Using the Koala Company Cards

Which Koala are You Today?

 

Each of these circle-shaped cards or stickers brings us up close and personal with a very expressive koala face. Which koala are you today? The mad, glad or just plain sad one? The shy or frightened one? There are no words on the cards, so you say what the koala is feeling. These cards are fantastic for adults, children, young people, and anyone with literacy challenges. Here are some opening suggestions for using the cards:

 

• Pick a card or sticker that expresses how you feel right now.

• Use the cards or stickers to evaluate elements of a project or express how you feel about a subject e.g. self-assessment on a school report card.

• Pick cards or stickers for family members.

• Group the cards or stickers into similar feelings/opposite feelings/difficult feelings/delightful feelings.

 

ADDING WORDS

Koala Company expresses a whole range of possible feelings, emotions and moods without using words. Like an early and very popular resource published by Innovative Resources called The Bears we deliberately left words off the koala cards so that people could give their own interpretation of the feelings portrayed by each koala.

 

At the same time we are keenly aware of the need for tools that enhance our emotional vocabularies; tools that help us describe our feelings more clearly and accurately. This is especially true for children. Our expectations that they will somehow acquire the language skills to differentiate feelings are often unrealistic given the lack of quality tools that are appropriate for different developmental stages.

 

All too often, for children and adults alike, we make untested assumptions that the words we use to describe feelings are heard and understood. Or indeed, it is easy to assume that we know what others mean when they describe their feelings. The language skills required for differentiating and communicating the subtleties of emotions are very complex and sophisticated. We experience this very keenly when we try to express our feelings in a foreign language. This is why good translation is such a difficult art.

 

Any tool, therefore, that can extend emotional vocabularies is helping to build emotional literacy in our society.

 

A simple exercise to try with an individual student or client or in a group is to ask them to list the words associated with each Koala Company card. The following questions may be useful:

 

• Which words spring to mind to describe the feelings displayed by each koala?

• How many words can you come up with that would accurately fit?

• Which is the most appropriate single word to describe each koala's feelings?

 

UNPACKING THE BAGGAGE

We all carry feelings with us from one situation to another. This 'emotional baggage' can be positive or negative. Probably most of us are particularly aware of times when negative feelings carried over from one situation can interfere with another, particularly within relationships. This is basically a variation of the 'had a bad day in the office, came home and kicked the dog' scenario.

 

We all know the possible consequences of emotional baggage, having been on the giving and receiving ends countless times. Sometimes, however, it can be invaluable to 'clear the decks' or 'unpack the baggage' before this interference occurs.

 

Skilled teachers and school counsellors know that on Monday mornings they have to be alert to those children who have had intense weekends. On the one hand there may be the child who had such a fantastic time they just have to tell all their friends. But there may also be the child who experiences a huge disappointment or a trauma. Picking up on, and responding to, the needs of both these categories of children in a timely way can be crucial to avoid the subsequent 'acting out' of the issues.

 

Giving people the time and space to identify what has been happening for them and what their feelings are about it, is a way we can assist people to deal with their baggage-good and bad.

 

The koalas can play their part by providing handles with which people can come to grips with this baggage:

 

• Which koala (or koalas) are you today?

• What has been happening for you recently?

• Is this koala likely to get in the way of other things you have to do?

 

Being able to choose a koala to represent our present (or recently past) feelings can be a helpful way of coming to terms with strong or confusing feelings that may be difficult to describe in words alone.

 

But a gentle word of warning: sometimes we can accumulate a lot powerful baggage that we keep hidden. The koalas are cute and lighthearted illustrations, however, when they put people in touch with suppressed feelings the above simple questions and exercise can unleash some strong feelings.

 

 

CREATING A DICHOTOMY

Creating a dichotomy (the setting up of two interrelated polarities) can be a great tool for noticing and measuring change. Because the koalas can so succinctly describe our changing emotions, they have innumerable applications for building conversations about change:

• Can you choose a koala that represents how you were feeling last week?

• Which of the koalas represents how you are feeling now?

• What is different? What has changed?

 

The dichotomy used in the above exercise is created by naming two different events at two different times-then and now, now and the future, when you were well and when you were ill-and so on. The key discussion is about the changes and making sure they do not go unnoticed. Koala Company can play a very useful role by literally providing a picture of the two different states. This can help both the naming and the noticing of differences.

 

Everybody has ups and downs. Feelings never stay constant for long. Our relationships with others are in constant flux and our relationship with our problems also fluctuates. But sometimes, because the changes are small or we are preoccupied and looking elsewhere, we may not notice the changes that are occurring. One of our key sayings at St Luke's is, 'Change only happens when it is noticed'. Naming, describing and picturing separate events or times in the process of creating dichotomies can be a useful way of making sure that important aspects of change and growth are noticed.

 

Having established a dichotomy and an expectation of noticing change using Koala Company, you can add layers to the conversation by identifying the strengths, skills and strategies you used (or need to use) to create change. Strength Cards, Strength Cards for Kids and the I Can Monsters are other materials from Innovative Resources that have been designed specifically to help identify and mobilise strengths, skills and strategies for achieving change.

 

You might also want to consider how to enlist the support of others around you to add to your own strengths. Angels with Attitude and Strength in Teams are two tools that help us think about who we can call on to support us.

 

Finally, having some tools to measure the change that has been achieved or is yet to be achieved can be a key component of noticing. 'Scaling' is a well-known, simple, yet powerful technique for doing this. It looks at the two events or times identified as dichotomies and, rather than seeing change as all or nothing, helps break the change process down into small achievable steps. Being able to measure change and monitor progress are essential to any therapeutic practice or learning program.

 

Scales and Scales II (published by Innovative Resources) are sets of pads with tear-off sheets. Each page is printed with a simple line drawing that represents the graduated nature of change (for example, a ladder, pathway, graph, water tank, pendulum, etc). Scaling can be combined with the Koala Company cards to create a highly accessible way for people to measure and communicate moods, emotions, progress and wellbeing over a period of time:

 

Using this picture of a temperature scale (or some other image, possibly from Scales ) mark a point on the scale that measures... (you decide what you are measuring) for each day of the coming week. Choose a card or sticker from Koala Company that shows how you felt each day.

 

 

YOUR FAMILY GUM TREE

Koala Company is another fun way of describing your family by creating a genogram or family tree. You can use the Koala Company cards or stickers to describe and discuss the personality of each family member. Choose a koala that matches each family member as you know them or as you or others remember them and create you own 'family gum tree' of parents, siblings, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and so on. The koalas are a great way of getting everyone in the family involved in a discussion of who is who and who has what traits and idiosyncrasies.

 

Counsellors and family workers will also recognise that Koala Company is a great resource for family sculpting. Family sculpting uses a simple family tree to develop insights into significant relationships within the family through such questions as:

 

• Who is closest to you in your family?
• Who is the most distant?
• Which relationships are the strongest and most positive?
• Which are the most conflictual ?
• Who is similar to other family members?
• Which traits are common between siblings or across generations?
• Who would you most want to be similar to?

 

The cards can be readily moved around to represent different relationships within the family. Additional layers of conversation can also be built through such questions as:

 

• Which koala represents each family member at their best?

• What about at their worst?

• Are there family members whose nature or personality has changed over time?

• Why do you think this is?

• Which koalas represent these changes?

 

Workers who adopt a solution focused or strengths-based approach might also commonly ask:

Having identified and created a picture of your family, can you also name the strengths of each family member? At times Innovative Resources' Strength Cards will provide a useful prompt for the listing of strengths.

Family trees and family sculptures can be created by family members working individually so that comparisons can be made between perceptions. Alternatively, a family group might create a family tree or sculpture cooperatively in which case the discussion and negotiation regarding the choice of representative koalas provides the means of comparing perceptions.