Introduction from Youth Work

The seven characterizes of youth workers are youth work in an educations practice, youth work in a social practice, youth workers actively challenge inequality and work towards social justice, where possible, young people choose to be involved, youth work seeks to strengthen the voice and influence of young people, youth work is a welfare practice, and youth work works with young people ‘holistically’.  In each one of these characteristics they are important.  In the education practice the youth worker needs to have a level of understanding on how to reach the youth they are working with in order to reach them on both a formal and informal education.  What informal means here is thinking outside the box to reach the youth and meeting them where they are at and helping reach a potential that they might not know they have.  The social practice piece is important too because I believe having youth work with others and seeking relationships with their peers is important.  I think it is important that this occurs and that it is a diverse group of youth.  For example I will use the high school baseball team I coach.  Coming into the season some of the kids are friends with each other and every child has their own identity and some of the players were not in the same clique’s inside school.  Once we got on the ball field we become a family and I have all of them get to know each other but not only that I would have them eat lunch together as a team if they were in the same lunch and players would introduce the other players to their friends and little by slow each player would become friends.  By the end of the year they are working together as a team and as a family on and off the field.  Going out to team dinners after practices or games, hanging out at each other’s houses and even becoming the anti-bullying squad in the school which means they would call out bullies and stick up for other students to strike out bullying in the school.  With NO fighting of course.  That example fits in with the next characteristic of youth workers challenging inequality and work towards social justice.  The next one is the young people choose to be involved and this is important because the youth you work with have to want to be there and if you are making it interesting they will want to participate.  When it comes to strengthen the voice and influence of young people this is so important that the young people have a voice and are being empowered.  I like this one because the young people I work with I encourage to do well in school and tell them that they are important and have responsibilities and can become anything they want.  I hold study halls during the school year even in the off season to help the kids with their studies and make sure they stay on track.  I help them with senior projects and applications for colleges.  With the non-profit I help run we give college scholarships to student athletes and I help them figure out what they want to do for college and how they can get there.  The welfare practice is huge because the welfare and safety of the young people is the most important thing.  One of my players has a particularly hard home life and without getting in to too much details his outlet is baseball but he is always nervous about what mom might do to bring him down.  So we work on staying positive at home and doing what mom tells him as long as it is safe and we built a “happy playlist” on his phone to play when he is stressed or in a bad mood.  We also work together on his grades so that he can get into a good college and play ball.  I believe that this young man would benefit from going to college and living on campus and moving out of his house when he is finished with high school.  The last part of working holistically is important and the non-profit that I help run does this on a daily basis.  The youth in the community work together to clean up the neighborhoods and help restore the damaged community. 

            The last thing I want to talk about is a relatable story to what was said in the paragraph “what makes a good youth worker”.  I had a player who was 15 years old who was in and out of the training school and playing baseball was the one thing that made him happy.  I wanted to help him on a number of different levels but he had to trust me first before I could do that. One night I was coming outside from my work and he was there picking cigarette butts out of the butt bucket and smoking them.  We talked for a while and he told me he doesn’t even like to smoke he just does it to be cool or fit in.  So we came up with a plan and I shared that I have a bad habit of drinking too much coffee.  We agreed to quit both habits and would log our cravings and if we caved.  We both caved twice in the first week so we came up with a plan to call a person we trust to talk to when we got a craving and we would check in with each other at baseball every day.  By the end of the month we both had quit our habits.  After that I was able to help him with his studies and finding a job and working on some other issues that he has.  I see him occasionally and he is still not smoking and is working and staying out of he is also down 50lbs (he was a larger young man).  I have since went back to drinking coffee but instead of having 3-4 per day I only have one.  I was happy to see him doing well and still not smoking and not getting in trouble.