How To Enable Young People To Use Their Learning To Enhance Their Future Development

Working with young people can be challenging at times and very stressful for youth workers who do not understand the fundamentals of working with young people.

I have come across youth workers who don’t have the slightest clue as to what their aims and objectives are.

What is their end goal? It’s like watching a headless chicken going round and round in circles.

I have facilitated and developed training manuals for youth workers and have always informed that youth work is about exploring and promoting clearly to young people the benefits of ongoing learning when they access your youth club.

It is about encouraging young people to reflect constructively upon their experiences and to recognize the consequent learning points when taking part in planned activities organized by the youth club.

Youth work is about creating appropriate opportunities for young people to reflect on their learning and experiences, including individual and group discussions.

Young people come to you for information and support, thus as a youth worker, you should be able to provide active and sensitive support in order to enable young people to deal with any experiences and learning they find challenging.

As a youth worker, you and your staff members should demonstrate that every young person that attends the youth centre is involved in the planning and developing the ability of young people to take charge of their own sessions that they can review with the help of youth workers.

Young people should be encouraged to value each other’s learning and disclosures, reinforcing this by personal example.

Furthermore, young people should be Encouraged to identify how their learning from youth work experiences might be applied in other areas of life.

Working with young people it is fundamental to identify and develop clear and achievable personal and group development goals.

More importantly assist young people to identify activities which will realize their goals, and which are in line with their learning styles, (recording these as appropriate) Identify sources of support to help young people carry out and continuously review their learning and development

To summaries as champions of young people, youth workers should be able to demonstrate that they;

• Recognise young person as a partner in the learning process

 

• Work to provide a safe learning and development environment for young people

 

• Encourage young people to explore their capacity for growth and development

 

• Encourage young people to be critical and creative in their responses to the world around them