EDUCATIONAL ASPECTS OF COUNSELING-ORIENTED URBAN GAME 'TREE OF SUPPORT' (Aspekty edukacyjne poradniczej gry miejskiej 'Drzewo Wsparcia')

In June 2009, during the Science Festival in Zielona Góra, the authoress along with her friends and a group of students realized a project entitled the Tree of Support. It was a reference to urban games, which are continually gaining popularity in Poland, though the actual content of the project was concerned with assistance and counseling issues. The paper describes the learning process of those students who were engaged in the project. The first part contains the description of the phenomenon of urban games and outlines the way the game 'Tree of Support' is run. In the second part, the authoress analyzes successive stages of making the game. She pays particular attention to the events that might have influenced students' relations or changed the way they think about the world and about those who require or offer assistance. Eventually, having analyzed the entire creative process she participated in, the authoress describes the processes that have influence on (re)defining students' identity (personal and professional). Role-playing, group cooperation (developing partnership relations, sharing duties, decision making), working on the project (preparing prompts and scripts), and finally keeping tabs on the course of the game have turned out to be the elements that influence the development of participants' (both students and lecturers) identity more strongly and in shorter time than in the case of traditional, academic lectures and classes.