Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

Self-Esteem Videos For Teenagers

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Self Esteem Videos For TeenagersTeenagers often judge themselves through the eyes of others. They see their success and failures, their self-worth, self-esteem and self-image, their abilities and their frailties through different lenses.

Some will see their intrinsic beauty and worth through the eyes of the boy or girl they fancy. Others will see their future defined through grades and test scores. Some will believe they’re worthy or worthless through the words of their parents, grandparents, teachers and idols.

Most will miss out on the incredible beauty, joy, humor, life and potential they have within them that many see, but they themselves cannot. These two self-esteem videos for teenagers can therefore make a great session about how to view your ‘best self.’

1. Self Esteem Video 1 – Dove

Dove conducted a new experiment exploring how girls and women view themselves versus how others view them. This would make a great introduction to a talk or small group discussion about self-image, self-worth, self-esteem or perspective.

 

 

2. Self Esteem Video 2 – Suli Breaks

Suli Breaks, a young man from England, has released a new spoken word video. This looks at how young people’s lives and futures can be defined by society and exam results.

However, it emphasizes that they are worth so much more than an A or a D or whether or not they know a theorem or can solve X. This is therefore a great video to show your teenagers as we head into the end of the school year for most students.

Many are getting ready to graduate, take finals, take A Levels, complete coursework and find out if they passed or failed all of the standardized tests we subject our teens to. They need to know that they matter, not their scores or what college they got accepted to. They matter and their dreams matter, even if they don’t know how photosynthesis happens.

 

 

If you liked these videos, we also have many other self esteem activities to use with your young people.

Question: How would you use these self-esteem videos – either together or separately – with your teenagers? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments below.

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How To Give Youth Hope For The Future

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Projective ImaginingThis week’s youth work session idea is a great activity to help youth look ahead in life and have hope for the future. It’s therefore particularly good for using with young people suffering from depression, those in young offenders institutes, etc.

This youth group activity is called Projective Imagining. I participated in this during a breakout session led by Dr Gregory Ellison at the Youth Cartel Summit in 2012 and loved the powerful impact it could have on youth.

n.b. I’m writing this based on my memory of how Dr Ellison explained it 5 months ago, so my apologies to him that it’s not exactly the same way as he led it!

Resources

None

Location

This activity can be conducted anywhere – indoors or outdoors. If you’re planning it for a sizable youth group, you’ll need a fairly large room.

Group Size

Projective Imagining can be done with any sized groups as the young people will be participating in pairs. It’s also an activity that will work just as well in a one-to-one session with a young person or as part of a mentoring relationship.

Objective

To have young people consider what they want to achieve in life, providing motivation for fulfilling their dreams and goals. Doing this will help them foresee a positive future for themselves, helping to give hope to those who may ordinarily think that they won’t achieve anything.

Activity

Split everyone into pairs and have them spread out around the room (or outdoor area if applicable). Go round and give each person the letter A or B.

Get them to close their eyes and read them the following scene:

You’re coming to the end of your long life – you’re now 85 years old. You’re a well respected member of your community and people often come to you for advice due to all the success that you’ve had.

On this particular day, you’re sitting out on your porch when a 10 year old comes to see you. He walks up the steps of your porch and explains that he’s unsure about what direction to take in life.

As a successful and respected 85 year old, he’d like to know more about what you’ve achieved in life and what advice you can give to help set him on the right path.

Once you’ve read this out, have them open their eyes. Explain that in their pairs, the As will play the part of the old person, while the Bs will play the part of the 10 year old.

The youth playing the old person needs to consider what they’d like to be known for when they’re old. They then need to tell the youth playing the 10 year old three things that they achieved in their long life, along with three pieces of advice for the 10 year old. During this, the person playing the 10 year old shouldn’t say anything – they should just listen.

Allow a minute or two for the “old person” to consider what they see themselves achieving in life and the advice that they want to give, then another 5-10 minutes to explain this to their partner.

Once they’ve done this, the pairs should reverse roles, so the old person becomes the 10 year old and vice versa. Again, allow the “old person” a couple of minutes to think about all that they want to achieve in life by the time they’re 85, before explaining it to their partner.

Similar Youth Group Activities

As this session explores what youth want to achieve with their lives and who they want to be, it ties in perfectly with some of the following activities:

Question: Can you think of any other ways to adapt this Projective Imagining activity? Let us know in the comments below.

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3 Mother’s Day Crafts For Teenagers

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Mother's Day crafts for teenagersAt the time of writing this Mother’s Day is still 5 weeks away, but many countries celebrate it throughout the year and so, while you may not need this session plan right now, you may need it in June if you live in Kenya or August if you live in Thailand.

We thought we’d give you a chance to get crafty with your teens so they can make something homemade for their mothers, step-mothers, godmothers or any other ‘mother figures’ in their lives. And overall, these will probably go over much better than that clay ashtray from when they were 4.

So here are 3 Mother’s Day crafts for teenagers:

1. Paper Flowers

You can have the teenagers make one or more small paper flowers or you can decorate your youth center or church with giant paper flowers. Having done them before, they do take some patience and fluffing, but once you get good at it, they’re beautiful. Quick tip: don’t make the center string or tie too tight.

The other great thing about this craft is that it requires very few resources – some tissue paper, scissors and a pipe cleaner or string are the minimum for a regular paper flower, although the large ones also need a tray, some paper clips and some hot glue.

Here’s a video guide on how to make these flower crafts:

Here’s another video guide, but this time to make giant flowers. I’d never seen the giant ones before, but these are seriously beautiful!

2. Stained Glass Tissue Paper Votive Holder

These Mother’s Day crafts are inexpensive items that are creative, personal and easy to make. You only need glass votive holders, tissue paper, glue and paintbrushes.

The easiest thing to do is tear the tissue paper into various shapes and layer them on the votive holder. While holding them in place, use the paint brush to paint the glue onto the glass holder and over the top of the tissue paper as you go. Don’t put the paper or the glue on the inside. Let the whole thing dry. Viola! Done.

If you’re feeling craftier, you may want to try this votive holder.

Or explore making these.

3. Origami Light Boxes

This final craft is very pretty when done correctly. You can either use white paper with white lights, white paper with colored lights or colored paper with white lights. All you need is paper, maybe a little bit of tape and strings of Christmas lights.

First, you need to make origami water balloons. These, like the paper flowers, will take some time to master but are well worth the effort.

Here’s a video detailing how to make them:

Then, using the opening that you blew into, place them over the lights.

You can end up with some really pretty strands of lights, and they work well with dangly icicle lights too!

Question: Do you know of any other great Mother’s Day crafts for teenagers? How could you use these crafts to make the mothers of your youth feel special? Let us know in the comments below.

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12 Earth Day Activities For Students

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Earth Day activities for studentsEarth Day is on April 22 each year. If you’re wanting to plan some Earth Day activities for students, here are 12 great ideas for activities you can do with them, whether they’re elementary, middle school or high school students:

1. Litter Picking

Make a positive impact on your local area by going litter picking. This is not only a great team building opportunity for your young people, but can also be used as a fundraiser.

2. Earth Day Scavenger Hunt

To make the litter picking competitive, plan it as a scavenger hunt where teams race to find various items of trash. You can find a free scavenger hunt list here.

3. Posters & Flyers

If you do decide to go litter picking, try to get other people in the community involved to maximize the cleanup effort. Get your students to design some posters and flyers to advertise what they’ll be doing.

4. Tree Planting

If your church, community center or school has some land that’s not being used, have the young people plant some trees.

5. Vegetable Patch

For a project that will extend beyond Earth Day, plant a vegetable patch. Get the youth to take care of the vegetables and use them to make snacks or meals together – see our free session plan on how to teach youth meal planning for some further ideas.

6. Recycle

This can easily be tied in with the litter picking activities, as there’s a good chance that much of the trash they pick up can be recycled.

Encourage them to bring in recyclable materials from home, particularly if their household doesn’t normally recycle items.

7. Visit A Recycling Center

Take your students to a local recycling center to learn about the recycling process and why this is so important. If you’ve been collecting items to be recycled, take these along as the youth group may be able to earn a little money in doing so.

8. Mind Map

Organize a brainstorming / mind mapping session looking at how to consume less. Split the group into three teams and have one team research and identify ways to reduce their consumption, the second team how they can reuse more items and the third team how they can recycle more.

Once they’re done, get each team to present their findings to the rest of the group, with their fellow students adding their own suggestions afterwards.

9. Earth Day Word Search

For younger students, create a word search using Earth Day-themed words. You can quickly and easily create free word searches using this free tool from Discovery Education.

10. Events

For US residents, check out the EPA website for Earth Day activities going on in your state that you can take the young people to.

11. Hike

Go on a hike in a state park, in the mountains or anywhere else close by where students can enjoy nature.

12. Zoo / Aquarium

Another way the young people can enjoy nature is by taking a trip to a zoo or aquarium. If you go on April 22, there’s a good chance they’ll also be doing some kind of special Earth Day event.

Questions: What other Earth Day activities for students can you think of? What do you have planned for your youth group on April 22? Let us know in the comments below.

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Youth Consumerism – Youth Work Session Plan Idea

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Youth ConsumerismRecently, Macklemore (and Ryan Lewis) has begun to make a name for himself (in the mainstream) in the US and UK with his song ‘Thrift Shop.’ I think we can all agree that song is “freaking” awesome! Besides being incredibly catchy and fun, it has a deeper message about consumerism.

Stephen then found Macklemore’s song ‘Same Love’ and we really started to appreciate his musicality, rhymes and messages. I started listening to his entire album, The Heist and found even more great songs.

One of my new favorites is Wing$ which has very powerful lyrics and music video. The main idea that I drew out from it (although like most of his songs it has multiple levels of morals and lessons) is that our consumer culture tells us we need things – in this case a certain type of shoes – to be someone or something of worth.

Macklemore himself said on his blog “The song “Wings” is about the pursuit of identity through the means of consumerism. The attempt is to dissect our infatuation and attachment to logos, labels, brands and the fleeting happiness that is intrinsically linked to the almighty power of the purchase. The subject I use in the song is shoes, but its aim is to paint a broader picture of being a consumer and tracing the lineage back to my first memory of retail infused desire.”

Here’s the video for Macklemore’s Wing$ – n.b. language warning – preview first (email subscribers click here to watch):

 

 

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis – Wings Lyrics

You can use this video and/or the song’s lyrics for multiple youth work session discussion ideas about youth consumerism. Here are a few to get you started:

1. Macklemore has said that the song is about his first experience of “retail infused desire”. What do you think this means?

2. What does this say about consumer culture and how it affects us and how we care for our things? Why do people buy knock-offs?

The box, the smell, the stuffin, the tread, in school
I was so cool
I knew that I couldn’t crease ‘em
My friends couldn’t afford ‘em
Four stripes on their Adidas

3. Why are logos so important? Some people cover the logos on their shirts with duct tape. Why do you think they do that? (Most say that they’re not a billboard or being paid to advertise for that company)

On the court I wasn’t the best, but my kicks were like the pros
Yo, I stick out my tongue so everyone could see that logo

4. Do you know anyone who has been hurt for their gear? What happened? Why would someone murder someone for shoes or a coat – is it really about those things?

And then my friend Carlos’ brother got murdered for his fours, whoa
See he just wanted a jump shot, but they wanted a Starter coat though
Didn’t wanna get caught, from Genesee Park to Othello
You’d get clowned for those Pro Wings

5. What are some things that teens you know stand in line for, spend their money on or take from others? Why are those items important? Macklemore thinks it’s about trying to fit in – why is it important for you to fit in but also to be individuals?

I was trying to fly without leaving the ground, cause I wanted to be like Mike, right
Wanted to be him
I wanted to be that guy, I wanted to touch the rim
I wanted to be cool, and I wanted to fit in
I wanted what he had, America, it begins

6. What kind of things are you consumed by? Why do you think it’s important to keep shoes in such pristine condition – like only wearing $300 shoes on Sunday so they don’t get worn or have the whites marked?

I’m an individual, yea, but I’m part of a movement
My movement told me be a consumer and I consumed it
They told me to just do it, I listened to what that swoosh said
Look at what that swoosh did
See it consumed my thoughts
Are you stupid, don’t crease ‘em, just leave ‘em in that box
Strangled by these laces, laces I can barely talk
That’s my air bubble and I’m lost, if it pops

7. Is it wrong to want things? Is a consumer culture a bad thing – why or why not? Do you agree that some items that we make into icons like shoes, electronics and clothes are ‘just another pair of shoes’ or are they more significant?

Consumption is in the veins
And now I see it’s just another pair of shoes

Questions: How would you use this video or song with your young people to explore youth consumerism? What discussion questions might you pull out from the lyrics?

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