Today is the second part of Mince’s guest post about youth work in schools in the UK. Check out the first part here and come back next week for the third and final installment.

Youth Work in Schools in the UK – Part 2

There are two reasons that teacher training is so intensive: one is that, as you already know, the good and proper education of children and young people is what any civilisation needs in order to survive and grow; the other is that it’s really, really easy to screw it up.

Here are some problems or non-problems you get in schools:

You’ve got a captive audience

Youth work is a lot like teaching, but the difference is that one of the founding principles of youth work is voluntary participation. As in, if they’re not interested in your session, they don’t come to it. They have the power to choose if they want to engage or not! This means you’ve got a very powerful audience, so you better do something good.

But also, if you can’t, then the worst case is that your group just wanders off. Not so in a school… If you die on your feet, you gotta stand there looking the fool till the bell rings. Better make some backup plans quick time!

Your group already has a dynamic

For all the training you might have received on making and controlling group dynamics in youth clubs, at a school the class already did that years ago; they have quite literally grown up together. It’s a toxic environment, a real mixed bag. But yes, you have this group of people who see each other every single day, and know more about each other than you probably know about yourself. As a result, your group discussions might feel a little strained.

The teacher is there

As a non-teacher, this can only be a good thing… right? Wrong! Teachers are all powerful. They can make your youth work session a success or a massive failure. If they look interested, if they join in, if they remind those kids at the back to pay attention, and generally point out how great you are, then success is so much more likely than if they come in, sit at the back, get out their iPhone to play Angry Birds, and chuck paper planes at you. It’s horrible to have to say this, but some teachers do not give a hoot about your session or about their class’s behaviour or learning. (In that case, who knows why they are there because there are much easier ways to make £25k, but that’s another story…)

Every school is different

Great! Don’t we just love being kept on our toes? After all, it would get pretty boring if they were all the same? But be warned, you WILL break a rule, even if it’s just a banned word or calling a teacher by the wrong name, or whatever. Chill. Take it easy. How were you to know? School life involves a million more rules (and the breaking of a million more rules) than youth work, so it’s pretty routine. Phew.

Mince is a youth worker in the UK with a healthy fear of schools.

Question: What painful experiences do you have from working in a school? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

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Today we’ve got another great guest post from Mince – you can also check out her previous post about the different types of youth worker. Today’s post is about youth work in schools in the UK – come back for the second and third installments over the next couple of weeks.

Youth Work in Schools in the UK – Part 1

If you wanted to be a teacher in the UK, you could complete NVQ levels 2 and 3 in Childcare and Education. That will lead you into either playgroups or schools work.

Alternatively, you could go to University, learn your subject inside-out (for a large fee), and then take either one or two years to do your PGCE.

If you want to specialise then you can do extra courses; for example to work with SEN groups (Special Educational Needs), children with other specific learning difficulties, tutor support, and so forth. You’d do some time in a school where you’d learn all the useful stuff like timekeeping in sessions, school rules, school cultures, uniforms, class management, teacher dress code, where the coffee is, whether you get called ‘miss’ or not, where to smoke, who the disruptive kids are, and all the ‘office politics’ you get in a school.

Youth workers, by comparison, mainly learn their trade on the job – as volunteers, as sessional workers, and eventually as underpaid, awkwardly contracted ‘staff’. Some choose to do an NVQ or a degree, or even an MA – youth work is routinely a graduate profession these days. But the funding, the infrastructure and the support are savagely lacking, and in a time of cuts, austerity, and ‘difficult decisions’, that isn’t going to get any better anytime soon. *sigh*

Now, there’s a reason you’re a youth worker and not a teacher, and often the reasons include:

• You like young people
• You hate schools, or
• You just really like to challenge yourself

Clearly the easier, better-paid and more widely respected career route is teaching. Instead, as a youth worker you’ll fight your whole career to be taken even half as seriously as a teacher. You’ll then spend every family gathering, meeting or party where you accidentally mention your job telling people that you do not just ‘play pool all night’, or ‘entertain teenagers’, or corrupt the fragile minds of the innocent.

Lots of youth workers hate schools for their one-size-fits-all approach. Youth workers will hear all the horror stories from young people about cruel and unreasonable teachers, including bullying issues and ego-shattering comments doled out to students. But we only hear one side of the story; teachers are also overworked, underpaid, undermined and insulted daily by young people, by OFSTED, by ESTYN and by local authorities.

So as a youth worker, at some point, you may end up having to go into a school. Schools are unfeasibly nervous about teaching ‘life skills’ or ‘PSHE’ or ‘SRE’ or whatever they call it this term. That’s fair enough, and anyway, better to have it taught by someone who stays up to speed with this stuff for a living than a Science or English teacher who drew the short straw. A good school will usually call in the experts – that means charities, youth clubs, health workers and other not-for-profit peeps with a message for the youth. *ring ring* oh, it’s for you!!

Mince is a youth worker in England and is therefore officially an endangered species.

Question: What are your experiences of doing youth work in schools? Let us know in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
2. Following us on Twitter
3. Liking us on Facebook
4. Signing up to our RSS feed