It was amaaaazing. As educators of teenagers, we hear this word often – and we know it means that something worked. How can we ensure that we keep hearing this word and that it has the meaning behind it that we hope for? I believe our best advocates are those having the amaaaazing experiences.
The education and programming planned and executed by peers potentially reaches teens in the most profound way. As an educator who works with these teens, I strive to empower the teens I work with to be responsible for not only learning how to coordinate details of the projects they are planning – but also to understand how to educate their peers and create powerful and amaaaazing moments.
When teens engage with contemporary role models as educators, they care more about the topic. Because their friends care about it (as we’ve seen with websites like YELP, urbanspoon, etc). We do our best to empower our teen leaders. We want them to find their passion, own the curriculum and balance both their enthusiasm and grounded understanding of their topics. As the organization, we provide the platform. The teenage participants choose topics and plan the programs. When, where and how do we give them support and guidance? The struggle is how to create a balance between giving them the experience and letting them have it, while still ensuring the highest quality programs that are both in line with our mission and have lasting impact.
There are two important steps to guiding teens through this process. First, the advisor must help the teen educator identify a passion – this might come from finding a new topic to learn about or exploring a familiar topic through a fresh framework. The program topic might be a skill, a resource, a text or a concept. Teens also have to learn the skills of teaching through continued practice and feedback. Very often, the teens I work with want to start off by being amaaaazing teachers and creating a program that ‘changes someone’s life’. These are both very big tasks. I help them walk through the process one step at a time. Learning and ‘life-changing’ comes from creating moments of transition – which is not a simple thing to do. It takes practice. One of the barriers to effectively creating these moments for others is being able to remove one’s own focus and fixation on their experience with the topic. This process might seem backward to a teenager who is focused on starting with their experience and wanting everyone to experience what they experienced. Before a teen, or group of teens, can create an environment that allows their peers to experience an amaaaazing moment, the teen leaders should learn about the process of creating moments of transition with easier topics.
Second, the teens must understand the process of allowing for moments of transition. Any program or learning is a one way transfer of information if it doesn’t involve a moment of transition – a moment where the participant realizes a lasting personal connection to or impact from the program and the lesson. Everyone experiences moments of transition differently from everyone else. What made one experience amaaaazing for one person is not the same that affected someone else. A moment of transition is literally the instant when the lesson topic becomes relevant to the student. One can identify this moment through changes in attitude, a newfound feeling of empathy or sympathy toward a person or situation or a change in emotion. We can help our teen educators learn about this by identifying their own moments of transition and helping them identify the factors that caused that shift and by remembering that a program should be thought of a series of moments – each one having the potential to reach an individual in a profound way.
This all rests on the overarching theme of relationship-based learning. Educators, adult and teen, are most successful when they have a strong, trusting, fun-loving and respectful relationship with the students. Peers have an advantage here and therefore can accomplish so much more - so it is up to us, as the advisors, to use that advantage and continue to strive for amaaaazing results.
These are wonderful comments - I agree so much with your observation that there is a moment of transition for learners - and it is "literally the instant when the lesson topic becomes relevant to the student" .These are the moments, when identified, that the educator recognizes the fullfillment of their purpose - and great moments they are.
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