Teaching Guide: Friendship & Dating

There is probably nothing teenagers are more acutely aware of and concerned about than their relationships with others. And understandably so. At a time when everything in their lives is changing rapidly, personal relationships are at once the most comforting and the most threatening factors of daily existence.

In this program, host Michael Pritchard and high school students in Detroit, Wichita, Brooklyn, and Gainesville, Florida, take a heartwarming look at how to create and maintain quality relationships. As one boy in Brooklyn said, “When I started dating, my Mom told me to treat girls the way I’d want boys to treat my sister.”

This material is from the teaching guide
for the video “Friendship & Dating“
in the 12-part DVD series THE POWER OF CHOICE

 

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

1. To stimulate young people to look critically at the nature of their relationships with others, and to choose for themselves what they want in a relationship.
2. To empower them to take the initiative in shaping their relationships the way they want.
3. To identify the ingredients that go into good friendships, and to sensitize them to the way their own actions either strengthen or weaken those friendships.
4. To examine the dynamics of boy-girl interactions, and to discover what members of the opposite sex both desire and expect from them in romantic and dating relationships.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. What are the qualities that make a good friendship?

2. What are the qualities you look for in a boyfriend or girlfriend?

3. How do you break the ice on a first date?

4. On the worst date you ever had, what went wrong?

5. When you first meet someone, what do you reveal about yourself?  How do you let people get to know you?

6. Why do some people on a date “act like Casanova Brown when they’re really PeeWee Herman?”

7. How do you approach someone you find attractive? What kind of risks are involved?

8. What are some of your pet peeves about people you’ve gone out with?

9. What do your pet peeves reveal about you?

10. What are the qualities you look for in a girlfriend or boyfriend?

11. A long-time friend asks you out on a date. You don’t want that kind of relationship with this person. How do you respond?

12. Two friends of yours are at odds with each other. They demand that you choose between them. You don’t want to lose either of them. What do you do?

13. How do you know that someone is really your friend?

14. How do you let someone know that you are really their friend?

15. “We trust friends more than parents,” says one boy in the program. Is that true for you? Are your friends more trustworthy than your parents?

16. How do you know if you can trust a friend with an intimate secret?

17. People you once felt close to turn on you and put you down. What should you do, if anything, in response?

18. Describe the groups or cliques that people you know associate with. Would you call the relationships within these groups friendships? What characterizes a friendship as distinguished from membership in a group?

19. What do you do if you want a person you have just met to become a part of your group, but the others don’t want to have anything to do with this new person?

20. When someone tells you that a friend of yours has done something that you feel is wrong, what alternatives do you have, and what would you do?

21. Have you ever drifted apart from a friend? Do you regret losing that friend, and if so, what could you have done to prevent it? Is there anything you could still do to fix it?

22. Have you ever had to break off a relationship? How did you do it? Could you have handled it in a better way?

23. Is there any good way to break up with a boyfriend or girlfriend?
24. Is it really possible to be friends with a former boyfriend
or girlfriend?

GROUP ACTIVITIES

1. Divide into teams of four. Each team creates and acts out a skit of a disastrous first date. It could be a double date, or two people could be the dating couple and the others play supporting characters like a driver, a former girlfriend or boyfriend, people they’re stuck with in an elevator, etc. The comedy comes partly from the contrast between the positive expectations of the daters and how they end when it turns out
badly.

2. Brainstorm ways in which people might meet someone they would like to know but have not felt able to
approach.

This material is from the teaching guide
for the video “Friendship & Dating“
in the 12-part DVD series THE POWER OF CHOICE

 

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

1. Write an ad about yourself for the “personals” column of the newspaper. (E.g., 17 year old athletic male seeks intelligent, vivacious female for weekend hikes.) Be sure to write it in a way that would appeal to the girl or boy of your dreams. Then, write an ad that the girl or boy of your dreams could use to attract you. What does this tell you about how you see yourself, and what you think you want? How well would the two people you described get along?

2. You are a “clique counselor,” and it’s your job to provide incoming freshmen with information about the cliques one might join. Write a brief description of the unifying interest of each clique and describe the people who tend to join it.

3. Write a scene in which two former friends who drifted apart after they joined different cliques meet by chance, tell each other off, and then discover they really still like each other.

4. Write an essay on the ideas about love that people are in love with. Focus on the differences between illusory love and the real thing.