Goose Feathers

Examine how small decisions shape integrity.

Purpose

This activity helps participants recognize how repeated small choices shape personal integrity over time.

Description

Small team / squad roll playing activity. One member in each squad lies or breaks a minor rule that is safe to break in the environment. They then talk their way out of it and experience the rammifications of chasing Goose Feathers.

Key Lesson

You should not try to talk your way out of situations you behave yourself into.

Set-Up

Assign a team of 6-8 people. Divide the team into two squads. Each squad must have at least three people.

Time ~ 25

1. 1 min to settle into the team and agree on members in each squad.
2. 1 min to familiarize the game and think of what they want to do and separate squads so they work independently.
3. 1 minutes for each squad to have one person lie about something or break a minor rule.
4. 1 minute for the squads to stop and reform into the team.
5. 3 minutes for squad 1 to talk through the lie and counter the lier/rule breaker while squad 2 listens and tryies to help.
6. 3 minutes for squad 2 to repeat.
7. 8 minutes to talk about feelings and document takeaways.
8. 1 minute for team to return to class.
9. 5 minutes for team to share result to class.

Instructions

1. Separate team into 3-person squads. Each squad will enact the activity on their own so one squad doesn't see or hear the other.
2. One squad member will do "something wrong" while two others observe and hear them do it. (Either lie or defy a rule that is ok in this learning environment.)
3. Bring the squads back together into a team.
4. Have squad 1's lier or rule breaker talk their way out of a situation they behaved themselve into.
5. Have squad 1's members challenge and counter the lier.
6. Have squad 2's members try and make sense of the lies and challenges. Try and make the person tell the truth, or propose ways to hold them accountable.
7. Have squad 1's member admit they did it. Give all others a change to react to the admission.
8. Repeat the drill with squad 2's lier/rule breaker and squad 2 membes challenge and counter while squad 1's members wade through the lies and statements.
9. Then have squad 2's lier/rule breaker admit what they did. Five all others a change to react to the admission.
10. Use the Goose Feathers form to record your feelings, general impressions and takeaways gained from spreading Loose Goose Feathers.

Reflection

• Doing something wrong is in a way like gossiping. When you gossip or spread lies, your words spread in the wind. Trying to recollecting them is exhausting and often impossible. And you look quite foolish trying.
• What did lying (or other breaks of oath/rules that you saw) do to trust? Should others immediately believe someone whose lips are moving?
• How did you feel trying to talk your way out of a situation you behaved your way into?
• How does it make you feel about others that deceive or break rules and try to talk their way out of it? Do you lose trust in them?
• Should others lose trust in you for not amitting your transgression?
Did feelings, trust or a path to regain a relationship emerge when someone admitted their lie, mistake, or their action?
• If you lied or broke a rule and nobody cared, would you not care anymore about telling the truth or follow rules? Would you care at all about integrity?
• If you could always talk your way out of situations you caused with bad behavior, would you change the way you look at promises and what you chose to do?
• How would it blur the lines of "bad" if you could always pay or buy your way out of your bad behaviors and didn't need integrity?
• If you could buy your way out, and had no use for integrity, whould you tend to think others would be like you- untrustworthy and always doing what you wanted without consideration for other peoples feeliings or notions of "what is right?"