Do you remember the scene in the Academy-Award winning film To Kill a Mockingbird?
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Atticus Finch hopes his kids can learn to get along with cantankerous neighbor Miss Dubose whom the kids would rather tease then befriend. He takes them next door to say "Hello." She's on the porch when he launches into one of the more poetic soliloquies in the history of film:
"Good afternoon, Miss Dubose. My, you look like a picture this afternoon. My goodness gracious, look at your flowers. Have you ever seen anything more beautiful! Miss Dubose, the gardens at Bellingrath have nothing to compare with your flowers...
I think that your yard is going to be the show place of this town."
And so our ability to create and maintain positive relationships with others is crucial to our success as leaders and as local and global community members. Relationships are difficult. They take time and work to develop, and need care and attention to grow—just like Miss Dubose's garden.
Hope Collaborative's learning module Relationship Skills helps lay the foundation for this critical and lifelong process. Learning goals for Relationship Skills at Hope include understanding different kinds of relationships and their import, identifying healthy vs. unhealthy relationships, using effective communication skills, developing trust and respect for differences, defining and respecting needs and boundaries, coping with negative feelings like shame and rejection, and repairing damaged relationships.
Media discussions are an engaging jumping-off point, and in Relationship Skills, we take a look at the classic film adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird to analyze the impact of communication styles on relationship conflicts.
In the second clip above, young Scout Finch steps in to defend her father Atticus, a white lawyer who is representing a black defendant in the 1930s south, from an angry mob that has formed outside the courthouse. Scout de-escalates the situation by leveraging her relationship with one of her neighbors, to whom she speaks calmly and politely while asking questions that appeal to things he cares about. In the earlier clip, we get a sense of where Scout may have learned this technique, as Atticus uses a similar positive communication style to defuse tension with Miss Dubose.
After viewing the clips, students discuss the benefits of positive communication while acknowledging the difficulty of staying calm in a crisis.
Often, viewing these scenes inspires Hope participants to share personal stories that relate to the topic, and to compare and contrast their own behavior with the characters onscreen. Students then go on to create their own stories about relationships, identifying skills and educating others based on the work they have done together during the module.
We're excited to share some of these photos of kids learning Relationship Skills!
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