Developing Youth? Part 2, The Program

The idea of our program is to prepare the middle school kids for adulthood by giving them some more practical skills than they may get in their other classes. (The students are in middle school, but most of them are US high school-aged because students are often held back or take a year off in between grades for one reason or another.) The program focuses on themes such as self-esteem, effective communication, goal-setting, careers, decision-making, sex ed., gender roles, etc. All of it is very participatory—such as team-building activities, problem-solving, working on teams, coming up with skits. Most students find these types of activities challenging because they usually spend their days listening silently to the teacher lecture or reading from their text books or copying information. They don’t get many opportunities to practice the critical thinking, communication, and creativity that participatory methods require, and they are often very shy and self-conscious. But they also seem to really like the classes because they’re a welcome change. Plus volunteers get an automatic rock-star status, being from the US, so that helps (at least for a while, until the glow fades).

Part of our job is also to train teachers in teaching our program with the idea that eventually they take it over. We’re never supposed to teach without another teacher in the classroom and the goal is to be co-teaching by the end of our two years. This can be really difficult because many teachers see the volunteer as someone that will take over the class while he/she can take a break and get other stuff done. We’re also supposed to give teacher trainings and workshops with all the teachers to help them develop participatory education methods, train them on teaching sex ed., and hopefully work in some training on professionalism. Part of our job is also to hold workshops with parents to give them the skills and info to better support their children.