A Lesson Plan from Life Planning Education: A Youth Development Program

Purpose: To increase comfort and skills for communicating about HIV/AIDS and to increase ability to correct misinformation

Materials: Leader's Resource, “If Someone Says...” (pdf)

Time: 30 minutes

Procedures:

1. Tell teens they will practice being AIDS educators who are responding to inaccurate or judgmental statements about AIDS.
2. Read a statement from the Leader's Resource and model an appropriate response. Ask the group to react to your response. Now read the next sentence and ask a volunteer to respond as an AIDS educator. After each response have the group answer these questions. What part of the statement did you react to? How did you feel about the AIDS educator's response?
3. When the group has read and discussed all of the statements, conclude the activity using the Discussion Points.
   

Discussion Points

1. What was this activity like for you?
2. Which statements were challenging to respond to? Which statements made you angry? Embarrassed? Confused?
3. Does the statement try to make other people angry or embarrassed? If not, why would people say these kinds of things?
4. What kinds of statements about HIV or AIDS do you hear from your friends and acquaintances? How will you respond to these statements?