| News
& Views
- Oct, 1993 Issue #24 |
NEW HOPE FOR (NON?)STUDENTS
Young Adults 18 and Older
(The following is taken from
the Brochure of Echo Springs Transition Center, in
Sandpoint, Idaho, directed by Doug Kim-Brown,
208-265-0207. The ideas presented in this part of the brochure
have some real substance, and so are presented here as an
article in its own right. Echo Springs opened its doors on
October 4th to help 18 year olds and older focus their lives,
while still pursuing academic studies in an innovative curriculum.)
Some late adolescents, poised
on the brink of adulthood, seem paralyzed, unable to take
the leap to their life's next stage. Their fears are not baseless.
Their culture, which makes much of the privileges of senior
year and graduation, has in fact given them little self-knowledge
on which to make important decisions.
They feel they should have arrived
but are in fact nowhere. Often they've done well, or well
enough. They've been tested, probably over tested, but unless
they have been extraordinarily lucky and have had a rigorous
teacher or coach, they have rarely been put to the test. Their
grades have been inflated and they know that. Cocooned from
true self-assessment, they have no clear idea of their strengths
and weaknesses, no sense of how they will get by in the world,
let alone succeed.
Nor are their fears about succeeding
unfounded. 1993 graduates will retire in 2040. They can't
even imagine the career fields that will burgeon during their
working lives, let alone plan and educate themselves for those
fields. Students now may have to prepare themselves for entirely
new career-planning models: project-based employment, self-employment,
cyclical employment, employment in virtual companies.
WHAT THEN ARE THE SIGNS THAT
SOMEONE FACED WITH THESE CHANGES NEEDS SOME HELP?
*A decline in grades or grades not commensurate with
ability.
*Procrastination, disorganization, lack of motivation.
*Inability to focus on schoolwork or finding a job.
*A string of "Incompletes" on grade reports.
*A tendency to withdraw, to avoid making decisions about college
and career.
*An inability to talk through issues with parents, friends,
or counselors to completion. *An inability to reflect on issues,
and through reflection, decide and act.
WHAT WILL HELP THESE STUDENTS
MOVE AHEAD?
*Working in a sustained effort on something that will be evaluated
thoughtfully and critically.
*Modeling effective relationships, to learn communication
skills.
*Transcending their peer culture, to choose what is valuable
from it, and look to other cultures for what they need.
*Learning goal-setting and completion skills and the satisfaction
of accomplishment.
*Articulating their interests and values and learning the
discipline of articulation--for much of the power in life
is in the hands of those who can speak and write effectively.
*Succeeding and failing in contexts that are neither academic
nor athletic, contexts that more closely match the worlds
of adulthood. *Moving from being a passive onlooker to an
active participant in their own lives.
*Learning to talk openly with other adults about the demands
of the workplace, about sexuality, relationship, and marriage.
*Debriefing adolescence and setting the stage for adulthood.
A "RE-ENVISIONING" OF THE
POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE
Drawing on tools unavailable to traditional schools or colleges,
the Center helps kids identify their interests, assess their
strengths and weaknesses, and learn to use them in a variety
of settings. It's a time away, a time to re-envision their
goals in life without rebelling against or merely parroting
those of their parents.
At Echo Springs vocational skills
are an intellectual experience, academics are a vocation,
and learning is an adventure. Students at Echo Springs will
learn that they can accomplish what before seemed impossible.
For many whose first response to a project would have been,
"I can't do it," the Center will coach them to attempt it.
Starting something new is the first step to realizing that
they can do what once seemed out of their domain.
THE PARENT AS EMANCIPATOR
An adolescent's chief job is separation, and separation is
a painful business. As many parents have bitterly learned,
the pain of declaring independence is often expressed by teenagers
as anger, not tears. For those teenagers stuck on the cusp
between adolescence and adulthood, it's important for their
parents, who are on their own cusp, to become part of the
process.
The truth is that it is not just
the teenager who is in transition. It is the entire family.
Parents must be learners, too, and at this stage they must
learn to let go, to free themselves of the illusion of controlling
their children, to manage the transition from parent as authority
to parent as influence.
A parent's job is how to acknowledge
the separation, to accept children for who they are and not
for their vision of who they are. When children leave the
household for good, everything shifts. Parents have to reexamine
their relationship with one another and with their other,
younger children. Managed well, this process can be enlivening
for everyone involved.
The Center is also time and space.
Away from the pressures of home and school, out from under
the hot breath of impatient parents, away from the mutual
driving crazy of parents by kids and kids by parents, a new
assessment occurs and new discoveries emerge.
Copyright
© 1993, Woodbury Reports, Inc. (This article may be reproduced
without prior approval if the copyright notice and proper
publication and author attribution accompanies the copy.)
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