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» 1 Committing
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» 6 10 Techniques

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Resources | Youth Programs | 2009 Confronting Concerns | Session 6

2009 Confronting Concerns

Ten Techniques to Talking with Teens

Leadership Institute, Session 6, September 28, 2009
Agenda | Report | 10 Techniques [pdf]

On September 28, 2009 Virginia Dorgan, our Executive Director, shared the following with Sandy Heierbacher, Executive Director of the Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation: "You asked for examples of connecting D&D with action & change. I am sure you remember that our conference last June, “Dialogue In/As Action,” June 12- 13, 2009 was directed particularly to this connection."

In this regard, I will give specifics of one of the sessions

AGENDA

Facilitators: Mala, Roshelle, Brittani, Erica

Objectives

• Adults will learn new ways to talk to teens
• Adults will understand the topics that teens are dealing with in their lives
• We will share the work for the leadership institute
• We will learn about the ten techniques we think are important when talking to teenagers

Introduction:

(Roshelle)-Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, we would like to welcome you to this confronting concerns workshop. Here with me today is Mala, Brittani, and Erica. So to tell you a little bit about ourselves, we are the youth leaders of the leadership institute.

(Brittani)-Our objective for this workshop is for adults to find a comfort zone in having a dialogue /discussion with teens about the concerns and issues important to teens.

(Mala)-We came to the agreement that the problems that many teens face aren’t handled in the most affective ways. The reason for this is because most teens aren’t comfortable talking with adults about their issues.

(Erica)-In conclusion to that, we came up with thought about what could help to make dialogue between adults and teens work and we came up with ten techniques to help an adults become more comfortable approaching an awkward situation. Our goal was to make sure that adults and teens could come to each other and understand one anohter.

Warm Up- Name Game

(Brittani and Erica): We are going to start out with a warm up to get everyone to know each other a little better. Can anyone tell me why a warm up might be something important to do if you are having a dialogue with a group of people? The instructions for this name game is that everyone will go around a say their name and an adjective that describes their personality that starts with the first letter of their first name.

Main Activity: Role Play

(Mala and Roshelle): Next we will be exploring what some of the issues are that teens think are important through a few role plays. We will break you into groups, and each group will get a brief explanation of an issue. They will then have to create a role play that shows how they would try to resolve that issue. Everyone please count off, from 1 to 5, starting here (pick a place in the room). Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Scenario 1 Parents receive a call from their son’s school telling them that their son was seen in the hallway physically abusing a female student. As they are talking about the situation, the son walks in at the same time. How would you address this issue?	Scenario 2 A mother is cleaning up her 16 year old daughter’s room and finds a condom rapper underneath the bed. She simply is assuming her daughter is having sex. How do you think the mother should approach the situation?
Scenario 3 A teacher in his class is discouraged about the derogatory language that has been being said to females in his classroom. Students often tell him it’s not a big deal but he feel it hurts and it’s deeper than just words. How can he address the situation without making his students feels he’s lecturing them?	Scenario 4 A father receives a call late at night saying how his daughter and her friend drink his alcohol substances when he isn’t there. Noticing that’s his bar has become very low he still doubts that his daughter was drinking. Being in denial he never questions his daughter and let the situation fly. What would you do?
Scenario 5 A daughter tells her mother that she is spending the night at her best friend house, later on that night the mother calls to make sure that her daughter arrived safely and everything was ok, and finds out her daughter isn’t there. What do you think the mother should do next?

** After each role play: Thank You for presenting that role play. Can someone briefly tell us what they saw happening in that role play? Can someone else briefly tell us what the resolution was to the conflict they saw?

Discussion
(Mala, Roshelle, Brittani, Erica)
• What did you think about the activity?
• Why do you think teens have a hard time talking to adults?

Hand Out the Ten Techniques Sheet

We are handing out to you our "Ten Techniques for Having Talks with Teens" sheet. We brainstormed and came up with these techniques that we thought were necessary in order for teens and adults to have open and honest communication with one another. READ THE TECHNIQUES TOGETHER then move on with the questions

Closing activity

Have everyone go around and share one thing that they learned and one thing they are going to take back to their community.

Reflection/Wrap Up
(Mala, Roshelle, Brittani, Erica)
-surveys
-youth leaders say a little
-say the thanks you
-talk about your own personal experience

(Roshelle)
-teen pregnancy, drugs
-keep things to their selves
-tactics help teen and adult get more comfortable

SESSION REPORT

The Leadership Institute: Britani Anderson, Erica Johnson, Jahmala Cornelius, Roshelle Wickham and the Teen Coordinator Tene Howard reviewed the goals and work of the Confronting Concerns Program which interviewed 150 youth in Harlem and then created workshops regarding these concerns. Currently these young women now as the Leadership Institute have been working together for several years, developing workshop skills. The first activity asked the ten adults to stand in a circle and present their first names with an adjective that describes their personality. They then divided the participants into three groups who were given a different scenario of youth and adult situations. Each group after some time in preparation role played a dialogue between youth and teens in these challenging situations.

One scene was a teacher, discouraged about the derogatory language being used toward females and how he would talk to the youth. The teacher in the role said he was disappointed by the language and then tried to get the youth to say how it felt for them to be using it one to another. After the role play the Leadership Institute then led a dialogue with the whole groups in regards to the presentation. This was done for the three scenarios.

This was followed by some questions to the adults. Here are a few of them:
Why do teens feel that they have to hide stuff? Why do you think the teens have a hard time talking to adults? They then presented the ten techniques and which led to more dialogue with the adult participants.