Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

4 Ways To Evaluate Youth Work Sessions

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Youth work session evaluationAs you might have seen from our previous posts, we’re big fans of youth participation. One way that you can get your young people involved in your youth work programs is through getting feedback from them.

This week’s Best Of Youth Workin’ It therefore has 4 different methods you can use for session evaluations.

1. Number scale evaluations – This first post explores different ways that you can use a number scale to have young people evaluate your programs – and not just using a 1-10 scale!

2. Quantitative & qualitative evaluations – Number scales can be good if you want to measure your youth work in a quantitative way. However, young people’s opinions can often be more nuanced than that, meaning that you can miss a lot of important feedback if that’s the only method you use.

This post therefore gives ideas of ways you can have youth evaluate the sessions both quantitatively and qualitatively. It also has free sample evaluation templates that you can download and print off.

3. Post-It notes – They may be small, but post-its can be incredibly useful as a tool for getting feedback. This post gives 3 ideas for how to use post-it notes for session evaluations.

4. Tops and pants – This is a fun and unique way of getting your youth work sessions evaluated – probably the most engaging (for young people) of all the feedback methods suggested.

Question: What methods do you use to have youth complete session evaluations? We’d love to read your ideas in the comments below.

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The Adjourning Stage of Group Development

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Adjourning stage of group development
Mind The Gap – coming to the end of the line for your youth group

Over the past five weeks, we’ve been exploring the stages of group development as identified by Tuckman and Jensen (1977). The fifth and final stage of group development – the adjourning stage (also known as the mourning stage) – is really more of an after-thought rather than an actual stage.

As discussed by Mark Smith of Infed.org, the initial stages of group development were identified as part of a functioning group, whereas the adjourning stage is really the end of a group.

A few things need to end during the adjourning stage of group development:

1) Tasks – Tie up all the loose ends for the project. Also, do any necessary monitoring and evaluation with the youth about the project and make sure that if they need to do any evaluation as part of their own project, they do that as well.

2) Group Roles – Spend time reflecting on what each youth enjoyed about their role and participation in the project. Help them identify areas where they could have developed their role further within the team or scaled back to allow others to participate more.

3) Group Dependency – While tying up tasks, completing evaluations and identifying areas for development, allow the group to do as many of these tasks as independently as possible. Allow them to form their own opinions about their learning and to feel a sense of personal accomplishment at the end – not just a feeling of achievement by being a part of the team.

Sometimes it’s not possible to end in the way you’d like if your project ends suddenly. Do the best you can in providing a final session for the youth to say their goodbyes and have some reflection time – this will help provide closure.

The worst-case scenario is that you will be unable to have a final session for any reason with your youth. If you have a forced and abrupt adjourning stage like this, write each youth a personal letter (if appropriate), providing the goodbye and closure that they may need.

If you are unable to contact the youth for any reason, encourage your manager or colleagues to hold a final session with the youth and help them reflect on their learning and have closure, even if you are unable to participate.

Because at the end of the day it’s about the youth, their group, their closure and their sense of well-being that’s important – that’s what the adjourning stage of group development is meant to achieve.

Check out our post about Tuckman’s Group Development Model for details of all five stages.

Questions: Did you learn anything new about yourself or your group during this series on group development? Would you like to see more posts like this? If so, what topics would you like explored regarding program administration? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Youth Retreat Ideas – 5 Unlikely Volunteers (Part 2)

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Last Monday, we suggested 5 unlikely volunteers to help you with your youth retreat – today we give you five more:

1) First aider – Safety is an area of the youth retreat to give serious consideration. If you’re the main person in charge, we’d highly recommend becoming first aid trained yourself. The Red Cross provide first aid courses all over the country – their website will help you to find one close to you.

However, if you nor any of your volunteers are first aid trained and there isn’t time to organize this, is there anybody else you know who has this training? They wouldn’t necessarily need to be involved with any youth work – you could just ask them if they’d be willing to be on site in case there are any medical issues.

If the retreat center you book is more of an activity center, there’s a good chance their staff will be first aid trained, so you may not need to bring along a dedicated first aider. Don’t leave this to chance though – check with the retreat center if their staff are first aid trained and if they’d always be available in an emergency.

2) Administrator for registration and feedback – Administration isn’t everybody’s gifting. If paperwork isn’t your strong suit, try to identify someone who’d be willing to take care of the youth retreat registration. They could deal with the registration forms, taking money, providing receipts, etc, freeing you up to focus on other areas.

This person could also be in charge of getting feedback after the youth retreat. We’ve covered youth work session evaluations a number of times before, so check out those posts for some ideas of how you could get feedback at the end of the youth retreat.

3) Photographer – Having a photographer with a good quality camera at the youth retreat can be very beneficial. They can take photos and video footage which can be used for a photo/video montage at the end of the youth retreat. The photos can also be uploaded to your website afterwards (if the youth retreat or your youth group has one), shown to parents to give them an idea of what happened at the retreat and used to promote the next youth retreat.

4) Donors – I don’t mean people need to give up their kidneys for the youth retreat. If some (or all) of the young people you work with are from low-income families, they might not be able to afford to attend the youth retreat without financial help. Are there any people in your community, church, workplace, etc, who’d be willing to sponsor a place on the youth retreat to enable a young person to go?

Many people are very interested in youth work and youth ministry, even if they don’t want to do the actual youth work themselves. This can be a great way for them to contribute to the lives of young people.

5) Drivers – Youth retreats will often be some distance from your local community. Rather than having parents drop off their children at the youth retreat center, you may instead wish to have all the youth meet at one location in your local area, then transport them all by minibus, minivan, carpool, etc.

**We’ve now published a book to help anyone planning a youth retreat. Find out more about How To Plan A Youth Retreat here**

Question: What other jobs can you think of that youth retreat volunteers could help with? Share your ideas in the comments below.

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Youth Work Session Evaluation Ideas: Post-Its

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Post It Notes - Youth Work Session EvaluationIf you were on a deserted island with nothing but a group of youth and one wish to get any resource, what would you pick?

Most youth workers I know would probably ask for Post-it notes (small square pieces of paper with sticky glue along one edge – they come in classic yellow and a variety of other colors, shapes and sizes).

Post-it’s or ‘sticky notes’ are the linchpin of most youth work sessions:

Need a game? Get out the Post-its.

Need to introduce youth to each other? Post-its.

Want group participation? Post-its.

Need a time filler? Post-its.

So it only makes sense that as we finish giving some youth work session evaluation ideas, we come back to the all-important sticky note.

Here are 3 ways you can use sticky notes to have youth evaluate your session plans:

  1. Choose 1 color for things they enjoyed and 1 color for things they would change. Have your youth write their feedback on each colored note.
  2. Write questions about the session on pieces of flip chart paper and have them walk around the room and leave their thoughts on the flip charts via sticky notes.
  3. ‘Target Practice’ – draw a target shape on a flip chart, whiteboard or chalkboard. Ask a series of questions (maybe assign different colored Post-its for the different questions, activities or discussions) and have them place their Post-it notes closer to the bulls-eye based on how much they did or did not enjoy that activity or discussion.
To use these evaluation methods somewhere without easy access or resources to Post-it notes, just use pieces of paper (colored if possible or use colored pens, pencils, crayons or markers on white paper) and tape.  The end result will be the same.

Question: How do you use Post-it notes to have your youth evaluate your sessions? Let us know in the comments below.

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Youth Work Session Evaluation Ideas – Part 2

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Youth work session evaluation ideasWe’re continuing to explore different methods for youth work session evaluations.

Why is it important to conduct session evaluations? Find out more about the reasons for youth to help evaluate youth work sessions, as well as how you can use a numerical scale to rate your youth work.

While it’s in keeping with the idea of a numerical scale, today we’ll be looking at how to create a paper questionnaire for your youth to complete. Paper questionnaires can be long and tedious, so it’s best to try and keep it to 1/2 a page or 1 page with a large font size and pictures to encourage youth to complete it.

Session evaluation questionnaires can be designed in one of three ways (click on each link for a basic printable example to get you started):

  1. Numerical Scales (Quantitative – measurable outcomes)
  2. Question and Answer (Qualitative – observed outcomes that can’t be measured)
  3. Numerical Scales & Question and Answer (Quantitative AND Qualitative)

Personally, I prefer the third type, including both easy to choose numerical options and reflective questioning to provide rich data for myself, my team and other stakeholders.

Sometimes it just needs to be a quick little survey, so options one or two might work best in those circumstances. A youth worker that uses all three types of youth work session evaluations will benefit from robust data that’s both quantitative and qualitative. They’ll also have a youth group that doesn’t get sick of completing the same evaluation tool each week.

Question: Do you use quantitative methods, qualitative methods or both when having young people complete youth work session evaluations? Let us know in the comments below.

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