sure that you didn't leave a single member of your team behind. All members had to make it across. Failure to do that would mean that you lose.
The students were eager to get started and it made it very hard at first for them to get the directions because they kept wanting to talk. Once I settled them down, I reminded ( and continued to do so the whole time) that a failure on their part to talk to each team member, make a plan and listen and communication would cause them to not pass the test.
And I was right.
All of the students were broken into groups of five and they had five Frisbees. As they moved across the river, some groups would have team mates that wouldn't listen to others, some were too focused listening to students who were not on their teams, and then some would start to listen then stop. It never failed that each team lost some of their marshmallows because they did not keep their feet on them.
We had one team to complete the challenge all the way through, however they were down to one marshmallow and everyone had to jump to get across. It was quite fun.
Our take away was how important it was to listen to each other and make a plan before starting a task. It was important to also share with the students that when they start to plan careers and make certain choices that they can not rush into things without having some type of plan. Failure to do so can end up with their "marshmallows" (whatever they may represent to the student) floating away and opportunities being lost.