EQ Kids Workbook: Taking Responsibility                                     6 - 8

 

"Who I am is God's gift to me; what I become is my gift

to God.”

 

Taking responsibility involves:     1. Following through on our assigned responsibilities;

     2. Acknowledging that we are in control of how we react to situations;

     3. Acknowledging our responsibility for our contributions to the problems in our lives;

     4. Using the gifts and talents we have been given to make the world a better place.

 

1. Break the class up into four "working groups" and assign each group one of the four different meanings of "taking responsibility," above.

2. Each working group should read the scenario, below, and then identify ways that the characters in the scenario are or are not taking responsibility, according to the group's assigned meaning of responsibility (1, 2, 3, or 4, above).

3. Finally, each group should describe ways that the characters could better live up to the EQ characteristic of "taking responsibility."

 

       Dale and Tom worked together on this year's science fair project. Both boys got good grades in science and sometimes talked about becoming scientists. The two decided that their project would be making a poster about how electricity works, since Dale's father is an electrician.

       They started the poster the night before the project was due. They decided that Dale would ask his father to tell them all about electricity, write down what Dale's father said, and put it on the poster. Tom agreed to get some brochures about saving money on electricity from his parents, figuring that the electric company always sent information like that when they sent out the electric bills.

       The night they were to work on the project, at Dale's house, Dale's father had to work late. He arrived home around 8:30 p.m. Dale got mad at his dad for getting home late, because it left little time for Dale and Tom to get the information for their project. Dale's dad replied that Dale had not even informed him that they needed his help on the project. Dale told his dad that he had forgotten to tell him about needing help. Dale's dad ended up writing and typing up the information Dale and Tom needed for their poster.

       Tom, meanwhile, never got the brochure from his parents' electric bill because his parents told him that the electric company does not usually send out such brochures with the bills. Tom told Dale about this right around the time that Dale's father arrived home. When Dale got mad at Tom over this, Tom argued that Dale had not followed through on what he was supposed to do, either. After the boys pasted onto their poster the information that Dale's father had written for them, they figured that the project was good enough and decided to hand it in that way.

 

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