PBIS: Cooperation

Can't we all just get along?

  • Course Length: 1 week
  • Course Type: Short Course
  • Category:
    • PBIS
    • Middle School
    • High School

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Let's all join hands—if you can find our hands —and sing, shall we? Ah, how harmonious, how lovely, how it makes us want to jump off a cliff and drag everyone down with us like lemmings. 

Cooperation doesn't have to mean all Kumbaya moments, all the time. We're here to help you develop some realistic strategies for cooperating with a variety of people, from best friends to people who you wouldn't touch with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.

In this course you will find

  • discussion ideas like talking about how to deal with conflict during everyone's favorite activity: group projects.
  • study questions about improving relationships with family members, team members, members of the community, and basically everyone except for Goldmember. No one can work with that guy.
  • additional resources, such as a TED talk on "The Power of Saying 'Thank You.'" Thank you, TED talks.

With all these lessons, you'll be ready to join hands and cooperate with anyone. Hey! Watch what you're grabbing. That's not our hand.


Unit Breakdown

1 PBIS: Cooperation - Cooperation

This five-lesson course will take you through what it really means to cooperate with others, and how to get better at actually doing that. We'll dive into these main topics:

  • At home
  • In class
  • Extracurricular Activities
  • In the Community
  • With friends

Trust us. Cooperation is a skill that will take you a long way in life. You better start now.


Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 1.01: Cooperation at Home

 
"And you have to read twenty more pages before you get dinner, young lady!" (Source)

You're sitting in your room playing a video game and absolutely killing it. At just about the most intense possible moment, your mom calls you from downstairs. She's saying something about the dog having your little brother's pacifier in its mouth, and… you didn't quite get the last part of the message. The game is more important at the moment.

Wait, what?

As awesome as your game is, you gotta press pause. Here's why: you're a member of a household, and at home, you need to cooperate. That's because when you're a member of a family, you need to work as one. Strength comes in numbers, and you are a part of that number.

If you don't cooperate with the rest of your household, then you're a complete deadweight/slacker/laze-about who will inevitably be the horror-story roommate in college. People will complain and warn their friends about you. True story.

Okay, now press play. Actually, no, go help your dog.


Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.01: Cooperation at Home

No matter how many or how few family members you have, one thing is always true: no family is the same. Some of you may love your family dynamic, some you may think your family's dysfunctional, and some of you might not even notice what's up until your friend comes over and makes some sort of sassy comment about your dad being a real-life version of Tobias Fünke.

We get it. It can be difficult to get along, let alone work together and just stay on the same page. Good thing you're super cooperative, right?

(Just smile and nod.)

Helping Out with Chores

We're not supposed to admit this, but chores are... not fun. There, we said it. They're horrible. They're kind of gross (cleaning the tub? blech.) But they're absolutely necessary. Unless you enjoy stepping on Funyon crumbs in your socks or wearing the same dirty crop top five days in a row, you need to do chores.

Within each household, there are certain things that need to be done in order to keep your living space, you know, not gross. If no one takes out the garbage, the house will stink. If no one does the dishes, there will be no clean dishes to eat off of. Who wants to come home to a house that smells like a landfill, where you have to drink soup out of cupped hands?

Most of the time, your parents or guardians will delegate tasks to you. Being told what to do can be frustrating, especially when you want to spend your own time a certain way—a way that's not cleaning up after everyone. It can be difficult to make other people's priorities your priority.

But you have to. End of story.

We'll be very explicit here. We can't speak for the heads of your household, but the usual order of priorities is this:

  1. Professional life: school, jobs
  2. Home life: family, relatives, pets, chores
  3. Social life: friends, dates, get-togethers, social media

When you're an adult, you can make your own priorities. Hey, maybe your home life will take a higher priority than your professional life. Until then, listen to your parents or guardians and cooperate. You really wouldn't be anywhere without them.

Communication

Do we really need to say this? Seriously, talk to your parents. Unless they're telepathic, they will have no idea that, say, you have a massive essay due tomorrow and can't help clean out the refrigerator. If you don't tell them, they might get mad, and then you might get mad at them for putting even more pressure on you. Then they might get mad at you for your bad attitude, which is actually there for a pretty good reason that they just don't know about.

It can get really ugly really fast without communication. Better to do it.

Getting Along with Family

Most of us didn't choose our families. Either way, better deal with it, because you're in it for the long haul—or at least until you move out. But we get it. Roommates can totally cramp your style, especially when your dad tells his super embarrassing dad jokes around your friends ("Pleased to meet you, So Embarrassed! I'm Dad!").

But there are definitely worse things than lame dad jokes, so count your blessings and work it out.

Firmly establishing ground rules is the first step to creating boundaries that you're all comfortable with. Essentially, you have to work around your issues and come to some sort of compromise, or cooperate.

In order to have friends, you need to be a friend. You didn't instantly become friends with all of your current friends. Similarly, you can't just walk up to Beyoncé and ask her to marry you. Relationships take time. Also, she's taken.

The same thing goes with the relationships that you have with your family. You have to cultivate them. Although you're already bonded by being family, taking the time to work on bettering your relationships with each of your family members will make those bonds stronger. You can do this by:

  1. Spending quality time with them
  2. Asking how their day went
  3. Giving them help when they need it
  4. Making sacrifices for them
  5. Trying to relieve their stress

In other words, be a little selfless once in a while. Think about the people around you, and they'll likely do the same. If you have a positive relationship with your family, you'll be more willing to cooperate with them.

In the Real World

So... this happened. Makes you want to work on your cooperation skills, huh?


Sample Lesson - Activity

  1. Lance is fed up with his little brother, Josh, borrowing his Nintendo DS. Games go missing, saved files get overwritten, and the D-pad is perpetually sticky. Ew. What's the best way for Lance to preserve the sanctity of his Nintendo DS?

  2. Mia has a busy weekend ahead of her. Her dad wants her to mow the lawn and her mom wants her to clean her room. She promised her little brother that she'd show him how to defeat the final boss in Diablo III, and she promised her boyfriend that they'd catch the new James Bond flick. Oh, and she needs to build a working volcano for science class.

    If Mia has her priorities straight, in what order should she tackle her "To Do" list?

  3. Fred and his twin brother Ted can't seem to get along. They have nothing in common—you know, aside from their genes. If they're not fighting about something trivial like who ate the last frozen Snickers bar, they're giving each other the cold shoulder.

    If Fred and Ted want to flip the script and boost their brotherly bond, which of the following options is a step in the right direction?

  4. Every time Brian brings a date over, his Mom pulls out the baby pictures. "Here's Brian in the bathtub! Here's Brian crying because The Suite Life of Zack and Cody was cancelled! Here's Brian dressed as a turnip for Halloween!" Needless to say, Mom's really cramping Brian's style. What should Brian do about it?

  5. Leslie isn't pulling her weight around the house. When she comes home from school, she heads straight to her room, and only comes out for meals and to monopolize the bathroom. Her parents have had enough and are considering signing her up for the Army. If Leslie wants to get her act together and avoid boot camp, which of the following is a good way for her to get started?