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Listen
Like caregivers forever, we were tearing our hair out over school grades. It always seemed that we were doing all the pushing and the kids were doing all the resisting – and little energy seemed to be left over for actual study! Norman, one of our tutors, said he thought we should be awarded the good grades at the end of the school year rather than the youngsters because we seemed to be doing all the work! As usual at our staff meetings, the chalkboard was covered with words and ideas, numbers, arrows, and hieroglyphic-looking diagrams representing motivation, carrot-and-stick models, graphs of low grades, correlations with this and that, all of which left us ... nowhere.
It was Norman who eventually had the idea. "Think about it," he said. "Here we are treating the kids like cattle that we want to pass through a gate, prodding, threatening, cajoling. Let’s try instead to treat them like reasonably sensible high school kids." Dumb silence. "I have this idea," he went on. "We should write them a letter!" Dumber silence. But he persevered and developed his idea, and soon we were all working at it. An hour later we were ready to try out a pilot scheme.
All of our high school students were given a personalised, objective report which listed their school subjects, their latest grade and the grade they would need to reach by the end of the coming term. For each subject we noted how far they had progressed so far (strengths approach!) and the "gap" which needed to be covered. For most subjects we could say "You are not far behind the grade average here and you will no doubt be able to make your own plans for this subject." But for the many subjects where they were lagging behind or failing we offered tuition, groups and other opportunities. "Several students are doing Hardy works this term so we have asked Tony Gallagher from the local College to run a reading group one evening a week. If you are interested in joining, what day(s) would suit you?" or "You have quite a way to go in Math or Biology or whatever; let Janet know if you would like us to arrange some private tuition for you." ... that sort of thing ... and "If you have some other ideas which you think would be useful, talk with Sam or Mike ..."
As expected, the delivery of these "letters" produced some loud guffaws and bawdy retorts, but in nearly all cases there was a positive uptake. Instead of going nose-to-nose with them, Norman’s idea had us taking up roles as supporters, tutors and encouragers, and this showed in the results of most of the kids.
All this is perhaps not such a new idea in the modern Child and Youth Care world, but today in our practice we can remember that when we want youth be responsible we can create real opportunities for them to take responsibility; instead of prescribing goals for them we can instead offer signposts and let them choose their own goals; and instead of the soulless work of trying to manage group behaviours ("silence in the schoolroom and get on with your work") we can listen to individuals, acknowledge the progress they have made so far, indicate (or create) possibilities – and then support them in their choices.
