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Youth Work 101. Who is in the room?. Share your name, preferred pronouns, and host site. Agenda. Overview of Establish-Maintain-Restore Deep dive into tips to Establish relationships with youth The importance of Boundaries Tangible first steps.
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Who is in the room? • Share your name, preferred pronouns, and host site.
Agenda • Overview of Establish-Maintain-Restore • Deep dive into tips to Establish relationships with youth • The importance of Boundaries • Tangible first steps
Establish-Maintain-Restore is an approach that guides Youth Workers to reflect on their relationship status with students to inform more strategic and purposeful interactions. Maintain • Intentionally Building Positive Relationships • Reconnecting with the Student After a Negative Interaction to Restore the Relationship • Keeping Relationships Intact through Ongoing Positive Interactions Establish Restore
Establish Phase: Intentionally Build Positive Relationships • Goal: Target students who you have not established a sense of trust, connection, and belonging with who need it the most • Actions: Interact with students in specialized ways to build a positive relationships (make deposits into the relationship)
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #1 - Banking Time • Finding individual time to spend with a specific student to deposit into the relationship • Open-ended questions • Validation statements • Reflective listening • Summary statements • Time spent should involve doing something (walking, working on something, playing cards) of the child’s choice
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #2 - Gather, review, and find opportunities to reference or integrate information about a student (show that you’re keeping track and paying attention) • Special interests, occasions, pets, family members, hobbies, likes/dislikes • Gathering information through • Brief conversations with the student • Sentence completion forms • Journals • Surveys completed by parents about interests, pets, family
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #3 -Second hand compliments • Find something to compliment about the student’s behavior or performance and relay that through another adult rather than delivering it directly to the student • Positive notes / calls home (be sure parent relays the message) • Positive office referral • Tootling to another teacher / staff (telling on the student to another teacher) • Compliments must be: • Specific • Sincere/authentic
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #4 – 2 by 10 • Spend two minutes a day for 10 straight days in a row talking or interacting with a student • The student selects what they want to talk about, play, or do
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #5 – Wise Feedback • Deliver feedback to the student regarding academic work but coupling it with a written or verbal statement that: • Communicates high expectations • Communicates high belief in the student’s capability to be successful in the class • "Wise" (trust) feedback note - "I am giving you these comments because I have very high expectations for students in my class, including you, and I know that you can reach them. I believe in you.“ • Purpose of feedback note - "I am giving you these comments so that you'll have feedback on your………"
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #6– Surprise Act of Kindness • A pure act of kindness is a gesture or gift that targets offering kindness towards a particular person for the sole reason of showing that one cares
Seven Strategies to Intentionally ESTABLISHPositive Relationships • Strategy #7 - Positively salutations and farewells on a daily basis • Positive greetings as a salutation that are personalized that demonstrate a person values the presence of the other person in the environment • Positive farewells by offering words of encouragement, saying thank you, and wishing someone a good rest of the day are a sign of care
Example – Four at the Door • EYE TO EYE • As you greet at the door in between class periods, before school, or after school be intentional in the hallways to role model what it looks like to make good eye contact with not only your students entering your classroom, but other students passing in the hallway as well. • NAME TO NAME • One of the number one relationship strategies that an educator can role model for students is what it looks like to ask someone what their name is, what it looks like to work hard at learning names, and the humility required to ask someone again if you do not remember their name. Once you have a students name, both in your classroom as well as others passing your door in the morning, role model using their name when speaking with them or when they pass by you during the day. Leadership Lesson #1 = Names are Important! • HAND TO HAND • Remember that human beings were built to be relational. It is all about relationships! With each student that comes through the door, find some form of appropriate human contact and intentionally connect. This could be a handshake, fist bump, hi-five, or some other form of creative hand to hand greeting. • HEART TO HEART • Each and everyday that your students come to your classroom, work hard to connect with as many students as possible first as human beings, before they enter your classroom as a student. This could be through asking a question about their weekend or something that you know they are passionate about or interested in.
Pair Share • Generate one open-ended question you could ask a student that would help you understand the student better • What does it look like when someone is actively paying attention to you and interested in what you have to say?
Keeping Healthy Boundaries With Youth • As we establish relationships with youth it is crucial that we also model healthy boundaries. • Boundaries are needed to protect both you and the youth you work with. • This is not always black and white, and it can sometimes be difficult to navigate these situations. • Activity: Move to one side of the room or the other (or anywhere in-between) based on how you would handle the following scenarios.
Boundaries – Best Practices • Never find yourself in a situation where you are 1:1 with a student out of sight of others. • Defer to your site’s policies on things like social media, contacting youth outside of school hours, etc. • Keep your conversations about the youth you’re working with. You can share facts about yourself and be authentic, but you don’t need to share deep or personal information about yourself to them.
Boundaries – Best Practices • We all need emotional boundaries as well. The youth you work with may have walls up and you need to be cautious about how you seek to take down their emotional walls. • Don’t force students to open up to you. They have their walls up for reasons we may not immediately know. They need to know you are a safe person and they need to have agency over taking down their own walls. • Don’t try to win their friendship in 10 minutes. Remember, it can take a long time for youth to trust you. Be authentic and let them open up as they’re ready.
Authenticity • What does authenticity look like to you? • What prevents you from being authentic? • How can we create a safe space for youth to be their authentic selves?
Wrap Up – Tangible Next Steps • For your first few days on site your biggest goal will be to begin establishing relationships. • Try out some of the tips we went over for establishing relationships. • Small Corps #1 is the next time we’ll see each other and we’ll be going over the Maintain phase.
