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Applied Research
The whole story of how the Young Canadian Leadership Challenge
took on its present form is bigger than the sum of its parts. It is a
story worth relating - because those who will replicate it in the
future will be tempted to change it - and even a small change could
destroy the delicate fabric which leads to the results - the journey a youth takes to become "their own person."
Changes will inevitably made in the future - but we want to insure that
future changes will improve on the results - not water them down - as
so often occurs.
First and foremost, we started with a clear idea of where we were going with this. We had met a youth who was "his own person" - and we had reason to believe that this remarkable shift had occurred at a weekend-long program he had attended. When we went, ourselves to see this program - the Young Men's Adventure Weekend - in Vancouver - we were struck by the program creator's assertion that this program had been constructed to teach men how to be better fathers - and only secondarily to benefit the youth who attended. Brad Leslie, a Vancouver realtor, had been struck by the fact that 90% of young men in Canada's prisons either had absentee fathers, or abusive men in their lives.
As we watched the program unfold, we learned that its content varied from program to program, and yet, we witnessed that at least some of the youth who attended were major beneficiaries - just like the young man we had already met. One 17 year old, who had threatened to kill one of the adult volunteers on the opening night, and who had just come out of prison for attempting to murder his father, sat down on a log next to me as the program wound down - and commented - "This is the first time in my life that I've actually liked older people." Here was another kid who had become "his own person."
We came away with the clear notion that it was not the program - but the caring of the people who gathered to put it on
- which was the prime ingredient of the results. We felt that if we
could hold this constant, creating a program within the program could
make the results more universally available. Brad Leslie invited us to "build on my shoulders."
Thanks to Brad's persistence, we have never deviated from centering the program around a group of adult volunteers whose motivation to be there was not clever interaction with the youth - but the sincere intention to serve them well. We are quite convinced that were the presenters a group of slick, overconfident technician-like adults - the results would soon be lost. There's something quite special in the fact that like the youth, the adults are equally open and vulnerable to the process. Sure, we have to be careful not to include pedophiles and adults who have a chip on their shoulders towards youth - and so we safeguard this by having a program where no adult is ever alone with a youth participant (they work in pairs), and by training Facilitators to spot and remove adults who can't meet this standard.
We did not start by going to the literature mentioned in our Background & Research section. We started from the experience several of us shared in running programs with remarkable success. We have all done programs that bombed - but we shared among our group an experience of programs which were remarkably successful as well. We settled on Simulation Gaming as our method - a method which we already knew would appeal to youth - and one which some of us had applied successfully in other settings. A simulation game can soar if it is well done - and can fall flat if it is not well done. It is done by casting a mythical and heroic scenario - which is presented as theatre - and by inviting the participants to make up their own roles in the drama we offer. Each culture has myths in which the hero "becomes their own person" - the best-known of which are the stories woven by J. R. Tolkien. Gradually we have evolved a myth which crosses cultural lines.
We also elected to use Ropes Course Challenges as the methodology within the myth. Several of us had been trained to present Ropes Course Challenges, and had used them in this age group with good results. What our first program in October 200 lacked in sophistication, it was nevertheless remarkably successful, with more than half the boys who attended becoming as present to their lives as the boy we had originally seen. We did not takes this as seriously as we might have until, when some of them reassembled a year later, we saw that they had added to this skill rather than having it become extinguished.
It was at this point (and ever since) that we began to read the literature on change among adolescents, and presence. Little by little, program by program we began to add elements from the "best practices" of the literature - methods which had been extensively tested to
produce remarkable results. An example of this came from reading Martin E. Seligman's Learned Optimism - which chronicles his work on shifting 12-13 year olds from self-defeating thinking to self-generated optimism.
This piece of work earned Seligman the "psychologist-of-the-decade"
honors for the 90's. It was inspired by his modelling of this program
on the so-called Hoving Effect -
which involves setting the learner off-guard, such that his response to
a surprise challenge is fresh, innovative and discovery-initiated. We
worked this into our design every opportunity we could - and as a
result our results became even better. We did this with virtually every
aspect of our program - substituting pieces everywhere which were drawn
from the literature on succcessful work with youth.
In this way, seeing we were on the same wavelength as they were, we picked the brains of the authors listed in Background & Research and bit by bit arrived at the design as it now exists. In each case, we used only elements which could be performed by non-professionals - as our design was committed from the outset to a program which could be replicated by everyday community members. The program continues to evolve as we gain more experience, learn to eliminate deadening pieces, and add others which continue to make the process sing.
First and foremost, we started with a clear idea of where we were going with this. We had met a youth who was "his own person" - and we had reason to believe that this remarkable shift had occurred at a weekend-long program he had attended. When we went, ourselves to see this program - the Young Men's Adventure Weekend - in Vancouver - we were struck by the program creator's assertion that this program had been constructed to teach men how to be better fathers - and only secondarily to benefit the youth who attended. Brad Leslie, a Vancouver realtor, had been struck by the fact that 90% of young men in Canada's prisons either had absentee fathers, or abusive men in their lives.
As we watched the program unfold, we learned that its content varied from program to program, and yet, we witnessed that at least some of the youth who attended were major beneficiaries - just like the young man we had already met. One 17 year old, who had threatened to kill one of the adult volunteers on the opening night, and who had just come out of prison for attempting to murder his father, sat down on a log next to me as the program wound down - and commented - "This is the first time in my life that I've actually liked older people." Here was another kid who had become "his own person."
We came away with the clear notion that it was not the program - but the caring of the people who gathered to put it on
- which was the prime ingredient of the results. We felt that if we
could hold this constant, creating a program within the program could
make the results more universally available. Brad Leslie invited us to "build on my shoulders."Thanks to Brad's persistence, we have never deviated from centering the program around a group of adult volunteers whose motivation to be there was not clever interaction with the youth - but the sincere intention to serve them well. We are quite convinced that were the presenters a group of slick, overconfident technician-like adults - the results would soon be lost. There's something quite special in the fact that like the youth, the adults are equally open and vulnerable to the process. Sure, we have to be careful not to include pedophiles and adults who have a chip on their shoulders towards youth - and so we safeguard this by having a program where no adult is ever alone with a youth participant (they work in pairs), and by training Facilitators to spot and remove adults who can't meet this standard.
We did not start by going to the literature mentioned in our Background & Research section. We started from the experience several of us shared in running programs with remarkable success. We have all done programs that bombed - but we shared among our group an experience of programs which were remarkably successful as well. We settled on Simulation Gaming as our method - a method which we already knew would appeal to youth - and one which some of us had applied successfully in other settings. A simulation game can soar if it is well done - and can fall flat if it is not well done. It is done by casting a mythical and heroic scenario - which is presented as theatre - and by inviting the participants to make up their own roles in the drama we offer. Each culture has myths in which the hero "becomes their own person" - the best-known of which are the stories woven by J. R. Tolkien. Gradually we have evolved a myth which crosses cultural lines.
We also elected to use Ropes Course Challenges as the methodology within the myth. Several of us had been trained to present Ropes Course Challenges, and had used them in this age group with good results. What our first program in October 200 lacked in sophistication, it was nevertheless remarkably successful, with more than half the boys who attended becoming as present to their lives as the boy we had originally seen. We did not takes this as seriously as we might have until, when some of them reassembled a year later, we saw that they had added to this skill rather than having it become extinguished.
It was at this point (and ever since) that we began to read the literature on change among adolescents, and presence. Little by little, program by program we began to add elements from the "best practices" of the literature - methods which had been extensively tested to
produce remarkable results. An example of this came from reading Martin E. Seligman's Learned Optimism - which chronicles his work on shifting 12-13 year olds from self-defeating thinking to self-generated optimism.
This piece of work earned Seligman the "psychologist-of-the-decade"
honors for the 90's. It was inspired by his modelling of this program
on the so-called Hoving Effect -
which involves setting the learner off-guard, such that his response to
a surprise challenge is fresh, innovative and discovery-initiated. We
worked this into our design every opportunity we could - and as a
result our results became even better. We did this with virtually every
aspect of our program - substituting pieces everywhere which were drawn
from the literature on succcessful work with youth. In this way, seeing we were on the same wavelength as they were, we picked the brains of the authors listed in Background & Research and bit by bit arrived at the design as it now exists. In each case, we used only elements which could be performed by non-professionals - as our design was committed from the outset to a program which could be replicated by everyday community members. The program continues to evolve as we gain more experience, learn to eliminate deadening pieces, and add others which continue to make the process sing.