Where I'm Heading!

It's time to start working with school's again! Our young people face an uncertain world and below I've set out some ideas that suggest an approach around which I'd like to frame my work.

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Introduction

We continue to do our very best to prepare our young people for an increasingly uncertain world and it feels fair to suggest that many of the programmes on which they will train, the jobs they will do and the wider choices they make are either in their embryonic stages or have yet to emerge.

?If we could help our young people to think about how they present themselves to the world, what advantages might we expect to achieve? This programme is designed to create some “thinking space” for participants to consider how they may be able to achieve better outcomes by paying attention to how the create, transmit and receive important linguistic and non-linguistic information.

Background

I’m a former teacher/Headteacher and spent a great deal of time working with young people whose behaviour might be seen as “challenging”. Working with some great people meant that we were able to make a significant impact on young people individually and, I would argue, as members of a family and of wider society.

I worked in Local Government Service Leadership (Behaviour and Attendance), leaving to establish with others, a consultancy looking at the relationships between learners and organisations and behavioural outcomes. The business developed, increasingly looking at similar issues in the workplace and this now forms the bulk of our work.

I was honoured to be involved in setting up a charity that worked on important themes to enable participants to increase their opportunities in the World of Work and it was here that I began to revisit some previous thinking along the lines of, “How do you develop your personal brand in order to give yourself the very best chance to build on opportunities”?

I met a great friend through business networking he once said to me, “You know John, people generally buy from people they trust, building trust is everything…” And this joined up perfectly to some of my thinking which was along the lines of “How do we create pro-trust behaviours that encourage others to want to get to know us better?” ?I thought at the time that there’s another side to this that say s something long the lines of “How do we avoid behaviours that deter people from wanting to know us better, to work with us on our ideas, careers and studies?”

I have continued to work (part-time) in Education, and I am more than ever convinced that our young people will benefit from being introduced to a range of practical ideas that relate to how they might be able to create and projects a positive image of themselves: it is this that brings me here today.

The Challenge!?

The tendency for adults to disparage the character of youth ?has ?been ?happening ?for ?centuries – Peter O’Connor[1]

….and I don’t see any changes in this, do you? I do see many challenges though and there are three big ones.

·????????One is “possible with help and encouragement,”

·????????the other? Well, “not so sure!”

·????????and the final one? Algorithms and the Never-Ending Scroll

Let’s first talk about (briefly!), “not so sure.” Adults (not all of us!) have a knack for disparaging the trends of younger people, their appearance, speech patterns, role models and behaviours. I see no sign of this stopping! We need to provide our young people with skills that will equip them for making the best of their opportunities in a rapidly changing context.

Here are some “interesting” themes and challenges:

·????????Work-When You Grow Up, There Might Not Be a Job

·????????Living Together-Populations Change and Cultures Differ.

·????????Citizenship-Join In or Miss Out?

·????????Health and Well Being

·????????Change Readiness and Resilience

..and I accept that each of the above could be developed into a self-standing curricular module. But that’s no what our programme is about. Rather, it focusses on some ideas and options our young people might need to consider so that they are better placed to encounter the above??

Moving on to “possible with help and encouragement,” where I think there might be a possibility of creating a better understanding of how by managing ourselves, we have an opportunity to influence the way we are viewed and understood by others.

Persuading young people to see the benefits of changing their approaches is a tough ask and the volumes written around the Theories of Adolescence are readily available (one click on Google produced 34,200,000 results in .48 of a second), will testify! The challenge is I think, something to do with “change ownership.” And there’s the challenge,

“How do we help our young people to manage the opportunities and stumbling blocks they face, and the developments and changes they might need to consider?”

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Algorithms and The Never-Ending Scroll-Three Questions

1.??????How do we help our young people to better understand that the addictive nature of apps and online services isn’t an accident, it’s by design.

2.??????How do we help them to better discriminate between the person they can be, and “consumer” online services need them to be by providing a seemingly unending supply of content?

3.??????How do we encourage them to consider the purpose of content-related adds and the possible potential for influencing behaviour and reducing choices?

We want to help our young people to address the above in and, whereas the learning themes are connected, each of the above can be delivered as a self-standing session and our proposed outcomes remain the same namely that:

“Having participated in the programme, participants will ..”

·????????Have a greater sense of personal agency.

·????????Have an increased sense of personal direction.

·????????A better understanding of the relationship between presenting behaviours and the perceptions others have of us.

I'll keep ypu posted! let me know if you'd like to have a chat about the above

[1] Professor of management, Queensland University, Australia.