Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

Q-Tip War – Youth Group Game

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Q-Tip War
Make Q-Tip War, not love

Q-Tip War (or Cotton Bud War for my fellow Brits) is a youth work game that’s great for your entire youth group, no matter how how many young people you have.

Equipment

  • Masking tape / duct tape
  • Drinking straws (enough for one per person and wide enough to fit Q-Tips inside)
  • Q-Tips (cotton buds) – about 10 per person

Setup

  • Split the room in half with a line of tape along the floor
  • Put equal amounts of Q-Tips and straws on each half
  • Split youth into two equal sized teams

To Play

For the Q-Tip War, the two teams of youth take their places on opposite sides. Each young person gets a straw and grabs a handful of Q-Tips. When you tell them to start, they have to launch Q-Tips over to the other team’s half of the room. As you may have guessed, they do this by putting the Q-Tip inside the straw and blowing hard to launch it like a missile.

Each team tries to launch as many Q-Tips to the other side – not just their own, but the ones that land on their side too.

Winner

The winning team is the one with the fewest number of Q-Tips in their half at the end of the game.

Tips

  • The Q-Tip War can take however long you like, although having a countdown timer can lead to a fun and frantic finish
  • Play some loud pumping music to create even more atmosphere
  • Make sure each team has the exact same amount of Q-Tips at the start of the game, otherwise you’ll have complaints about how unfair it is!
  • Have some spare straws on hand in case any get broken during the game
  • Keep an eye out towards the end of the game for any youth stuffing Q-Tips in their pocket to seemingly reduce the number on their team’s half. (Or maybe it’s just me who’d consider doing something like this 😉 )

If you like this idea, you might love our other youth group games.

Question: How would you make the Q-Tip War even more exciting? Let us know in the comments below.

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3 Ways To Recognize Youth Worker Burnout

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Youth Worker Burnout
Burnt out youth workers are as much use to young people as burnt out marshmallows

Did you read our post about managing and avoiding youth worker burnout in January? In the busyness of the first quarter, did you take out time to recharge? Did you set clear boundaries? Did you line up your workplace supervision for reflecting on your practice?

No? See, we told you “no one plans to get burnt out”!

Well, it’s now mid-April.

The ‘new year smell’ has worn off your programs.

You’re winding down school year programming and trying to plan for the longer hours of summer programming.

Or you’re trying to figure out how to increase attendance, since it always drops off over the exam season and through the summer months.

You’re dreaming of those carefree vacation days between Christmas and New Year. When the phone didn’t ring. Everyone was full of good cheer and resolutions to volunteer more with the youth. When the stress of the fiscal year ending and/or starting was nowhere in sight.

Well, if you didn’t avoid youth worker burnout, here are 3 ways you can tell if you might be experiencing the start or even full-on burnout:

  1. You watch the clock. Usually you work 30-50+ hours a week and don’t give it a second thought, but now every extra minute feels like an eternity. You find you’re coming in right on time and leaving two minutes early. And while there’s nothing wrong with being punctual and having good boundaries, you’re beginning to resent having to be anywhere for anything with anyone for any longer than is absolutely necessary. Including finding increasingly creative ways to use your sick leave.
  2. You complain about the youth. You’ve started to find their usually hilarious behavior, irritating. You find you want to roll your eyes at them or even mock their questions in your mind. You’ve started to use sarcasm as your go-to response to anything they have to say, like you yourself are also 13.
  3. You can’t be asked. You’ve started putting on a movie more often or watching progressively longer clips. You don’t really want to hear much about a youth’s problems and find yourself nodding along and saying ‘uh huh’ without remembering a word they just said. Maybe you’re leaving planning to the last minute or just ‘winging it.’ You’re taking longer to log attendance or you’ve just started doing a head count instead of the usual formalities of sign-ins or other record keeping. Or maybe you’re actually saying to yourself and others ‘I’d do that but I seriously can’t be asked.’

This last one is the most severe sign of youth worker burnout in my opinion. You may notice a change in your attitude towards your working hours or your youth, and a volunteer or good manager will often point those out as well. But apathy can quickly kill any good work you’ve done.

A snarky comment and a longer lunch can usually be fixed with some rest and a pep talk, but inner, deep-rooted apathy can be much harder to overcome. Especially when you still get your work ‘done’ with the youth. They’re still attending. You’re still providing some kind of programming. You can rationalize it and others may not notice for a long time.

If you recognize your behavior in any of these three examples, take some time out. Take a vacation or a few days off with your friends or family. Find an activity that inspires you besides youth work.

Maybe you need a challenge and should consider taking a course or attending a workshop.

Consider if this role is still the right fit for you – do you need a change in position, responsibility, organization or even vocation?

Do what you need to do to re-energize yourself. Because you won’t be any good for the youth, volunteers or colleagues you work with if you’re burnt out.

Question: Are you experiencing youth worker burnout? What action steps are you going to take to make a change? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Stealing – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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Stealing youth work session plan idea
Image courtesy of funkeemunkeeland, Flickr

Depending on the youth that you work with, stealing might be a problem for some or all of them. If you know stealing is an area a lot of your youth struggle with, this session plan idea can help address the issue.

This kind of youth work session is one that the young people might find hard to be honest in, because they don’t want to admit that they steal things. It’s therefore important to ensure that the youth see the session as a safe environment, one where they can be completely honest and where there’s no judgment about their past behaviors. You could have the opposite problem though – they might lie about how much they steal in order to impress their friends.

This youth work session on stealing may therefore work better in a one-to-one setting – this removes the temptation to not be completely honest due to their peers.

Identify

Have the young people identify situations where they steal. This can be done by having them answer the W questions:

  • When do they steal: Is it on certain days of the week? Every day?
  • Where do they steal: Do they only ever steal from a certain store or from their parents? Or do they steal from anywhere?
  • What do they steal: Is it the same item – money, alcohol, food, clothes, etc? Is it something they feel they need or is it something they want or feel they have a right to?
  • Who do they steal with: Do they do it alone or with friends or family?
  • Why do they steal: This might be one of the hardest questions to answer – you may well get a load of “dunno” answers.

If they’re all able to, have them write down on a piece of paper their answers to all these questions. Some youth may not be good at writing though; if you know that’s the case for some or all of your youth, write down their answers for them on a flipchart.

Review

Have the youth review their answers – can they see any patterns?

  • Do they only steal on days they play truant from school? If so, do they skip school on the same day each week? If so, is it because they’re avoiding a certain lesson, either because they aren’t good at it or because there’s a bully in that class? (This could also answer the Why question)
  • Is there someone who they always steal with? Do they steal because that’s what the friend wants to do, or does the friend just tag along?
  • Is stealing only a problem when they visit a certain store? If so, is it because they love the products in that store, or do they have a negative memory association with that store, so stealing is their way of dealing with the pain?

Avoid

Once the youth have answered the W questions and reviewed their answers, have them identify ways that they can avoid the temptation to steal:

  • By not hanging out with certain friends
  • By avoiding certain stores
  • By not skipping school
  • By getting a job so they can afford to buy want they want
  • By dealing with whatever underlying issue is bothering them that makes them want to steal as an outlet for the pain

Try not to give them the answers yourself – it’ll be far more helpful if they can come up with the avoidance measures themselves. If they need some guidance though, ask them some open questions that guide their thinking.

Consequences

One problem you may encounter with this youth work session on stealing is that the young people don’t actually see a problem with stealing. It’s therefore important to address the natural and logical consequences of their actions.

Give each of them 3 or 4 sheets of paper, with each piece of paper having 4-5 squares on it and arrows from one square to the next. With these, they have to draw out a series of consequences when they steal.

For example:

Square 1 – Draw themselves meeting up with a friend they always steal with

Square 2 – Draw them stealing clothes

Square 3 – Draw them getting caught by a security guard

Square 4 – Draw them in front of a judge

Square 5 – Draw them doing community service

The reason they should have 3 or 4 sheets of paper is to take into account that consequences will get progressively worse the more often they are caught. The first sheet may just have them receiving a warning, with subsequent sheets leading to the above-mentioned community service, on to going to jail, not being able to get a job, etc.

Young people can be very short-term thinkers, so they may struggle to come up with possible consequences. If that’s the case, once again try to avoid giving answers yourself; instead, continue to guide them by asking open questions and directing them to the answers.

The more they can consider for themselves their own actions and consequences of stealing, the more likelihood there is that they will change their behavior. Simply saying “Stealing is wrong and you’ll end up in jail if you’re not careful” is unlikely to have much of an impact.

Impact

Consequences can still seem intangible until it’s too late. One way of counteracting this is to find out if your local law enforcement has some kind of “Scared Straight” program. This is where youth go into prisons to talk to adult inmates; the inmates describe what life is like in prison in an attempt to “scare straight” the youth.

There are differing opinions in terms of whether this is an effective program, or if it’s actually counterproductive and encourages delinquency.

Reflex

Depending on the youth you work with, you may find the Reflex program from the UK useful to research. From their website:

Reflex exist to empower children, young people and young adults to break the cycle of offending and reoffending. In 11 prisons, across 5 regions, we equip young people with the skills, confidence and opportunities to realise their full potential.

Reflex deliver Outreach, accredited Non-Formal Education, and through-the-gate Resettlement Mentoring for young people serving a custodial sentence. Using a tried and tested methodology: ‘creative reflection – positive expression’, Reflex help young people reflect creatively on their lives and positively express their hopes for the future.

If your young people do struggle with this issue, it might be worth addressing stealing in future youth work sessions, as it’s unlikely that the problem will be solved after just one session.

If you’ve found this helpful, you may also like our other youth work session plan ideas.

Question: How would you address the issue of stealing in a youth work session? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Binders vs. File Folders – Youth Work Admin

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Youth work administration - binders vs foldersn.b. If you’re paperless in your youth work administration this post won’t really apply to you. But you do get a gold star for being awesome and helping save trees.

As a youth worker you have permission slips, sign in sheets, photo release forms, volunteer forms, medical releases and more. If you don’t, you might want to read these posts about youth work policies and procedures and then come back.

Policies and procedures virtuoso? Perfect, let’s keep going. So, you have all these forms and need to access them easily during your youth programs. Which way do you go – Binders? or File Folders?

Binder. Every time. Binder.

But why you ask? The file folder is like the binder’s weaker, pastier friend who drops his phone in the toilet all the time. Here are three reasons binders are better than file folders for your important youth work documentation:

1. Security

Binders keep documents more secure than file folders. A two or three-ring binder will do a much better job of keeping your documents in order than a folder, which really is only one step up from construction paper in terms of durability. Some binders even come with an actual ‘locking system’ so that they won’t pop open or get bent when you drop them.

File folders will let you down when you’re in a hurry and all your papers fall all over the floor. ‘But,’ you might be thinking, ‘my file folders have metal clasps to keep my papers secure.’ While some file folders do have metal clasps which may keep your documents in the file folder, they won’t help out much with the next two reasons.

2. Transportability

Both binders and file folders are easy to take with you to an external youth work session. In fact, depending on the binder, file folders may even be smaller.

But, binders are more durable. They have a hard outside that keep your documents from getting bent, ripped or dirty. Between the hard exterior and the aforementioned locking rings, binders are infinitely more transportable in a backpack or rucksack than any file folder.

3. Organization

You can organize different projects much more easily using a binder than a file folder. You can get dividers and tabs. You can have all your projects and their forms in one binder that you take everywhere using multiple dividers and sub-dividers for individual programs and forms.

Or if you run multiple projects, you can have a different binder for each program and have dividers for the various forms you may need. File folders can either be clasped or loose and you can have only one per program if you want to have any kind of access to the information you need in a hurry.

Bonus reason for loving binders more than file folders: They can be color coded for projects, can have clear pockets for title pages/labeling and come in multiple ring size options for small, medium and large project needs.

Really, all file folders have going for them is that you can stand them upright in a file cabinet and see their names. I’ll let you in on a little secret: binders can do that too if you really need them to. Put a label on the side binding and put your binder open side down in the file pockets; otherwise just stack them in your file cabinet.

Question: Do you prefer binders, file folders or something else? Share your ideas and experiences in the comments below.

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What Is Youth Work Praxis?

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Youth work praxisQ: What is youth work praxis and what does it mean?

A: The origin of the word praxis comes from the stem of the Greek verb prassein, which means to do or to act. From prassein we get the Greek word praksis, spelled more commonly as praxis in English, which means practice, action or doing.

In Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, Paulo Freire writes that through praxis – through putting learning into action – the oppressed are able to gain more of an awareness of their situation and, in turn, are able to gain freedom and liberate themselves.

Youth work praxis is therefore when you put the theory you learn into your day-to-day youth work practice. This theory could have been learned through a conference, training, course or book. However you learned the youth work theory, what’s important is not only learning it, but putting it into practice.

Youth work praxis can take many forms, but here are three ways you can put youth work theory into practice:

1) Youth group development

Identify which stage of group development your youth are in, then use that knowledge to help guide them through the process of developing as a group

2) Set objectives

Use SMART or SMARTER targets to set goals and aims for your youth and your youth work programming

3) Child protection

Learn about best practices in child protection and then make the necessary changes or improvements to policies and procedures. Make sure that those procedures are put into place each and every time you work with youth

Question: What theory have you learned that you put into practice or need to make part of your youth work praxis? How did it go? Let us know in the comments below.

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