Community Experience

Background (for reference):

I went to Discovery Ranch in Mapleton with Ashley Smith. We interviewed and took a guided tour with Craig Smith, the clinical director. Discovery Ranch is a boys ranch for troubled teens age 14-18. There are 54 boys living in homes on site. They go through experiential treatment, which means that treatment is hands-on rather than therapy. The treatment methods include equine therapy, raising calves, ropes courses, learning music, sand tray therapy, and serving in the community. The boys have a variety of issues, including: substance abuse, behavior and family problems, RAD, anxiety and depression, and learning disabilities. They are educated in the afternoon/evening, where they are taught and tutored in the Utah State Core.

Reflection:

NOTE: Throughout this reflection, I will refer to "boys" and use the pronouns "he" and "his." This is because I was at a ranch for boys. They have a girls campus in Cedar City for girls who are struggling with similar things. When I say the above, I mean it to refer to both genders.

The biggest connection to our class I saw was that these boys were struggling because they feel left out of the human conversation. Craig said that one of the problems they see are what they call “enabling parents,” or parents who believe that their child isn’t succeeding, so they do everything (homework, chores, work, etc.) for their children so that they can succeed. The result isn’t a good one; rather, the children feel like they can’t succeed, so they develop what is called “learned helplessness” where they stop working, or participating in the conversation, acting helpless despite their abilities and desire to be a part of the conversation.

Craig gave us suggestions on how to avoid being like an "enabling parent" as teachers. The most helpful thing we can do to help our students like these boys is focus on teaching them self-motivation and really believing that they can do it. If we give up on them, they will never progress. If we nurture them, yet have structure and high expectations, they will meet those expectations. The last thing we want to do is to leave them out of the human conversation; they want to be involved! If they have "enabling parents" we can invite the student to do his homework with us after school, during lunch or in other free time so that he can be the one doing the learning.

We must be patient. Since most of the boys on the ranch have learning disabilities, a consequence is they have a slow processing speed. Although they might not learn or respond as quickly as other students, we as teachers need to let them have time to think. For those in special education, we can work with their special education teacher; however, with the rejection of the deficit model, we learn that just because a child isn't being successful doesn't mean they have deficits. Oftentimes the boys become class clowns and misbehave in class, but that’s only because they don’t want to look dumb in front of their peers for not being able to keep up with the material. By slowing down the way we teach, the boys can keep up and learn along with everyone else. This might mean teaching smaller sections in class or doing more repetitive work, and we must do this as much as the core will allow. If necessary, we can take extra time outside of class to help them succeed.

Something I loved that he said is that “If you meet one of these boys, you’ve met one of them. They’re all different.” It reminded me of the “single story” in that we can’t understand them all just because we understand one. Similarly, we can’t come up with a band-aid solution of how to help them. Each boy needs something special and so they have to work for one-on-one time to figure out what that need is. We can’t just “know” what it is; we have to WORK to find what it is and then WORK to meet that need. There are lots of opportunities to work to find out what their needs are. During group work or free time, spend time with his group and really listen to what he says. Take him aside and ask him about things other than the class. Find out what he's involved in and have a cultural experience trying to participate in those things to better understand him. In time, hopefully, the needs will become clear.

He taught us some classroom management strategies to encourage learning in troubled teens. The first was to use groups a lot. Create these groups based on common interests, or allow the students to group themselves this way, so that they will have a way to work together. (To encourage an inclusive pedagogy, we should be careful. Using interests and NOT race or culture as a separation should be safer.) The support groups they used at the ranch were substance abuse, grief, dialectical behavior therapy, social skills, and adoption. The idea I had is that we can group our students based off of common interests by surveying them to find out what their favorites of various things are. Then when groups need to be assigned, you can group them according to their responses. Even when the common interest isn’t a part of the core or what the project is a about, the group members will be able to find common ground, which enables these troubled students to succeed. Another thing Craig said is that boys work better when they aren’t working in co-ed groups. On the ranch, they have activities that enable the boys to learn proper relationships with girls, but education isn’t one of them. They boys are easily distracted, and by having their group be a boys only group, you can be helping to eliminate distractions. (This is likely case by case.)

The last thing I will point out is the observation that nearly all of the boys I saw appeared to be FAR from troubled. They were happy, well-behaved, involved, and respectful. The things they were doing at the ranch really are working! The boys feel so comfortable there. They know that the staff cares about them, so they respect them and respond to them. I hope that when I have troubled teens like these boys I can model the things I learned at the ranch so that I can see similar responses from the boys in my classroom.