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HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE
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General approach for working with underachieving and oppositional youth
Take Away Their Adversarial Relationship.
Let them know that you are not the enemy. If they do well you feel good about their success and your own. You can also help them see that their “friends“ are often part of the problem. In physics we observe that the water seeks its own level and gravity makes it run downhill. I’ve often said that it is easy for high school kids to find a support group around almost any kind of behavior; Just go into any lunchroom (Or even in faculty rooms) where people talk about “peer pressure“ almost always in a negative way. In “ICARE“ we believe it can also be a positive force for behavioral modification or change.
We encourage group members to become supportive challengers for each other. When somebody gets their first passing grade on a civics or English or whatever quiz we celebrate. Some group members have a natural tendency to lash out against others as the way of coping when they can’t deal with a setback. We have the group address their negative approach in a brainstorming exercise. “Is what you’re doing getting you where you want to go? If not let’s find something that has helped other group members get what they need.”
We want them to see their success as a win – win situation.
This model encourages the teacher to feel good about how they reach a student and the student gets to feel good about getting what they want (a passing grade). Everybody wins!
Teaching Tips (For non teachers: communication 101 a)
Catch Them Doing Good (grammatical syntax = doing well)
This can be difficult for some of us. If you have the “half empty“ mentality it is easy to become fixated at slow, or non existent, improvement in attitude or achievement. We’ve seen kids who have fought us every step of the way...They see us as killjoys who have an overriding compulsion to change them; even the way they think. We constantly remind them that we are here for one reason only: to help them get what they want. This, of course, is predicated on the concept that no 16 year old really wants to go to prison. They may have nefarious goals like stealing, getting high, physically harming anyone that poses a threat to them... but the goal of actually doing hard time is rare indeed. I would submit that the tiny percent who actually want to live in an 8X10 see that as a better alternative than their current situation.
Statistics from program data indicate that we are successful at the 89% level at convincing group members that we are sincere in our commitment to provide support to assist them in making better life choices.
In our mission statement we are always mindful of building alliances between our clients and the authority figures in their lives. “The best way to get what you want is to help someone else get what they want”. We’re all in this together!
Giving Back
The biggest single predictor of success in “ICARE” is the volunteer work component. Each group member contributes four hours per week while in our program. They are encouraged to identify something about which they have a consuming passion and find a way to share it with others. One young man loved playing the guitar so he started giving free guitar lessons at his neighborhood elementary school. Each week he writes about his experiences as a volunteer. We were delighted with his second report: “I learned that I am a really good teacher…The kids are learning fast and I’m learning and practicing more myself.” He went on to be one of our best student group leaders, elevating himself to the role of teaching assistant.
A young lady whose family was from Burma spent a summer there and learned of the devastation to school supplies as a result of flooding. She came to the group with the idea of sending school supplies to them. She worked with group members and collected donations from friends, neighbors and businesses. She even founded a “Fiends of Burma Education“ foundation. Talk about making a difference and feeling good about yourself!
Many other people have started big projects with us. “Adopt - A - Grandparent” for one example. Some boys took seniors to a baseball game. Two girls did all the decorating and arranged catering for a World War II fighter pilot group. Another group collected children’s books to be donated to inner-city schools through “Teach for America“. Each book included an essay written by the student on why they loved the book as a young person.
One young baseball lover got himself and his friends involved in “Challenger Baseball” a program designed so any child, regardless of handicap, can experience the joy of playing baseball. As you might imagine it takes a lot of support for a wheelchair or a gurney-bound person to play baseball but it can be done.
The stories we have could fill another book. The bottom line is simply “it’s hard to feel bad about yourself when you're bringing joy into someone else’s life“
The most dramatic of the stories may be about a young lady who attempted suicide on at least two occasions. Her passion is music. She discovered that the elementary school she attended dropped it’s music program due to funding issues. She got permission to arrive late for school two days a week so she could teach music to the fourth graders. When we interviewed her about any recurring depression she said, “I can’t be thinking about killing myself. They need me to teach them music”. We all just need to be needed!
Tools
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Preparing For Success
Our clients often need assistance in “learning how to learn”. We work in as much style specific language as possible into our presentation/delivery system. Learning styles are: Visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic. More on this topic in section 5.
Examples:
“Can you see what this is all about?”
“Do you have a feel as to where this is going.”
“Can you grasp this concept?“
“How does this sound to you?“
“Do you hear where we’re going with this?“
“Can you grab this new line of thinking?“
“ Look, this has helped a lot of people get a good grade.“
“Do you get the feel of passion from the protagonist in the story ?“
“Does this idea move you?“
We help awakening all of the senses. For example; research shows that the smell sense is tied directly with memory.
One excellent strategy involves tying smell to studies. For example, while memorizing information, the student can savor a wintergreen lifesaver. Just before taking an exam on that same material another lifesaver can assist in the recall process.
Many other ideas for working smarter not harder are shared. We look at the forgetting curve and help students understand the importance of spreading out a task over time to approve retention.
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Learning Skills
I’m constantly appalled when our students don’t know their most productive learning style. We all have one (sometimes two for lucky people) area(s) in which we absorb knowledge more easily. Why every student isn’t given a learning style inventory on a regular basis boggles the mind. It would be like entering college and being forced into a major for which you had no interest nor ability! We administer an L.S.I. on the second session complete with tools best suited for an individual's style. The goal being: “Work smarter, not harder”. They like that!
We talk about memory tricks and mnemonic learning. Example: When memorizing the levels of cell division (Mitosis) we encourage employing acronyms.
Prophase \
Metaphase \
Anaphase l becomes P.M.A.T.I.
Telophase /
Interphase /
Remembering the order of colors in the visual spectrum: RoyGBiv or Red,Orange,Yellow,Green,Blue,Indigo,Violet. Isn’t that fun? Spelling of the word Geography: “George’s eldest oldest grandmother rode a pig home yesterday.” ( I’m probably having more fun than a “normal” person would with this, but I gave up on NORMAL years ago!!) There was one for MISSISSIPPI but I’ve forgotten it (that’s funny right? or just twisted?...you decide.
Music is extremely valuable in learning. I’d like a dollar for every kid that has told me that they “can’t learn stupid school stuff”. My response is always: “What is your favorite song? Do you know the words to it? If you “can’t learn stupid school stuff” how do you explain the fact that you have memorized the words to maybe 100 songs?” You learn them because you were interested in the lyrics and you wanted to remember them. You can do the same thing for school work. The great singer – songwriter Tom Lehrer ( also an excellent mathematician, instructor at Harvard) made a song out of the periodic chart in chemistry. Knowing the power of music and memory is a valuable tool in learning. Making rhymes out of lists works great as well.
Most of our kids don’t see the importance of study groups. College students get it right away. I’ve seen people improve their GPA from high school to college just by taking advantage of the group process. Hearing another person’s “take“ on a concept can help material stick with us.
One of the most important concepts we impart is creating a positive relationship with teachers. In my 44 years experience working with teachers and the 19 years before that in the classroom being taught by them, I made some observations that we freely share with our charges:
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Teachers/professors are people too. Before you discount this premise as being the very definition of a “dah“ statement, remember the shock you felt as a kid seeing a teacher at the grocery store? We held them as super creatures that didn’t need food like we mortals.
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As humans, they share a lot of our emotions and needs.
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To feel successful
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To be needed and appreciated
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To feel joy at others accomplishments
3. We teach our kids to see how teachers want to celebrate success with their students and themselves and how a smart (street or otherwise) person will build alliances with their instructors.
I often share my own experience as a teacher and a student. I was floundering in a college Zoology class and went to see the professor (on my own time). He shared many thoughts on study skills and how to determine what was important from all the myriad of information in the current chapter. His guidance helped immediately. I went from a grade of D - to a B+ by the end of the first semester. The next semester I got the A. (He only gave one per semester!)
Sidebar: 117 students started that Zoology class in the fall and fifteen of us finished it in the spring. That experience changed the way I thought about myself.
Preparing for success
As a student I learned that all of us who were succeeding in this highly demanding class had our own interview with the professor. I talked to him about this later and he said: “When a person takes the initiative to come in on their own like you did, I see them as a sincere student and give freely of my time and energy. I get a great return on my investment, wouldn’t you say?”
I took his approach a step further when I became a teacher myself. I shared my success story with my students and invited them to come see me. In “I CARE” we encourage our kids to become “students who care”.
They see firsthand what a win – win relationship looks like. The teacher goes into the faculty room and brags “Remember that student who was bound and determined to fail my class? I got to him and he earned a C+”. And the “ICARE” kid gets to say to himself ( depending on this mindset) “I got over on that dude and passed his stupid class” or hopefully “Hey, I can learn and pass tests if I put my mind to it... next time I’ll get a B”
Sidebar: This topic brings up my favorite quotation about the student/teacher/professor relationship: “They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”