Life Skills & Leadership: Unit 1, Session 5: Understanding Mental Models | Page 61 of 93- Give people time to work on their posters. Then invite interested participants to share their posters
with the group.
Note: If you have divided this session into two, use any extra time for participants to expand upon their personal posters.B. Summary
Summarize by saying:
“When you think about all the things that have influenced the ‘house’ you are building for yourself, you
probably notice that there are some influences you did not choose, like the family you were born into,
your gender, community, or culture. There are also some influences that you do have choices about,
such as the friends you spend time with or the values that guide you. The important thing is that you
can use all these influences to build the kind of ‘house’ that you want for your future.”V. Assessment (10 minutes)
Materials:
(None)
A. Visitor from Another Planet
Participants use humor to review important concepts from the training.
- Invite people to review the important things they have learned from the training. Say:
“I have invited a very special guest to join us today. This person is visiting us from another planet across
the galaxy with a highly intelligent civilization. That civilization has been monitoring our class and this
visitor has understood everything that we’ve talked about. Unfortunately she [he] cannot speak any
language known to us here on Earth. The good thing is that we Earthlings can easily learn her [his]
language. I am very familiar with it and I think you will learn it quickly too.”- Turn to the visitor and say:
“Do you, our honored visitor, have any questions for the group about values and how we learn them?”- Pause to let the visitor speak nonsensically, then say:
“I think our visitor is asking whether anyone can list two or three things that have influenced their
mental models.”- Invite a few people to respond. Turn to the visitor and say:
“That was a great question. Do you have any other questions that will help us review what we’ve
learned today?”- Let the visitor speak unintelligibly again. Instead of immediately translating, ask the participants if
anyone is willing to translate the question. (Encourage people by telling them that anyone can think of