Day Six

I am beyond exhausted after my day today. We had activity after activity from 8:30 to 5:00. And after not getting back into town until 2 AM this morning, I've been running on about 4 hours of sleep. I can now say from experience, which I'm sure my parents won't be too happy about, that the streets of Memphis are not where you want to be after midnight. I saw things that shocked, confused, and almost moved me to tears. Nevertheless, today was chalk full of useful information.

Re-ED

Nicholas Hobbs was the founder of one of Youth Villages' techniques known as Re-education of Emotionally Disturbed Children. Dr. Hobbs believed that children want to do well and have a desire to learn. This approach is grounded in educational, psychological, and ecological principles. The 12 principles are:
1.) Trust between child and adult is essential.
2.) Life is to be lived now, not in the past.
3.) Competence makes a difference.
4.) Time is an ally.
5.) Self-control can be taught.
6.) Intelligence can be taught.
7.) Feelings should be nurtured. 
8.) The group is very important to young people.
9.) Ceremony and ritual give order.
10.) The body is the armature of the self.
11.) Communities are important.
12.) A child should know some joy in each day.


The following link is a great article that goes a little deeper into who Dr. Hobbs is and what he founded.
Re-ED Principles

Structured Chaos

Role paying activities were a major part of our Re-ED training today. We went through several different types of group huddles that are frequently used in the residential facilities. These were really useful to see how they are supposed to run as opposed to an off task huddle where nothing gets accomplished. After lunch we started our major role playing activity. The summer staff was divided into six groups and given six different scenarios to plan for. We needed to set expectations of our adolescents and plan for positive behavior and negative behavior. We discussed each of the six scenarios in depth and got a real life taste of how difficult it can be to keep kids on task and out of harms way. But I think the most important thing that I learned today was that it may seem like nothing is going your way because your plan for the day isn't being perfectly executed, but as long as you can see progress by going from wake up time to breakfast to group time to bathroom break, etc, then you are on task and getting done what needs to be done. We function in a structured chaos of sorts and this train may rock around an awful lot, but getting from point A to point B is the most important thing. 

The Big Day

Tomorrow begins our first full day on the job site. The BCIRT shift begins at noon and we will wrap up around eight. Tonight I plan on getting to bed early and being fully rested so that tomorrow I can put into place EVERYTHING that I have learned over the past week. I will of course let everyone know how it goes!!