Audience Member: So, let’s say you have a class full of 10th graders and all of them are in danger of dropping out of high school. They have discipline issues, are under-credited, disengaged, all of it. You have no cost restrictions – no amount of money is too much. There are no limitations – you can literally do anything you want. What would you do to keep these students in school and get them on the right track toward graduation?
This was the question posed to six students on a panel I was moderating at a dropout prevention summit in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. Four students were in high school and two in college. I thought it was a great question; a question to promote dreaming; to generate the ideal with the obvious understanding that it would have to be trimmed back into something more real, something with real-world restrictions. But, just offering the chance to dream with “no holds barred” left me excited to hear what these young people would say. Tear down the traditional school building and start over? Create programs that do X, Y, and Z? Change the time structure of the school day? Connect students to jobs? Make it more “fun”? Get rid of all the teachers (except for Mr./Ms./Mrs. (NAME HERE) who changed my life)? Scrap the boring curriculum and make it relevant to my life? Get an iPad in every student’s hands? Nope. None of this. Their answers were clear and consistent, and would cost next-to-nothing.
So, for the big question with no money restrictions, the prompt for these students to dream big about dropout prevention “no holds barred”, we get 1. relationships, 2. personal motivation, and 3. a sense of positive personal identity.
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Remember when you used to go to the mall or the movies just so you could hang out and talk with your friends?
Remember when you (occasionally) hated to miss school because it meant that you missed out on whatever buzz was circulating that day perhaps from a weekend party? Remember when you had to go to the library in order to do your research paper or to learn about random or obscure topics that stretched beyond the reach of the Encyclopedia Britannica Home Edition? Or, perhaps you had to go to a store to rent the VHS tape for a movie (for the book you didn’t want to read for English class)? For that matter, remember when you had to go to another room or hallway in your house that had the phone in it to make a call to your boyfriend or girlfriend? OK. Some of us may be older than others! But, that’s really the idea. We are and always will be. The point is that there was a time in the not-too-distant past when where we were in terms of physical location actually mattered to our social life, our education, and even our communication with family. However, I can, right now, close this window I am writing in and make every connection and find every bit of information I may have needed above. With my smart phone, I can do this from anywhere. What does place matter? I am everywhere. As part of a digital immigrant generation, many of us remain at least somewhat rooted in the echoes of our past experiences of place, in which many of us place real personal value. But, for a younger generation reading this, they have no idea what I am talking about first-hand (although I am sure they have heard more stories than they care to). They only know the universally connected, infinitely accessible, and instantaneously communicated world that is our present. My co-worker’s 10-year-old son recently sincerely asked his parents “Why do I need to go to school if we have the internet at home?” We may respond by recoiling to such a question because of our roots and our own experiences, but if this 10-year-old is asking the question, we would do well to figure out a compelling answer for him. One CBS news article by Melissa McNamara puts it this way, “Technology is so integrated into teens' lives that it's difficult to measure where their offline life begins and their online life ends.” (This was way back in 2006!) Maybe the answer is that these are not two different lives for our young people; they are just two different lives for us. Do our youth know a world without limitations, or a world without identity? Is theirs a world that is global, or one that is groundless? Is everything within their reach, or are they stuck staring at a lighted screen not reaching for anything in particular? Is their constant communication actually communication at all? Yes and no. It doesn’t really matter. This is their reality. Now, what? Amid the volumes of contemporary discourse on the subject, I came across a simple quote that sums up our postmodern, technologically fueled, digital immigrant angst: “To be everywhere is to be nowhere.” Ahhh ... indeed. That’s why we are concerned. Modern technology has left our kids lost in the middle of nowhere! Who was this wise man that so captured our 21st century condition? Seneca the Younger, born 4 B.C. The funny part is that the quotation continues: “When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances but no friends.” Wonder what he would think of Facebook? (It’s worth noting ironically that he was “the Younger”!) The problem is not the technology (or the foreign travel) but our clinging exclusively to past forms for relationships, to the supposedly tried and true methods of delivering our education, and to our generally analogue perspective for processing our world. It’s the “generation gap” defined. As we try to convince our young people that “how it used to be” is somehow how “it should be”, we just further drive our youth away to find themselves in and figure out “how it is”. As adults, we must remain flexible and in a state of perpetual adaption (involving but not synonymous with adoption), and we must do so by including and not resisting, learning from and not diminishing the present technologies and perspectives of our youth. For instance, I was a late, but happy, adapter to text messaging and Facebook . I use them daily. But, I will not adopt them as replacements of face-to-face communication, voice communication and the like, which have not only social but developmental and biological value to them. Undeterred, our young people will communicate and use the tools most familiar to them. Undeterred, we will do the same. There is a compromise to be found here. So, as I adapt, I try to merge the best of the new with what I value in the old. In doing so, I also have a responsibility to introduce the old into the midst of the new. In committing to compromise (and our own growth), we can seek and model a more intergenerational approach to communication and to culture so that our youth today might one day, in turn, do the same. The ground “moving under our feet” is just the ground for our young people. Perhaps they can help steady us. Rest assured, however, that one day the ground will move under their feet as well. The question is whether or not they will know what to do when it happens. Across the country, young people are anxiously awaiting and excitedly receiving letters and emails from our institutions of higher education telling them that they have been accepted for enrollment and giving them a glimpse of what the future holds. I remember this time during my own senior year and have shared this time repeatedly with the young people I have worked with over the years. It is a remarkable moment in a lifetime.
The problem is that many students never glimpse this future vision and never arrive at this seminal moment. These students are typically low-income (rural and urban). These students are disproportionately students of color. These students come from already failing schools and live in communities that too often lack opportunities for them as well. These students are immigrants and children of immigrants. These young people are caught in a dangerous cycle. Now, some of you might already be thinking it, and I have heard more times than I can handle, that “all students are not college material.” I agree. But why in 2010 do we accept using such a euphemism to rationalize the exclusion of low-income students and students of color from a pathway to higher education? From a pathway out of poverty? Perhaps it is worth recalling that in 1960 some students were not considered lunch counter material. Shouldn’t all students have a right to educational choice? To determine their own futures and their own pathways with equitable and accurate information and adequate support? To define their own pursuit of happiness? I worked with students from two low-income, urban comprehensive high schools who in 2004 wanted the answer to these questions. So, they asked more than 400 of their friends and classmates in these two high schools if they actually wanted to go to college. The result was that 91% of students said YES, they did want to go to college. Candidly, I was shocked at this level of aspiration and so were they. Even as these youth and I were pushing against it, we had to some degree internalized the false notion that “these students” had lower aspirations than their peers in other schools. Painfully, we then took a look at the college-going rates and found that only 1 out of 10 entering freshmen would actually make it to post-secondary. This is a stunning and a perfectly horrifying inversion from 90% aspiration to 10% attainment. That’s us failing our students, not our students failing. Now, this data seems a little dated (and makes me feel a little old), so let’s look at a couple of more recent examples. Another survey for students and by students was just completed by the Mayor’s Youth Council here in Nashville. It surveyed almost 1100 students across every public high school, comprehensive and magnet, alternative learning centers, academies, and a few private schools. 86% of the respondents said that they wanted to attain some sort of 2 or 4 year college degree or professional degree. And, while I obviously don’t have the numbers as to how many of these students will make it across so many different schools, these same students did report that only 23% of them had actually gotten support from a guidance counselor to get there (despite also reporting that they wanted and needed help in the research, application, and financial aid processes). College-going data from around the country tells us that, if they are low-income (which was not asked) and/or students of color (about 60% of the respondents), these aspirations will go unsupported and unachieved. This is not a Nashville issue alone, nor is it purely urban. I had the opportunity to do some work with a consortium of rural counties in West Tennessee comprising the STEP (Southwest Tennessee Educational Pathways) Initiative. A colleague and I did some research and work with this group to write a brief gap analysis (they already knew the gaps and they were almost everywhere) and to develop a multi-county college access strategy that would legitimately work for such a broad and under-resourced geographic area. Part of the research included a student survey to better understand their level of aspiration, access and understanding. Of 1399 students surveyed across 9 rural West Tennessee schools, 93% reported that they wanted to go to college. We know the reality from other local efforts that the number actually making it to college is closer to perhaps 20-30%. Again, the statistics suggest we are working counter to our students’ aspiration, not capturing it and building on it. It should be noted that the guidance counselors are not solely to blame here. They are highly trained staff who spend too much of their time counting tests. If you talk to most of them you know they are often as frustrated as the students. They are frustrated they cannot “do their job”. For what they are actually asked to do, “guidance” and “counselor” are too often unfortunate misnomers. With that being said, we must understand and admit that to do the work and provide the support for many of our students to make it to college, and to do so with equitable choices, requires a full-time staff commitment of college counselors. It is not a percentage of another staff. It is not something we can do when/if we have time around testing and coordinating tests. That won’t cut it. We also must understand that the “boot-straps” stories that percolate this time of year, while certainly worth celebrating, are stories of young people who have succeeded despite the system, not because of it. We need to celebrate these young people, but not be blinded to the real problem by their individual herculean efforts. The fact is that, despite many successful programs around the country, the system for supporting low-income, first-generation students to access post-secondary education is broken…on second thought, it is non-existent. And, to make matters worse, the students know it. This gap is a recipe for hopelessness, a crushed vision for the future, a lack of purpose for high school, and a pretty good impetus for dropping out of school. College access is more than credentialing. It’s about a sense of self, of identity, a sense of purpose, of hope, a pathway out of poverty, and a reason to make good choices along the way. These should be part of the system, not counter to it. These should be opportunities for every student. At a recent meeting of school administrators from across Wisconsin, we had the opportunity to reflect on and consider the opportunities and challenges related to involving students in their schools. We based this work on the Continuum of Youth Involvement (pdf). We considered the range of involvement from student participation to voice to leadership to engagement. We sought to understand the distinctions and to have candid conversations about where we had worked, where we were willing to work, and where we had the support to work along that continuum. One key clarification from the conversation is that where student voice has never been considered, we will struggle to dive into conversations and practices around youth engagement – at least systemically. We can always have the brave and creative outlier who manages to engage students deeply despite his/her broader school environment. But, this is not our goal. Our goal is the systemic inclusion and engagement of young people in their own lives and their own education.
Mirroring this discussion about students, we asked the group of administrators to consider the same Continuum of Involvement, but to do so with the teacher in mind – teacher participation, voice, leadership, and engagement. What does this look like in schools? What are the barriers and opportunities? Supports? What have their experiences been? The two conversations were very similar. Involvement along the continuum for both teachers and students is about power and power sharing, both in the classroom and in the broader school community. Reality Check: Teachers without power cannot share power with students. And the logic continues that principals without power cannot share power with teachers and so on. Those of us who advocate for student involvement at any level (whether in schools or elsewhere) would be well served to consider advocating similarly for the adults closest to and supporting our youth. Student/youth engagement is about a cultural shift in schools and communities, not about a program or the implementation of a distinct practice or new pedagogy. It is about a system of relationships. I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately while reading about “critical consciousness” and the importance of “critical literacy” for youth, particularly in marginalized communities and communities of color. I have also been inspired by the example being set by young people involved with Special Olympics as they advocate for the end of the “r-word”. These young leaders know all too well that words have full and rich lives and dynamic capacity beyond letters and sounds. Young people with intellectual disabilities know what the r-word feels like – this word is not heard, it’s felt. One young woman with intellectual disabilities who I met last year actually has begun passing out cards when she hears the under-the-breath use, or even the overt use, of the r-word toward her. Her cards say “words hurt like fists.”
But, language is often much more subtle. With all of this in mind, I began reflecting on some of the language we use working with young people, with communities and around social justice. And, while I will not go as far as to advocate the eradication of these terms, I do suggest we pause to reflect on their implied meanings (and compare with our intentions) before we decide if we wish to continue their use. I believe the language we have chosen in the examples below unfortunately frames our ultimate ineffectiveness in engaging our young people and building our communities. “Youth are our future ... Youth are the leaders of tomorrow” I know many adults use this language with the best of intentions, to demonstrate the optimism (or react to pessimism) for the future given the current state of things with youth. It is also used to validate our investment in young people today. But, why tomorrow? Why the future? Why would we even need to validate investment in our youth? With effective, ethical leadership and a breadth of transferable leadership skills fundamental to healthy individual development and critical for positive economic, social and cultural development, why would we wait to cultivate or to engage our youth and defer their leadership to some nebulous future? As I consider our most marginalized young people for whom opportunities to lead could be most transformative; for whom the empowerment of true leadership may be a positive feeling or a source of identity that can be found nowhere else in their lives; perhaps for whom an 18th birthday is celebrated as the realization of a future they never dreamed they would see, I cannot conceive of appealing to them to wait. I cannot conceive of informing them that the future (that they may not even imagine or believe they will actually live to see) will be their time to lead. Just wait ... When I hear this language and these appeals, I am haunted by Langston Hughes’ timeless question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” “Pass the torch” This one builds on the whole “leaders-of-tomorrow” discussion above. The passing of the torch has somehow become synonymous with the attempt to light and link the gap between generations. And yet, when I work with adults, particularly those who are at an age most likely to be reflecting on work/life in a way to think about the torch, they also have repeatedly said “I am not ready to go out to pasture either!” In spite of the transactional language, adults don’t typically want to hand off the torch as much as bring new, younger folks into their work -- a demonstration of their understanding that systemic change is generational in its timeline. However, in attempting to pass the torch, adults have failed to realize that it is too often still about “their work” and still about the tools they used for “their work.” Instead of genuinely inviting young people into the work to build the work, to expand the toolsets, to update the language, the invitation feels more like (read in your best James Earl Jones voice) “come in young man and finish what I started, but be sure and do it how I did it.” In communities and in social change work there is a place for all people with all levels of experience and all with something to add. We don’t need to pass the torch; we need to expand the flame and, with it, ignite new flames. “Give back to your community” I really hope I never “give back” to my community, and I cringe when people offer that term in acknowledgment of my work. For me, the whole language of “giving back” too often implies my having transcended or moved beyond my community; or, at a minimum, that I owe my community something in return for something it provided me. Regardless, the concept of giving back implies a sort of transactional relationship (like the torch conversation) with community – an arbitrary system of debits and credits and finite means. Community is a function of relationships, not of this sort of transaction. Do I “give back” to my spouse, or my brother, or my mom, or my friends? That would seem odd and strangely mechanistic for a personal relationship. But, I also have a personal relationship with my community, which is comprised of potentially infinite other personal relationships. As such, an investment in my community is inherently an investment in myself. Shouldn’t giving and receiving, sharing, serving and investing be core to the actual definition of a community? If I am an individual member of a true community, aren’t I a part of this constant process? Let’s not focus on “giving back” to our communities; let’s just be part of them. “A seat at the table” In social change work, sometimes a “seat at the table” is given, sometimes it is won. In either case, if I get a seat I am likely pulling it up to a table still owned and ruled by someone else. If I am “given” the seat, aren’t I there at the table’s behest? If I “win” the seat, aren’t I there despite the table? Isn’t what I really want the re-creation of the very table itself? I don’t question the power or purpose of garnering a seat at the table as an incremental step toward change. This sort of inclusion, whether given or won, is a critical first step and we need to keep pushing for more seats for more people at more tables. I do wonder, however, in the 21st century, if the idea of getting a seat has actually lowered our standards, or anesthetized us against the real need for a systemic shift in the concept and purpose of the table itself. We can and should keep fighting for “a seat” but we must remain committed to building a new kind of table – our table. These are just a few examples of the language I hear in conversations almost daily and to which we typically give no thought. We all just nod in familiarity without truly listening or understanding our words. Perhaps we and our youth and our communities could borrow a strategy from my friend at Special Olympics and begin to pass out our own cards when we hear this and other language that just doesn’t work for us. If we really paid attention to language, what might our cards say? No matter how long I work with folks or how much I believe we are on the same page, I occasionally still get caught off guard by a fundamental question about youth/student power. It dawned on me recently that I have had a number of these questions come directly back, or filter back circuitously, to me over the years, many times deep into a relationship. Co-workers, colleagues, partners, educators and even just friends have on occasion finally asked that ultimate question, or perhaps even offered it more as an assertion: “I know you talk a lot about the power of students, Anderson, but…I mean…they really don’t have power…(do they?)”
So, here we are; the fundamental question. And, to be clear, I want to thank, not criticize, those who are willing to voice their uncertainty; I just wish many times that they would do so earlier in our work together. Addressing this question together is the only way we can move forward effectively around youth and student engagement. In response to this very legitimate question, I offer a few scenarios: What would happen (and does happen) if the students in your community decided they had had enough of the over-suspension of black males in their school? 600 students decide to walk out and refuse to go to class until new policies are put into place. The school is effectively shut down. Do these students have power? What if students decided that they were sick and tired of their futures and their education boiling down to standardized test scores? They all decide to sit in on the test but not answer any questions. The school gets near a 100% failure rate as a result. The school, its faculty, staff and the central administration are now in academic crisis. Do these students have power? What if students decided that they had seen enough bullying of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans-gender youth in their schools by students and faculty alike and took their cause to the school board? They manage to get the district to add GLBT language into their school safety and anti-bullying policies. They establish a process and recourse for complaints and the implementation of new teacher training. They shift the climate of the school. Do these students have power? It’s hard to argue that these scenarios don’t present powerful students. What we see in these scenarios is student power organized and exercised and aimed at a clear target for change. But, now the question is: in the absence of this level of student organizing (which admittedly is not as common as I believe it should be given the state of many of our schools), do students still have power? To answer this question, it is important first to understand that latent power is still power. Fuel un-ignited is still fuel. But are student organizing and advocacy like these scenarios the only way students ignite power? Or, are we just ignoring the more ad hoc power they exercise every day that impacts our communities, the educational system and really every one of our lives in some way or another? We spend billions of dollars every year and have rung the bell of a national epidemic to address the dropout crisis and to understand the failure of our urban schools. And yet, in our strategies for change and improvement, we don’t talk much about student power in this crisis (thus obviously failing to leverage it). Students are choosing to walk away from our schools. That’s power. Students are choosing not to engage in boring and irrelevant curriculum. That’s power. Students are refusing relationships with teachers and staff that don’t respect their lives or understand where they come from. That’s power. Students are choosing to join gangs rather than after-school or extracurricular programs. That’s power. On the other hand, there are even more students every day who are choosing to stay in school, to study, to engage and to do myriad positive things in their communities, for their families and with their friends. That’s also power. Choice is power. The fact is that students are making choices every day and their decisions impact nothing less than the direction of this country and its educational system. And, in regard to the exercise of student power, whether we adults accept, validate, lament or otherwise punish these choices is effectively immaterial. Power is power, and we’re not engaging it. We cannot choose for our students to stay in school. They have to choose it. We can only co-create with students the spaces, the relationships and the opportunities for effective and informed choices. If this is not co-created, but solely adult-driven, it becomes coercive at best and compulsory at worst. Our efforts to improve our schools and rebuild our communities must genuinely acknowledge and understand the power of our students without obscuring that power through our adult value judgments. Power has no innate value. Without this level of understanding, inclusion, and leveraging of collective power with students, we will never find the means to co-create change, but will continue merely to impose change that students will ultimately decide if they agree with or not. As we have heard a thousand times, they will “vote with their feet.” Students, in fact, will ultimately decide whether all of our efforts achieve success or are all for naught. They have the power. Earlier this year, I posted a blog “Can’t See the Forest for the Fields” in which I talked about the arbitrary (for youth) but systemic (for our schools, communities, and organizations) distinction between the notion of “student” and that of “youth”. I also talked about the gap that we create when a young person is a student say from 7 a.m.-2:00 p.m. while in school and then suddenly becomes a youth when he exits the school building and enters the community. Each “sector” has its own unique training, outcomes, expectations, disciplinary practices and on and on and the only consistency is the young person who has to cross these boundaries. I won’t rehash the whole blog here, but feel free to click above and check it out.
Since the time of this initial posting, I have had numerous conversations with community groups who are trying to work with schools and schools who are trying to work with community groups. No one seems to understand why they end up frustrated or at odds because we all genuinely believe we are working in the best interests of our young people. But, the reality is that for community organizations the “best interests of young people” often means we want youth to be engaged in their community and in issues important to them. We want them to develop informed and powerful voices, to build positive leadership skills and values, to understand conflict resolution, to build effective relationships and so on. This is what we are measured on; this is what our funding says we have to do. On the other hand, most of our teachers and schools are struggling with the singular ultimatum of success that is standardized testing. They are trying in the “best interests of young people” to get students to pass these tests, and in order to do so to manage their classrooms, to address behavioral and disciplinary issues, to build relationships, and so on. But, ultimately, the students have to pass those standardized tests. This is what our schools are evaluated on; this is what their funding says they have to do. Our differences are a matter of perspective, approach, and evaluation, not necessarily intent. The dissonance is between setting and outcome, good process and high-stakes accountability, climate and academic performance. And, despite the research, we have failed to make a strong enough case for the interdependence of these elements; or we have at least failed to create enough urgency to focus on changing our current course to support such a case. The reason I am revisiting this concept is that I recently received an email describing a community that really seems to be working on eliminating this arbitrary gap for our students/youth. They are doing this with an understanding that a quality environment for young people is a quality environment for young people, regardless of content or specific outcomes, regardless of being in-school or out. In other words, there are some universal elements of quality spaces in which young people thrive that we can and should apply both in schools and in community settings. An excerpt from the email: This inspiring 12-minute video documents how the Georgetown Divide, a small community in the Sierra foothills of Northern California, has embraced a positive youth development approach across the settings where youth spend time and has anchored that commitment through widespread use of the Youth Program Quality Assessment. In this video, school teachers and youth workers reflect on their own practice in powerful ways, and describe how the cycle of assessment, planning and training works. District administrators and youth organization leaders describe how they are systematically implementing a low-stakes approach to accountability that has empowered staff, improved practice, and resulted in real change for youth. To view the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79epysezpVs The fact is that we know the kind of environment in which our young people will positively develop and thrive socially, academically, and otherwise. And yet, we too often define our educational and community settings around content delivery and short-term outcomes rather than our long-term intentions: developing healthy and prepared young people. If both in-school settings and out-of-school settings could at least share a common understanding of the elements of good “programming” for youth and for what makes quality youth spaces, perhaps we could, despite differing content and accountability, better align our collective efforts for the sake of our young people. Our challenge now is to follow the lead of Georgetown Divide in understanding that the term “youth” in Youth Program Quality does not in fact exclude the concept of “student” and that the term “program” does not exclude “classroom”. Ironically, we need to follow a town called “Divide” to ensure our schools and communities better work together for the benefit and wellbeing of our young people. *The same Youth Program Quality Assessment tools and trainings being used by Georgetown Divide are being used around the country in urban, suburban and rural settings. More can be found at the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality website: http://www.cypq.org/ I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with young people over the span of my early career and more recently to translate some of these experiences into working with adults. The bulk of these efforts have been focused on developing meaningful opportunities for young people to engage in their own lives and in meaningful community change with the support of adult allies and adult-led systems. In other words, I have tried to engage young people as active members of a democratic society. For years, I have stood beside young people as they advocated on issues that were important to them including their having a voice in schools and communities. For years, I thought that making this happen required a combination of deep engagement and preparation with young people and then getting adults to get out of the way.
Now that my work is focused mostly on adults (still around youth engagement), I am finding that the issue of getting adults out of the way is much more complicated than I previously understood. It is not just that we adults are in the way of young people developing democratic values; we are apparently in our own way! We don’t cultivate the democratic values of choice, advocacy and an engaged citizenry, largely it seems, because we are not comfortable with those concepts ourselves. If we are going to work to develop young people to be the next social change agents, the movement leaders, the ethical and engaged politicians or even ask them to engage in youth issues of today, we adults have our own issues to deal with! In a recent training, after spending a day and a half building report with a group of adult community leaders while increasingly reducing my role as facilitator of their group and turning the power back over to them, I gave them the opportunity to self-organize in groups around a series of discussion topics that they had created. I simply acknowledged that they had come up with some key issues to discuss and I invited them to get into groups around the topic that was most interesting to them and discuss and develop action strategies. It seemed pretty simple. A few people stood up immediately and started to move. A few followed them, but the vast majority stood looking at me and around the room in utter confusion. One particular woman with an almost panicked look on her face told me “I think we need some more instructions.” I told her simply that I had given all the instructions that were needed. Another woman swooping in to rescue her confused colleagues made an announcement that she thought that everyone should get back into the groups that they had worked in at a previous session, that this would “just be easier.” Finally, a third group member offered his own set of instructions based on my simple prompt of “get into groups based on the topic that most interests you” with an idea around numbering the tables and then choosing a number and so on. Ultimately, the group went to the tables where they had worked previously and at which they were already comfortable working, and then secondarily claimed topics for discussion based on where they happened to be sitting rather than necessarily by interest. In other words, in the uncertainty of open choice, they followed a protocol that was familiar to them, that was safe, that did not require them do any problem solving, communication, or significant work with their peers to generate a strategy for a simple problem. As we reflected as a group on this exercise, the adult leaders had to wrestle with the fact that they were totally stumped by the opportunity of choice, of self-organizing, of a lack of prescriptive instruction. They were overwhelmed as my limited directions did not meet their expectations or their needs. Many, quite simply, couldn’t do it. They were paralyzed. They sought parameters and direction from a source of power (the facilitator) and did not know how to claim their own power. They actually wanted to be told what to do. Their mental models required them to have more information -- and less choice -- in order to take action. How many young people have you ever worked with who wanted to be told what to do? Now, I do not offer this story as any sort of criticism for this particular group. In fact, this is a normal response when working with adults. The reality is that we have very un-democratic mental models of how the world and our work happens. And, we find comfort in the consistency of someone else’s direction, especially when we trust them. Herein lies the danger of our practice in working with young people. We can build great relationships with young people, powerful and important levels of trust, and yet we can do so while continuing to perpetuate a degree of powerlessness and deference. Whether it is our inability to share power (or perhaps acknowledge our own) or our desire to protect young people from failure, our practices often present formulaic relationships and controlled environments to young people that neither prepare them for their real lives nor create space for them to be creators of their own learning and existence. We focus on outcomes around safety, engagement, skills development and so forth without ever supporting the development of a healthy, sustainable practice of life, of learning, of growing, of becoming. These sorts of outcomes require the courage to act effectively without (or against) explicit rules or parameters, to create something from nothing. These are the ultimate skills for breaking the mental and societal bonds of oppression that so many of our young people are growing up in. Only with these skills and efforts will we achieve a democracy for all people, not just for those for whom the current system is working. But with our own deference to social norms and the same formal and informal educational structures we continue to put young people through, we actually continue to perpetuate our own passivity and powerlessness, passing it on to the next generation. We need a prompt in order to act. We need to be given choices in order to choose. We need to be handed the mic in order to speak. As a result, we adults make parameters, define rules and pedagogical practices and learning environments that keep us safe under the guise of what is best for young people. So, I ask: who says that magically at 18 years old a young person is prepared to be an active, voting, engaged citizen? Why are we waiting until then to include young people in our democracy? Who honestly thinks that suspension from school or removal from society via juvenile incarceration does anything at all for the positive development of a young person or democratic citizenship? Who believes that 7a.m. is the best time for high school students to begin learning and 2 p.m. the optimum time to send them on their way? Have you ever met a young person that does his best work at 7 a.m.? I have been in numerous discussions recently about the fact that young people are involved in crime and in fact dying at a considerably higher rate during the hours of 3 to 7 p.m. What would happen if they were in school at that time? What if school started at 10am and went on into the evening. I am quite certain that I have never met a teenager who would wake up early just to get into trouble between the hours of 7 to 10 a.m.! The fact is our current system serves our needs (if nothing more than our need to resist change) better than our youth’s needs. Until we understand the ways in which we adults continue to define the rules of the game, and therefore to ensure that it is, in fact, our game, we will always struggle to engage young people in meaningful ways. Until we check our own needs for our own definitions of support, of opportunity, of education, of democracy and realize that we may be serving ourselves better than our youth -- actually maintaining the status quo that isn’t working for them – then we will continue to fight with great intentions, great righteousness, and limited results. Just like a well-functioning democracy, working with young people is more messy than clean, more chaos than clear parameters, more calculated risk than controlled curriculum. We adults have some work to do. In the last twelve months or so, I have connected with at least a half dozen cities, several local and national nonprofits, the philanthropic arm of a major corporation, and even the ministries of education and of local government of Trinidad and Tobago, all of whom are engaged in some way with youth councils. Many were starting new initiatives around school, organizational, and municipal councils; others were barely hanging on to an existing council and afraid to say that it just wasn’t working anymore; and finally, others were pretty much done but weren’t sure how to end it.
Part of the opportunity and the challenge of working with youth councils (and youth generally) is that we adults come to the game with very good intentions, but too often with very stale models or without a clear vision of what we really want. We have what I call a massive “intentions-to-practice gap.” We assume that, because we were youth once, we must know what we are doing when it comes to working with youth. (This is a fallacy by the way.) We come without a true understanding of how to make a council successful and sustainable for our unique circumstances (i.e. our city, state, school, community, organization and youth). We come wanting to provide an opportunity for youth, but lack the understanding and skills to genuinely share our power with them. We come because we believe it is the “right thing to do” for our youth, but without articulating why it is the smart thing to do for our organization, city, state, school or otherwise. We just start a youth council – seems pretty simple. This is why 3-4 years down the road so many groups get so frustrated when things are not working out like they had hoped. Maybe the youth stop coming. Maybe our initial diversity doesn’t seem so diverse anymore. Maybe it feels like the council is just meeting to be meeting. Maybe the adult who championed it is no longer around. Maybe our city or organizational leadership has moved on to other more pressing issues or ideas. Maybe our initial funding has run out. Effective youth councils are far more complex than we typically prepare for. So, in order to help close the intentions-to-practice gap, and in order to provide better and more lasting opportunities for our young people and therefore more sustainable communities and a stronger democracy, I offer you the following considerations before you start a council or revamp your existing one: Program Support
Consideration of these and other questions in your thinking around a youth council are critical if we are to close the intentions-to-practice gap. But, understand that you may not initially have all of the answers. This is not a prescription or a static plan. Over time, however, from the start of a council to a year-end reflection to a complete revamping after many years, addressing these issues and questions will help you ensure your best intentions are met with best practices. Finally, we also must understand that the “youth council” is only one of many options for engaging young people in your work. If the council model does not match your core strategy or your staff capacity or you just don’t have the funding to do the quality work to answer these questions, that’s OK. Don’t start a council. Be creative. Use some of these and other criteria and questions to find something that will work for you that is strategic, sustainable, and meaningful youth engagement. This is the goal; the council is just one of practically infinite strategies for getting there. We often struggle in education and in youth programming with the “relevance” of our efforts in the lives of young people. What is more relevant to a young person than his/her own life? Youth-led participatory research is a tool and a process that connects young people more deeply to their own experiences while also expanding awareness, developing skills, and building a sense of power and personal efficacy. Here are 5 critical components to effective youth-led research:
Tell Your Story, Speak Your Truth The process of storytelling provides us with the opportunity and the challenge to put into words many experiences and relationships that we only know from an emotional perspective. When we tell our stories, we have to decide what parts we want to share and what parts we need to hold onto in order to share perhaps at a later time. In order for this to be a healthy and supportive process, when we tell our stories, when we speak our truth, we need those around us to support and encourage and validate our experience even if they disagree or have differing experiences. Build Your Context We all grow up in a culture, in a family, in a socio-economic class, in a geographic location, and at a time in history that we did not choose or define. Many young people internalize the values and norms and oppressions related to these circumstances and begin to understand them as their identity. When we research from a basis of our own stories, our own lived experiences, we have the opportunity to deepen our understanding of the systems in which we live and which impact us every day. When we can name those systems, we can also externalize many of the negative impacts that they have on us. For example, we can objectify causes of poverty at a systemic level rather than purely identifying ourselves by it symptoms. Explode the Issue With a deepened understanding of familial, social, cultural and historical systems and their impacts on our lives, we can begin a process of identifying specific issues that are important to us. We can focus our efforts on the causes and root causes underlying our issues rather than the symptoms of them. For example, instead of lashing out at a guidance counselor individually for not helping us get to college, we can understand and focus our energy on addressing a broken guidance counselor system that has our counselor so overworked that she does not have time to support us. On a personal level, exploding the issue can help deepen our understanding of our relationships and the causes and root causes of those that are working for us and those that are not. Organize Your Thoughts and Your Plan During the participatory research process, we gain incredible insight into our own lives, into our own identities, and into the systems and issues that affect us in our daily routines. In order to take the next step in the journey, we need to organize all of this knowledge and develop a clear plan for what we want to change for ourselves personally, in our families, in our schools or in the broader systems that affect us. Without this clarity, we will be frustrated by our inability to address issues despite our deep understanding of them. Take Action Whether it is addressing a struggling relationship in our family or a broken education system, the purpose of deepening our knowledge and skills through participatory research is to take action. If we have not found a way in this process to begin making change then we run the risk of further frustrating young people and instilling a sense of powerlessness. Taking action can mean working on ourselves, having a conversation we have avoided with a family member, or even advocating for change at City Hall. |
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