Showing posts with label at-risk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label at-risk. Show all posts

Saturday, November 11, 2023

What's Your Truth?

 

                                            "the truth is..." (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by memory_collector

Those of us who work with kids from at-risk environments are challenged by the truths embedded within their trauma. How much we know about the conditions of their lives is dependent on many things, not the least of which are the protocols surrounding the appropriate disclosure of the always sensitive details. Who needs to know? Can those who perhaps want to know impactful details about the kids they work with handle the emotions surrounding the circumstances? Are there those who won't benefit from knowing these details but insist on not being kept out of the loop? 

There appears to be a fairly aggressive desire to know as "much as we can" about the kids we work with, but what if we're focusing on the wrong truths? I'm the first person to assert that we need to know as much as we can about the "story behind the story" of the kids and families we serve, but when circumstances prevent us from knowing as much as we'd hope to, I think we can totally divine a simpler construct in support our most vulnerable clients. In the very simplest of terms, there's only one truth we absolutely need to implicitly know in order to do our best work with kids from at-risk environments... our own.

I have often been involved in difficult conversations regarding the "need to know." At times when it has been necessary to disclose confidential information about a child's personal circumstances, I will typically hear teachers and other school personnel make statements like, "If I had known more about this child, I would have changed the way I interacted with him," to which I typically ask two questions in reply... why and how? 

There's one thing we implicitly need to know about kids surviving adverse childhood experiences; our personal truth in the way we feel about supporting kids no matter the type of environment they arrive from every day. Call it a philosophy, a perspective, or whatever you'd like, but the way we perceive our role as kare-givers (caring for kids from at-risk environments,) is the most important awareness we need to be clear about and one that we can never go wrong with if it emerges from the right perspective. The first part of this truth is that we can never, ever judge a child. I often find that this judgement, when it does happen, is grounded in incorrect assumptions about the child; that the behaviour they're communicating with is intentional or premeditated. It's not.

This inaccurate judgement often also manifests in damaging language (verbal and body) that gets communicated back toward the child. We act out what we're feeling, even when we don't realize we're doing it. When we feel that kids are intentional in being "bad," the tendency to take their perceived actions personally is heightened. Our best work cannot materialize when we believe kids are coming to school with deliberate intent to make our day, and their classmate's days as miserable as possible.

Kids know much more about who they're dealing with than we know about them. I often say kids are like horses; they pick up on our nuances and impressions toward them so much more skillfully than we can toward them just like a horse can feel his rider through the saddle better than the rider can feel the horse. This reality puts both the horse, and the child, at a distinct advantage with respect to the ways they respond to our actions, feelings, and words directed toward them. Kids know when we're not at ease dealing with them.

If all of us who work with kids could empathetically approach each of them with kindness and acceptance perhaps we can get by without the advantage of knowing about where they come from. We'd be expressing nothing toward them that necessarily needed to be reacted to. We would be tapping into what good solution-focused therapists know about effectively working with their clients; that you don't need to dwell on the problems to effectively set goals toward the solutions. We should harbor no animosity toward others for not disclosing details about kids we don't need to know. We could simply feel what we should feel about our role as educators; privileged and humbled to have the opportunity to support them from wherever they arrive each and every day. Defaulting to that presents very good odds that we'll build the trust and comfort necessary for kids arriving from at-risk environments not to be at risk within our classroom environments too. 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Living in the world of possibilities- becoming powerful beyond measure.

I've been looking for inspiration as a new school year begins.  Every year my school district holds its annual kick-off event, and this year along with about a thousand other people, I had the tremendous fortune of listening to the story of Ben McConnell.

Ben spoke about the power every teacher possesses to positively affect the lives of their students, and he knows of what he speaks. Ben has dealt with a litany of health issues that have made his life so much more challenging than most, but he hasn't complained. The journey he has taken, and the attitude he possesses are nothing short of remarkable. Ben provides a humbling example of resilience and strength; primary elements that inclusive teaching and learning environments should be designed to nurture. Ben described teachers who found ways to access his unique motivation to be involved in school beyond measure.

Friday, August 5, 2011

The Alternatives...

flickr photo via David Blaine

The first thirteen years of my teaching career were spent teaching in what are commonly referred to as alternative school environments. I worked for six years in First Nations schools in northern Alberta, and then within the Red Deer Public School District's Alternative School Programs. I learned more than I could imagine about life and learning during every one of those years. I formed a phenomenological perspective that allowed me to see students in a different light, and apply supports that extended beyond teaching. The reality was these kids needed to come to terms with the other stuff in their lives before any learning was going to occur in the traditional school sense.Helping our students come to terms with the other stuff was the essence of the alternative approach to teaching that my colleagues and I practiced. We affectionately referred to ourselves as  the "Alternatives."

A former colleague, Kevin Hanrahan explained the alternative philosophy rather eloquently one day before giving all of us a wing-nut to string on our key-chains as a lasting reminder of who we were. He said being alternative is like a wing-nut. A regular nut locks into place and doesn't move; it's rigid and permanent. A wing-nut on the other hand, is designed to easily be moved; adjusted according to the tension required for any particular job. I still have that wing-nut on my key-chain. That's the alternative way.

I came across an excellent example of alternative philosophy at Larry Cuban's blog, Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice. In his post, Narrow Thinking About Health and Schools, Larry introduced me to Dr. Jack Geiger. In 1965 Dr. Geiger prescribed food for hungry kids in the Mississippi Delta understanding that hunger trumps the desire to gain knowledge. He also founded one of the first federally funded community health centers in the United States. Clearly a man who understood that social determinants play an overwhelming role in whether kids learn successfully or not. He got it. He was alternative.

In this excellent post by Liz Dwyer at the GOOD EDUCATION blog, she mentions Sir Ken Robinson's belief that,
change begins at the classroom level. Every teacher has the ability to take the time to build relationships with students, make her classroom an engaging environment, and connect students with real world opportunities in local creative industries and higher education.
This is so close to the entire point that education reform does not need to cost billions; it does not require a silver bullet resource or teaching strategy de jour and it certainly does not require copious amounts of expensive, traditional professional development to ensure we're all on the same page. As Liz Dwyer so honestly and simply states, what ed reform really needs is for Alternative Education to go mainstream. Simply brilliant, and brilliantly simple.

Back in the day when I was teaching with the Alternatives, we used to get asked to explain our strategies and processes during various seminars and workshops. A humble group of educators that we were, we really weren't interested in talking about what we did, but we were very interested in providing opportunities for our students to explain how they benefited from how we did it. I wish I would have filmed even one of those sessions. Our students were honest, and they were real. They took the opportunity to tell the audience what they could do if ever they came across a student like themselves. It wasn't complicated. They told their audience of teachers to listen to their students, especially the ones that were giving them a hard time. They told their audience of teachers that really hurting kids with few or no supports anywhere else who have been let down by so many adults in their lives often give their teachers a really hard time because they want to know which ones can take it. It's a test; a test to find out which ones will still be there for them tomorrow, like a loving family member would be no matter what bad thing had happened. They're looking for the Alternatives.

Our students, every single one of them having been removed from their previous mainstream school environments, told brutally real and visceral stories of how they felt in those mainstream environments, and more importantly how things had changed for them since becoming "alternative." Within minutes, and during every single session we did, tears were flowing among the audience of teachers, some of who had taught our kids prior to their alternative placements. Our kids told their stories, and we listened to them, and that was all it really took to get from here to there with them... they simply needed someone to truly listen to them without bias; without judgment, and without advice. Their learning paths were theirs alone. It wasn't for us to steer them in any particular direction. Our job was to hold their hands as they traveled their chosen paths. When they took a wrong turn we held their hands even tighter. When they took a right turn, we let go just a little. Over time for so many, we let go completely, but we always made sure they knew we were there for them if they needed us, and we made sure to also lend our support to those teachers who would hold our students' hands after they left us.

So there it is. The simplest form of education reform is the authentic caring that comes from a teacher who knows how massive her impact can be within the realm of one classroom, in one school, in one community; a teacher who gets it. A sphere of positive influence grows through simple acts of caring, unconditional support, and acceptance from teachers who know this. Kids have this remarkable ability to flesh out what teachers know.

If you want to be ready when a student chooses you for the test, why don't you try being one of the Alternatives? 

Sunday, April 25, 2010

"I need another note..."


Those of us who are privileged to work in schools need to be aware of  how the slightest act can lead to a massive realization on behalf of one of our disciples... we need to take this element very seriously. I have many stories of exceptional teachers who knew this implicitly.

My career has provided the opportunity to witness some pretty incredible people working very effectively with kids that not too many would be successful with. During my eight years working exclusively with kids from at-risk environments in a congregated special education context, (in Alberta the Department of Education designates these kids under code 42- those manifesting severe emotional/behavioral difficulties... I just coded them as needing someone to believe in them,) I was dumbfounded at the levels of resiliency these kids displayed, and profoundly saddened at the same time as a result of being forced to know what they were overcoming on some days just to make it to school at all. I took the long way home many days during those eight years. At the same time, I was repeatedly encouraged by my exposure to levels of with-it-ness in my colleagues that were off the charts when dealing with these kids' stories.

One such story popped into my thoughts today as I was writing about a colleague in another post- We need schools where "everybody knows your name." Dan McDonald taught in our Behavior Program for ninth and tenth grade kids. One day as Dan tells the story, a young girl arrived at school in a particular state of anxiety. She was pregnant, and the world was weighing heavily on her... that much was obvious. Never judgemental, Dan and his support staff watched her closely that afternoon, looking for any clue that may help tell her story that day. In the gentle conversations that ensued it became apparent that the girl was at her wits end with life in general, and she was planning to get loaded that Friday night... to drink and smoke her sorrows away. As the day wore on, and the staff became increasingly convinced that this young girl was serious, Dan came up with the best 'think-on-your-feet' plan he could; he told the girl she wasn't going to do that.

The response was painfully predictable... "yes I am!", the girl said. Dan reiterated, "no you're not," and she responded, "what the hell are you going to do about it?" Without really knowing what he was going to do if he was being totally honest, Dan blurted out the first thing that came to his mind; he said to one of the support staff members, "Ethel, what are we going to do about it?" Her response was equally off-the-cuff... "write her a note," she said. So Dan did just that; he wrote her a note indicating all of those reasons why she should not go get loaded as she seemed so intent to do that particular Friday night. She took the note, left for the weekend, and they didn't give it another thought beyond adding it to the generalized concern they felt for their students every Friday night.

Flash-forward about a year...
The girl in question had left the school to care for her newborn baby, and as often happened, one day she came back to the school to visit with her child. Dan and his staff never turned these kids away when this happened; it was as if they had a homing instinct that brought them back, and it was important that they were accepted and welcomed. This visit was a bit different, however. They were talking and holding the baby, getting caught-up with the goings-on of the last year or so in the young girl's life, but the conversation went on for much longer than was usually the case. An hour or so after she arrived, when most of what was usually talked about had already been talked about, Dan sensed there may be something else this girl needed, so he asked exactly that... "not that we are rushing you away or anything, but is there something else you need today, because we really should get back to our lessons for the day." The girl started crying and simply said, "yes, I need another note."

Never underestimate the power of small, seemingly insignificant acts of caring... you might be the only one in a young person's life who took the time to perform them.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

R.I.P. Phoebe Prince

The January 2010 suicide in Massachusetts of Phoebe Prince prompted investigators to accuse nine of her fellow students with the bullying that may have prompted her suicide. Phoebe Prince was the latest casualty in a war we are not winning; the war on bullying.
 flickr photo via trix0r

How many of these incidents will it take before we realize that our typical reactive response does nothing to prevent future tragic incidents from occurring? The odds stacked against our sons and daughters are overwhelming if they find themselves the subjects of bullying behavior, and we need to stop the cycle. I have written in this blog about the importance of learning bullies' stories, and for those kids on the bully-victim spectrum, I sincerely believe this needs to be done if we are to help ease whatever pain is causing their actions. This proactive approach is necessary to curb the influence of bullying, but it won't bring back Phoebe Prince or any of the others who have succumbed to one of the biggest social challenges educators are facing today... kids tendency to want to share their personal pain.

As a former counselor in middle school, and having worked with kids from at-risk environments for 16 years, I have heard stories that upset me to the point where I have had to take the long way home after a bad day at work in order to avoid displaying my grief to my family. I have been reduced to tears hearing kids stories about their home environments, what they deal with socially at school and how this affects their ability to function in even the most basic ways. Our kids are hurting. They are hurting more profoundly than they ever have before. New faceless tools to inflict pain toward others like text messaging and other social media outlets have produced a desensitized generation of perpetrators that has raised the threat of bullying to epidemic levels.

What are we to do? There are no doubt infinite opinions regarding how to deal retroactively with cases such as Phoebe Prince's, and the vast majority of them will default to an eye for an eye perspective. I honestly have nothing to say about that. What should happen to the individuals involved as perpetrators in cases like this will be decided by the courts, and that will be that. You know what though... I'll say it again; it won't bring back Phoebe Prince.

Our kids are lost... how can we make a statement other than this one while attempting to make any sense whatsoever of incidents like the Phoebe Prince bullycide? There was at least one case in my high school twenty-five years ago, and it's still happening.



We need to do what we do in schools differently if we are to curb this most devastating problem, and as I said before, we should start by knowing kids' stories. Teachers must make it their business to connect with kids on personal levels; to reclaim them. In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his foreword to the book, "Reclaiming Youth at Risk- Our Hope for the Future,"

The reclaiming environment is one that creates changes that meet the needs of both the young person and society. To reclaim is to recover and redeem, to restore value to something that has been devalued.

Teachers, and anyone else who works in schools, it's our most imperative moral and ethical responsibility to reclaim our lost children. We need to establish the most basic awareness that children are our gift to the future and that we are not packaging them very well as of late. We need to truly provide safe and nurturing environments in our schools for kids to thrive without fear and anxiety regarding their emotional, social and psychological well-being. As educators, we tend to underestimate the value of those regular day-to-day things we do in schools for kids who are in so much personal pain that they feel they can't live another day. In the words of Carl Jung,
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Teachers, there are no emergencies in education; we get so worked up about trivial things on a daily basis that we forget, or perhaps some of us never realize that behind the faces of our students are vulnerable young souls dealing with what to them could be life or death problems that overshadow any test, assignment, lab, bit of unfinished homework or any other minor delay in the learning process. Our greatest challenge in contemporary education is to reclaim kids; all of them. Their problems are real, even if they are only real to them- they are real... make no mistake about that. Do not shirk your responsibility to acknowledge this fact, and take the appropriate action to be there when a student chooses you.

That student will choose you because in some way, on any given day, you have provided just a glimmer of hope in the dark and damaging world he/she endures.

Don't be the last person a student came to before doing something bad that cannot be reversed... be the first person a student came to and will never forget because you were willing to share the pain as you held hands without judgement taking those first steps through their grief toward healing.

In the brilliant words of Professor Herbert W. Vilakazi,
"The problems of children and of youth, giving rise to child and youth care programs, can only begin to be solved in that society of humankind’s dream; a more collective-oriented society than at present, when the father of the child shall be every man as old as the child’s father; when the mother of the child shall be every woman as old as the child’s mother; a society of responsibility of the entire community..."
Is there any more important responsibility than this?

Rest in peace Phoebe Prince.



Sunday, November 22, 2009

Resiliency- What is it really?


As a young teacher who really didn't know much about how to teach kids, despite what my crisp diploma indicated, I knew in very short order that there was more to the game than I had bargained for. The variables that affect a child's ability to achieve in school are overwhelming for teachers; genetic variables, social variables, cognitive variables... and we're not even the ones suffering the effects personally. Knowing how much these variables affect our disposition and state of balance, imagine how much they affect the kids who manifest them.

I'm not sure, to be honest, if most kids who are born knowing nothing different than the environment that these variables shape and form really are affected all that much. The environment kids are born into is all they know, and therefore becomes their default "normal." In my experience, it's not until children get older, usually around the middle school age, that they begin to realize that the other kids don't necessarily live the same sort of life they do. This is when a different perspective begins to take shape. The child's private logic becomes altered. I believe it's at this time in a young persons' life that supports are most critical, and they need to be maintained through to adulthood.

The question is, really, where are these supports supposed to come from? There are differences of opinion on this, but the research reality is that in an overwhelming large number of cases, this support comes from a teacher. For this reason it is massively important that all teachers are ready to respond positively when a student decides to seek their support. How can we be ready to face this challenge? To me the answer is simple... we need to understand resilience; we need to be resilient ourselves and we need to know how to foster resilience in others. Resilience is nothing new, but the formal study of risk, resilience and recovery has been altering the perspective of conventional wisdom in contemporary fields of psychology, social work, education and other social sciences lately, and I'm happy about that.

Whether we understand why a child chooses one of us to be the person he reaches out to for care and support doesn't matter; we just need to be ready to respond appropriately and effectively. Teachers need to consider ourselves as process advocates in a wrap-a-round system that can be daunting for those most vulnerable and disengaged. In lieu of judgment and deficit-based thinking, we need to adopt a strengths-based focus that divines the good in young people experiencing distress and hardship. There is no other way.

I'm interested to hear how teachers do this... how have you supported a young person in distress, and more importantly, how did your support help? Often we may never know years later after our connection is lost, but it validates everything we do when we are privileged to know. There is nothing better and more uplifting for teachers to hear a story of success about one of their more challenged kids.

I would like to hear your success stories. We don't tell them often enough.
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