A Postcard from Punjab Public School: Forgiveness – a road to peace

Posted: 20 August 2021

Overview:

The Punjab Public School hosted a RS Postcard on 4th August 2021 with a total of 114 student delegates and 24 adult delegates from 24 schools from South Africa, the UAE, Oman and India participating.

The welcome and general introduction set the tone for the postcard. Dr Frederic Luskin, currently serving as the Director of the Stanford University’s Forgiveness Projects spoke on the theme “Forgiveness: A Road to Peace”. He touched upon a wide range of issues associated with domestic violence, hurt and paranoia and shared his own methodology of forgiveness.

This was then followed by a Barraza session where students deliberated on the Postcard theme. A delegate each from twelve breakout rooms summarized and shared their respective deliberations on returning to the main group. The session ended on an optimistic note with many a takeaways for everyone.

Planning

After attending many RS Postcard sessions as delegates, we were keen to host one ourselves. The first thing we did was to decided on our theme and took inspiration from a book titled ‘Forgive for Good’ by Dr Frederic Luskin. We took a chance and contacted Dr Luskin and invited him to open the discussion on our Postcard to which he gladly obliged.

We wrote our proposal and submitted it to Round Square and then finalized a date and time for the Postcard with them.

To decide the time of the Postcard, we were required to keep in mind the different time zones to ensure participation from other countries on the other side of the globe and to accommodate Dr Luskin who is based in California.

We then compiled our itinerary/schedule of the event.

The number of Barraza rooms was decided based on the number of delegates. The size of the breakout rooms was such as to enable every participant to share his/her thoughts. Based on the number of breakout rooms, we decided the number of Barraza leaders. We had twelve breakout rooms with two Barraza leaders allotted for each of them. Since it was an online event, two Barraza leaders acted as back-up for each other. In the event of poor net connectivity, the other leader was supposed to pitch in. One teacher from the host school was allotted to each of the breakout rooms to ensure discipline and smooth sailing. The students were told to come up with questions they would like to discuss in their Barraza rooms.

Once the above plan firmed up, we trained our Barraza leaders so they were prepared for worst-case scenarios and ways to handle them.

We also worked with the Round Square WMT in preparation for the call which helped give students much needed confidence.

Detail

1. Welcome and General Introduction
2. Introduction to the theme
3. Question and Answer Session
4. Barraza (Breakout rooms for students’ discussion)
5. Conclusion of each Barraza
6. Thank You Note

Challenges

Our most exciting challenge was making contact with  Dr Luskinto invite him to participate in our Postcard. We had to research him as an author and source a contact email. In the email we told him about Round Square and about our school and requested him to share his thoughts on the theme to which he readily and most graciously agreed.

Because planning took place during the COVID pandemic some of our students were distance learning, while some were back on campus. This hybrid approach made organising planning meeting difficult, but we used Zoom meetings as a way to resolve this and bring the team together.

Impact

Hosting a Postcard session was the first and best experience our students had during pandemic. As the students were teenagers and this was the first time they were experiencing such a difficult time, it was very necessary to engage them in some constructive work. What could have been better than bringing their organizational and leadership skills into action by hosting this Postcard. The students readily agreed and took this as a great opportunity to learn and make students of different Round Square schools share their ideas on the given theme. They really developed many of soft skills in the Round Square Discovery Framework like teamwork, tenacity, courage and communication skills.

Long term

The author of the book that inspired our RS Postcard, Dr. Fred Luskin is a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford University where he teaches people ways to manage their stress and to live lives of greater satisfaction.

It is thought that learning to forgive helps people hurt less, experience less anger, feel less stress and suffer less depression. We hope that as our students learn to forgive they become more hopeful, optimistic and compassionate, and as they learn to forgive they become more forgiving in general not just towards one particular person who did them wrong.

Dr. Luskin suggested that research has also shown that forgiveness has physical health benefits. People who learn to forgive report significantly fewer symptoms of stress such as backache, muscle tension, dizziness, headaches and upset stomachs. In addition people report improvements in appetite, sleep patterns, energy and general well-being. We hope that all our delegates are now more mindful of the act of forgiveness and what long term impact it can have on their lives.

Advice

• Start planning early. Talk to people who have already hosted such events.
• Prepare the students well: Take many practice sessions with them. Prepare them for worst-case scenarios and make them take responsibility.
• Make the event meaningful by putting questions that can lead to meaningful discussions.
• Be open towards all kinds of people and their opinions.
• Have fun interacting with people from different parts of the world.

Author: Tanuja Singh, RS Rep, Punjab Public School