This new edition of Circles®: Intimacy & Relationships, brings the time-tested and evidenced-based Circles® curriculum to elementary-aged special needs students. Circles® teaches children with intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities and those on the autism spectrum, the abstract social-sexual concepts of personal space, social distance, and relationship building in a concrete way. Circles® is an organizational paradigm for students with special educational needs that helps them learn to act and interact in self-enhancing ways. This curriculum’s proven-effective paradigm helps students generalize their learning across many settings: at home, at school and in the community, through materials that simultaneously teach and/or train students for greater social competence.
Circles®: Intimacy & Relationships was first introduced on a wide-scale basis in 1983. The authors, Marklyn Champagne and Leslie Walker-Hirsch, in their roles as teachers, counselors, and consultants, along with James Stanfield, EdD, contributor and publisher, created a flexible social-skills learning program that not only addresses personal space, boundaries and social distance but also serves as a pro-active sexual abuse prevention tool. Since then, though many revisions and updates, Circles® has gained wide acceptance as an essential piece of original work in the field of social/sexual learning for people with disabilities.
GOAL STATEMENT: The purpose of this multi-media program is to make relational social skills easy to learn for students with special education challenges. It is an adaptable teaching tool that meets learners at their level and is fun for both the student and teacher to use.
HOW CIRCLES® WORKS: The CIRCLES® program teaches social distance and levels of intimacy using seven color-coded concentric circles presented visually on a graph. Starting from the center circle, which represents the self, each new color-coded concentric circle represents behaviors, feelings, and actions appropriate to the distance from the center or self. The program assists students to discriminate different degrees of intimacy and to adapt their behaviors accordingly. For example, a person may hug and kiss members of their own family, people in their Blue Big Hug Circle, but never hug and kiss a total stranger in their Red Stranger Space. The graph that follows provides an overview
The Colored CIRCLES® and Their Meanings
- Purple Private Circle/Space (see note below)
- You are the most important person in your world of Circles.
- No one touches you unless you want to be touched.
- You do not touch anyone unless they want to be touched.
- Blue Big Hug Circle
- There are very few people who you hug and who hug you closely – usually nuclear family members, a beloved pet or best friend.
- Green Far-Away Hug Circle
- There are a few more people you give far-away hugs to (i.e., a friendly, non-body touching hug) such as family members you don’t live with.
- Yellow Handshake Circle
- You shake hands with acquaintances and when you are introduced to someone by name.
- Orange Wave Circle
- You wave to children and nod (or wave) to people with familiar faces if they wave first. You do not linger or converse at length
- Red Stranger Circle (Community Helpers/ Health Workers)
- You have business touch only, with community helpers.
- You have medical touch only, with health workers.
- Red Total Stranger Space (Total Strangers)
- You do not touch strangers.
- Strangers do not touch you.
Within each circle, students are guided to appropriate levels of touch, talk and trust with the most of each reserved for members of the individual’s Blue Big Hug Circle. The members of one’s closest circle, let’s say the mother, is awarded higher levels of each than are persons in circles farther away. Generally, we can trust a mother to act on our behalf if we share a personal problem. We cannot trust a total stranger to do that. In summary below is an overview.
THE THREE “Ts”: TOUCH, TALK, and TRUST: Touch, Talk, and Trust - symbolize behavioral, cognitive, and affective components of a relationship. These elements mark the overall emotional tone of each kind of relationship. In a basic interpretation of CIRCLES, the color of the circle represents the formal social role that the person placed within it occupies. This may require guidance from family, teachers, and/or other care providers, as all situations are different.
- Touch refers to the kind and amount of bodily contact.
- Talk refers to subject matter and language formality.
- Trust refers to the degree of emotional reliability and physical safety.
In general, the quantity and quality of the Three “Ts” varies directly with the degree of intensity and intimacy of the relationship. The closer the CIRCLES relationship, the more intimate the overall emotional tone.
Deciding Factors
In analyzing closeness in relationships, we identified the following six key elements that characterize them. To answer these questions requires critical thinking skills that your students may not yet have. You can help them by prompting them and providing examples. This can be part of the discussion during the lesson or as a follow-up at the end. The answers to the 6 “How” Questions below yield the Six Deciding Factors, which suggest the best circle placement for a particular individual:
- HOW LONG have you known the person?
- HOW OFTEN do you see the person?
- HOW MANY common bonds do you have with the person?
- HOW WELL do you know the person?
- HOW DEEP are your feelings for the person?
- HOW SAFE are you with the person
Included in this Kit
- State-of-the-art video vignettes of high interest and low complexity reflect the integrated lifestyles of students today.
- Easy-to-follow lessons plans.
- The CIRCLES giant wall graph boldly emphasizes the importance of the individual in the Purple Private Circle. The graph is wall-mounted and is used in conjunction with other materials included in this kit for a dynamic bulletin board illustrating the CIRCLES relationships and as an ongoing reminder in your classroom.
- Large, laminated - figural icons suggestive of ethnic and racial diversity and depicting of a range of ages and size coordinated to the large CIRCLES giant wall graph offer a wealth of teaching opportunities suggested within the lesson plans.
- Personal size CIRCLES graphs make it easy and fun for students to create CIRCLES diagrams that represent their real-life relationships.
- Reproducible “Peel n’ Stick” icons that are ethnically diverse visually aid students in individualizing their personal CIRCLES graph. Each icon has space for a name and may be further personalized should the students so desire.
HOW TO USE THE TEACHER GUIDE: This guide has been organized with individual lessons to teach your students the CIRCLES paradigm story-by-story, color-by-color, and step-by-step. Lesson plans can be used as written OR they can be modified and presented across several meetings. Each lesson plan provides you with a summary of the story, a teacher’s note, and specific steps to teach the circle highlighted in the video. The following materials should be available to successfully carry out the basic lesson plan:
- Appropriate CIRCLES video story.
- CIRCLES giant wall graph.
- Large, laminated multi-cultural figural icons for use with the giant wall graph.
- Personal size CIRCLES graphs (which can be collected and safely stored for use for the next lesson).
- “Peel n’ Stick” icons for use with the personal size CIRCLES graph, all of which are included in the CIRCLES: Intimacy & Relationships curriculum.
FINAL THOUGHTS: The CIRCLES program is flexible. Each teacher can personalize the lessons to address the specific needs of their own class. Feel free to skip any part of the program that doesn’t apply to your students. Many young children never venture into the community alone but familiarity with these guidelines serves as safety training for future levels of independence. The more familiar a teacher becomes with the CIRCLES concept and paradigm, the more applications they will find. Religious, cultural, and ethnic differences impact the kind and amount of touch in a particular community (especially cross-gender touch, shaking hands). Be familiar with and respect the mores of the communities you serve; modify the lesson plans as needed. This is an opportunity to engage parent support. Sofie tells the students that touch between any two people must be consensual. That means both people must want to touch in the same way at the same time. Learning the concept of consensus will support decision-making later in life.