1302 plane crash debate 2 intermediate

Scenario
An airplane flying to the US crashlanded in the Pacific Ocean.
Now the airplane is floating on top of the water. There are nine
survivors, most of whom have some small injuries. The crash
site is about one and a half days of rowing from the nearest land.
The survivors have a life raft with room for four persons.
Your group must make a decision about who those four persons
will be.

The brief bios of the nine survivors

Tanja McFly (25). Tanja is a divorcee with a 5-year-old son.
She is a waitress in a night club. Working night shifts, she is
forced to leave much of the parenting to her mother, who lives
in the same trailer with them. She wanted to become a doctor
but his son’s unplanned arrival and his divorce disrupted her
plans. She suffered some internal injuries and complains
about severe stomach ache.

Andy Kiss (34). Andy is your pilot and it was only due to her
expertise and composure in the emergency that the jet could
land smoothly and did not break apart. She is single and has
no children. She started her career in the US Navy. She
received training in survival techniques while there. She is in a
bad physical condition now, having suffered serious injuries to
her left arm, which she can’t feel or move.

Bekele Hagos (21). Bekele is a sophomore (=2nd year student)
at SOTE Medical University in Budapest. He wants to move
back to his native Ethiopia once he’s graduated from medical
university. He speaks perfect English thanks to his English

language education. He has very poor eye sight, but his
glasses got broken in the crash. He has no children. He was
flying to the US to meet his American girlfriend in San Diego.


Tulugaq Irniq (15). Tulugaq belongs to a tiny Inuit tribe that speaks a
completely different language than the rest of the Inuits. There are
only about 30 people left that speak this language. With the tribal
population sinking year by year there is a fear that this language will
soon go extinct. Tulugaq, whose name means ‘raven,’ was on her way
to settle in California after marrying a linguist who was doing field
work in her tribe. She doesn’t speak any English.

Frank Smith (59) Frank became a hippy in the late sixties, because he
loved the new ideals of anti-consumerism and free love. He still
adheres to his principles and lives in a hippy community to this day. All
he owns is a tiny mobile home, an old chopper and a small piece of
land. He and his wife make a living off of selling organic vegetables and
doing pottery. He has one grown-up child, who he hasn’t spoken to for
5 years. He was flying to San Diego to meet him again and to try and
mend their broken relationship.

Meg Polanski (10). Raised by her mother, Meg is an only
child who is very hard to control. She has a full-time
babysitter, who she hates. She is bullying her classmates
in school, but they are too scared to report her to the
teachers. She demands that her mother buys her
anything that she pleases. She likes to watch TV above
all else.
Agent Malcolm (32). Agent Malcolm works for the CIA’s antiterrorism arm. His job description includes listening to

wiretapped private phone calls in an effort to trace terrorist
activities. A Harvard graduate in psychology, he was assigned
to Iraq to question US terror suspects in a secret prison where
they are kept on a special Presidential order without the
knowledge of the public. Agent Malcolm has two little children.

Marianne Polanski (38). She is Meg Polanski’s mother. She
separated from her boyfriend, the father of her child, three years
ago. She has had several boyfriends since then. She is the head of
the marketing department of a multinational company. She’s a chain
smoker and a workaholic who focuses more on her job than on her
daughter. She often gets home late, letting the babysitter take care
of Meg in the mornings and after school. Neither she or the
babysitter can discipline Meg.

Thomas Waldorf-Astoria (59). Born into the rich Waldorf-Astoria
family, he owns fifteen large factories on several continents,
employing over 55 thousand people. Amidst the ongoing crisis he
intends to modernize his company rather than do massive lay-offs.
If he dies, his company will be taken over by the oldest of his 8


children, who wants to improve profitability by ruthlessly laying off 30 thousand
employees, while cutting wages and benefits for the remaining ones.


TEACHER’S NOTES

Aim:
This exercise may enable student groups to discover how they work together; their strengths and

how they need to improve.

Time required:
Thirty minutes as an icebreaker, one to one and a half hours with debriefing, depending on the
number of groups.

Resources:
A room where small groups can form; flip chart or overhead projector plus pens.

Procedure:
1 Give the students the handout of the scenario and the brief bio of the nine survivors and make
clear the 30 minute time limit imposed.
2 Explain that each group will have five minutes in which to report back and justify their decision.
Reporting back is not essential but gives the students the opportunity to explain their decisions. If
there is a large number of groups, an alternative would be to record their choices on paper for
display.
3 Carry out a debriefing of how the group had functioned. The questions you ask will depend
upon the learning you want the students to achieve from the exercise but should encourage
reflection on their experience.
Examples - How did they reach their decision?
What roles did group members adopt?
Did they listen to each other?
What have they learned about the functions of a group?
What would they do next time?