Healing wheel-chairs

Aims of the tool

1. raise awareness of the negative discriminative power of stereotypes and prejudices;
2. develope participants's skill to identify discriminative discourses;
3. offer a tool of managing and resolving conflicts.

Description of the tool

A. Preparation:
1. Put the 4 chairs in order that they are in the center of the room and that the ones sitting on them will not have visual contact with the other participants in the activity.
2. Have 1 slide of PowerPoint presentation showing the above medicine wheel with 1 title per quarter. Ideally, these titles could be:
a. Stereotype
b. Prejudice
c. Discrimination
d. Self-fulfilling prophecy
3. Divide the blackboard in 4 sectors, each one with the titles of the medicine wheel’s sectors.

B. Instructions:
1. Explain that the aim of this activity is to get acquainted with the power of discriminative discourses, and to be able to identify them in our working environment.
2. Define stereotypes (negative or positive oversimplified generalizations of people who belong to a particular social group), prejudice (negative feeling toward people who belong to a particular social group)
3. To warm up, ask all the participants of the module to say at least one stereotype they can identify from their daily life.
4. Have a second round with prejudices identified in daily life.
5. Have a third (last) round with discriminations identified in daily life.
6. Ask 4 people to sit down at the 4 chairs you have placed in the center of the room.
7. Give each siting participant one different title of the possible 4 from the medicine wheel.
8. Ask the 1st participant to name one stereotype related to the subject that your module covers (i.e sexuality, disability, racism, homophobia, elections etc)
9. Ask the 2nd participant to name one prejudice that derives from this stereotype.
10. Ask the 3rd participant to name a discrimination that results from the mentioned stereotype and prejudice.
11. Ask the 4th participant to name a self-fulfilled prophecy that relates to the referred discrimination.
(EXAMPLE: Stereotype: Women are weak -> Prejudice: Women’s performance in hard work is inferior to the man’s -> Discrimination: Women are misrepresented in a big part of works which are considered masculine, or when they are hired they get lower salaries -> Self- fulfilling prophecy: Women do not apply for jobs considered masculine because they believe they can’t make it)
12. Have a second round with the same exercise but 4 other people.
13. When the 2nd group is finished ask everybody to go back to their places.

C. Debriefing and evaluation:
1. Short review of the activity (you are supposed to take notes on the whiteboard every time a participant mentions one example of the discussed term)
2. Ask participants if they feel that something of the examples mentioned may be exaggerated or surprising, or if they disagree.
3. Ask if they have ever thought of these events as intersecting and interconnected.
4. Ask if they can recall anything similar from the work.
5. Ask the role that their work can play in dealing with these stereotype circle effect.
6. Ask participants to share feelings and opinions from the activity.