Schools’ work: Friendships First

“If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.” Zig Ziglar.

Dream

Last week I met two girls in a local school, I’ll call them Holly and Eleanor. They have been best of enemies since junior school but now, after five years of nasty comments, rumours and YouTube videos, it all got too much and staff at the school intervened. Neither girl wanted to show ‘weakness’ so didn’t want to make the first move, but both shared a deep desire for peace between them.

What struck me as I sat talking with Holly and Eleanor is that both could tell me about the damage that had been done, both were very clear that there had been bullying on each side, and both had no clue how to make it right without the other apologising first. Do you recognise situations like this in your youth work?

I’m glad we have nationwide initiatives like Anti-Bullying Week to help raise awareness about bullying behaviour and ways we can all stand against it. I want the young people I work with to know they don’t have to accept bullying and they shouldn’t stand by while others are bullied around them.

I also want important movements like this to be defined more by what they stand for than by what they stand against. Of course we must tell young people that bullying is not acceptable, but we should also spend as much time telling them what friendships they can aspire to be like.

In one sense, what Holly and Eleanor have been through is quite normal; young people fall out, it’s upsetting, and it often blows over. What they need from us are the tools to fix it. Can we, as youth workers, play a role in teaching them about friendship? Can we help them to mend broken relationships, watch them build strong and committed friendships, and recognise the life that relational health can bring? I think we can and I think we must.

Develop

As schools’ workers we tend to divide our time between taking assemblies, teaching RE lessons and running Christian unions, which are good things to do. I’m doing plenty of that too. But if that’s all we do, I wonder if we’re missing an opportunity to be part of the wider life of the school. Do we just tell students what Christians believe, or do we show them what Christians do and who Christians are? We are peacemakers and relationship builders. We believe that Jesus changes everything, including our relationships, so we should have a lot to say about friendship. Consider these questions, either on your own or with others you work with:

• How would you explain true friendship to one of the young people you work with?
• How are your friendships different because you follow Jesus?
• What would you say to Holly and Eleanor?

Take one of these three contexts: a small group of five year ten students; a class of 30 year nine students; a year eight assembly. Think about how you might inspire and challenge young people to build strong friendships in these settings. What would you say and how would you demonstrate a meaningful aspect of friendship in each context?

The idea of not just promoting anti-bullying, but of promoting what a positive community could look like, represents an opportunity to serve a school near you. Think about the schools you already have contact with: do they have a strategy to combat bullying, or to build healthy relationships in the school community? Why not see if you can help?

Do

The aim of these resources is to introduce a conversation about friendship and get your group thinking about different types of friendship. They can be used in a small group or classroom setting and you can download the resources by searching on schoolswork.co.uk.

Friendship on the table

Using the words inside the ‘friendship scramble’ envelopes, ask the group to separate the words into two separate piles - ones that show friendships and ones that don’t. Discuss why they chose as they did. In a recent session, young people placed ‘disagreeing’ in the ‘not friendship’ column. It was a good chance for us to think together about why friends might disagree and how they can do it well. Of course good friendships can tolerate some disagreement and may even be better for it.

Total friendship game

The philosopher Aristotle said that there are three types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure and friendships of the good. Explain each one, giving examples from your life and ones that are relevant to your group. There are explanations on schoolswork.co.uk.

Aristotle also said that friendships keep communities together and that is true in school communities too. Challenge your group to make good friendships at school: it is the community that they spend most of their time growing up in.

Think about different friendships and how they might fit into Aristotle’s ideas. Place the envelopes containing descriptions of the three types of friendship onto the table and hand out the eight pictures of different friendships. Ask the group to categorise each relationship using Aristotle’s ideas.

What is different about each type of friendship? How did they decide which category they belong to? Did they disagree about any of them? None are better than others, but we could say that some are deeper friendships - friendships of the good (level three) are deeper than friendships of utility (level one). What would it be like if all your friendships were level one? What if they were all level three? If appropriate to your setting, you could explore what Jesus said in Luke 6:32-36 to really raise the game!