A Lesson Plan from Guide to Implementing TAP: A Peer Education Program to Prevent HIV and STI

Leader's Resource for Four Corners: A Values Clarification Exercise Lesson Plan

Pay special attention when youth express an unpopular or minority position. Support the young person's willingness to stand up for those values by moving to stand beside the teen and praising the teen(s) for taking a stand with which others disagree. Do this without saying anything to indicate that this stand also expresses or contradicts your own position.

Clarify universal core values that are summed up in the ground rules. For example:

• Everyone has value.
• Discrimination is always wrong.
• No one should ever be forced to do or say something against his/her own will.
• Honesty is important.

Support a position that embodies a core value if none of the participants supports that position. For example, if the entire group disagrees with a values statement that "Everyone should have the same rights, irrespective of race/ethnicity, biological sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity," you might point out some basic human rights, like the right to be safe and fed and the right to speak one's beliefs.

As facilitator, remain neutral. When appropriate, you might express your personal value, but stress to the group that this is your own personal value and is not the only one or perhaps even the commonly held one. Remind participants that values are individual and that no particular value is the only one. Be sure to share your values sparingly; you want the participants to explore and clarify their values and how to act in accord with their values, not to agree with your values, however laudable you think they are.

If the session gets out of hand, remind participants of the purpose of the exercise. The purpose is to explore their own values and to become comfortable listening to and understanding values and opinions that differ from their own. The purpose is not to divide the group or to convince others of the rightness of particular values.

* Adapted from Guide to Implementing TAP: A Peer Education Program to Prevent HIV and STI (2nd edition), © 2002, Advocates for Youth, Washington, DC.

Reprinted from Creating Safe Space for GLBTQ Youth: A Toolkit, Girl's Best Friend Foundation and Advocates for Youth, © 2005.

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