Creating Partnerships for Home and Beyond
A new school year offers new options. For many parents the school year means added stress. Adult stressors are pretty well-known……we tend to complain a lot. After all, we’re responsible for keeping our families clothed and fed, keeping the children in school and preventing them from flunking classes, keeping them off drugs, to name a few.
Youth stressors aren’t readily known. My son and I took a group of teens to see Choices, a play written and performed by teens (Positive Youth Troupe) for teen audiences. While many situations were portrayed in the play, violence preempted the others during the discussion after the play. Teens from the cast and audience shared personal encounters with violence that earlier generations only saw in movies. When an adult asked what they needed from adults, they answered “protection”. However, Raymond Wade, 12, commented that he wasn’t sure adults could protect him because they were too busy fighting each other.
It became clear to me that we have to develop partnerships with each other and with our youth. The traits of an effective partnership works for families, schools as well as places of employment. By instituting the practices at home, we are training youth to accomplish in the outside world. Let’s spell out a few.
Plan and Play – Partners have a shared vision. Include children in creating a vision for your family and ask what each one brings to the partnership. Assign household chores and plan fun activities on a regular basis to review and reward performance in home management. Involve them in determining categories for rewards. Be sure to include a category for Improvement.
Appeal to common interests - Too often, adults don’t have a clue about what their young person likes to do. When parent and child takes a multiple intelligence inventory, they not only identify their own areas of interests but also those that they share in common. This information allows for more communication and shared activities, both of which enhance partnerships.
Remember that relationship is everything – Students flunk classes because they didn’t like the teacher. Youngsters join gangs or hang with a gang-banger because of friendship. Affirming and supporting youth, valuing their opinions, listening to them results in strong relationships.
Tell your true stories - Too often, we rewrite our life stories in an attempt to present a pristine image. Overcoming hurdles is part of the game of life. When youth experience live examples of that, it’s living proof that regardless of where they are, they can move beyond that.
Nurture innate intelligences - Adopt an attitude that doesn’t prescribe what your child will be but rather one of “Let’s discover what you’re here to do.” Expose her to many activities and honor the requests to repeat certain ones. Detecting innate intelligences and linking careers to those will have the student master the subjects and choose careers that bring fulfillment.
Expect the best – evaluate the rest - Have your child set goals – what grade is she going for in math for the first marking period? Encourage actions to make the goal a reality. If they miss the goal, don’t make them wrong. Support them in reviewing what was missing.
Represent and respect - Let your actions reflect the words you speak. It’s a known fact that children don’t always hear or listen to what we say but they always see what we do and note the contradictions.
Schedule time for family matters with the same diligence as a departmental meeting. Family meetings, family meals, outings all go a long way towards strengthening family relationships but most important, include them in making needed contributions to the family. If Nelson Mandela could herd sheep at the age of five, there’s something your child can contribute while boosting self-confidence and self-esteem.
PN Alerts!!!
admin @ September 2, 2008
In the past, children and adults played an integral role in determining the welfare of their family and their community. Nelson Mandela was herding sheep at the age of five. Fast-forward to the present where families are dependent on external institutions for survival. How can we reverse the trend?
Maulana Karenga’s fourth Kwanzaa principle following Unity, Self-Determination and Collective Work & Responsibility is Cooperative Economics – to build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses, and to profit from them together. This would be the solution to eliminating dependency.
So what if we accepted this value system and took responsibility for raising self-reliant, responsible and community-oriented adults. What if our youth knew they were on a mission to gather skills and experience from jobs they hold to bring back to family or community businesses. Can we take a crash course through the first three principles for our independence?
The city’s annual Summer Youth Employment Program for youth 14 – 21 ends Aug. 16th. Current data from DYCD reports a citywide current enrollment of 43,103 with 6,548 active work sites. What if these youth, in addition to earning $7.15 per hour, were ambassadors from the community with the purpose of gaining skills for community businesses?
It would probably eliminate many of the SYEP work site supervisors’ complaints such as inappropriate dress – girls wearing shorts or shirts showing cleavage - boys wearing hats in the building or pants below their behinds, not bringing a uniform, disrespect; using inappropriate language, talking back to supervisors; stealing, fighting, causing arguments, gossiping, having relationships at work, bringing siblings (when their is no sitter) or friends, not calling in when absent, missing several days, often late.
Nioka Workman, Manager of Ejam Services, offers these tips to teens based on her experience of connecting teens to employment.
1. Be accessible - Not enough young people have consistent access to a computer. Notices about work and workshops appear online. The employer will request a resume online. If there’s no response, we have to move to the next potential employee.
Parent support can include providing a computer at home or a public library card which allows access to computers.
2. If communicating by phone, make sure the voice mail message is professional. Employers won’t hire potential interns/employees if they call and the phone message has a long song about “’kissing”!
Parent support – Discuss this tip with your job-hunting teen. If getting rid of the song is traumatic, have them give the home number to prospective employers.
3. Be prepared – Employers that have job openings have too much responsibility and no time to train workers. Employers say that many young people are not “focused” enough to handle more than one task at the same time.
Parent support- Include your child in home management….chores and hold meetings where problems are discussed and solutions sought.
4. Become invaluable – It’s important to make a good first impression. Be on time, look wonderful and feel positive. Professional entrepreneurs and business owners are looking for partnerships. They will work with a person that has a special skill that they don’t have.
Parent support – Make sure your child is aware of his or her intelligences and that you provide opportunities for their use. Send a competent, confident and contributing teen to the workplace.
Next time, we’ll get some insights and tips from Brooklyn’s family businesses on Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics.
PN Alerts!
**The 2nd Annual “Cradle to College” –Parent and Youth Empowerment Seminar, 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM * Saturday, August 16, Medgar Evers College, 1650 Bedford Avenue and * Saturday, August 23, Secondary School of Law, 237 7th Avenue.
**The Ron Brown Scholars Program seeks African-American high school seniors to apply for $10,000 annually for four years to attend an accredited four-year college or university. Deadlines: November 1, 2008 and January 9, 2009. Visit www.ronbrown.org.
** Training high school graduates (must be at least 17) and providing part-time and flexible employment selling Cutco cutlery with salary, sales commissions and scholarships. Visit www.cutco.com.
**Road2Success is a two-year program supporting ACS-affected parents in pursuing higher education in New York City; identifying college programs, finding financial aid, help with books and supplies, child-care, transportation and more. Contact Gemma Pujadas Ribeiro, (212) 348-3000, gemma@cwop.org
**Magnolia Tree Earth Center launches Home Works! Ujima Circle in September – a parent/guardian collective think tank turning problems into projects and unleashing the genius of our youth. For info and to register contact Andrea at 718-387-2116 or Aminisha at the parentsnotebook@verizon.net or 718-783-0059.
admin @ August 14, 2008