The Future of Prevention: Part Two
March 2nd, 2010
In February’s newsletter I championed a more holistic approach to the field of prevention that addresses the sources of risk behavior. In this second installment I advocate personalization over standardization of educational approaches.
Last week I spoke with the director of a youth organization I’ve been working with for several years. Her group is transitioning from a standardized education model to a more personalized one. The director described the initial training for the original program implementation. “We were basically trained to deliver a script,” she told me. Her observation succinctly captured a core tenet of the standardized approach. Hatched in the industrial revolution to promote a “consistent product” (I grieve to think that we would deign to refer to humans and their ideas as “product”), this relic prevails today. We have come to value standards and fidelity to such an extreme that we have marginalized the very elements that can promote behavior change. Standardized educational methods, while they may be earnest in their desire for bringing about positive change, consume precious resources and limit educational effectiveness and efficiency. To recoup these losses and to bring greater benefit to the youth we serve, I believe we must transition from standardized education to a more personalized model. Personalized education does not mean that we deliver a different program to every student. It means we retool our methods to provide every student with the requisite freedom, trust, and safety to make the education his or her own.
Consider the following: You deliver a “Stop Smoking” message to a group of teens and survey them afterward. You’re encouraged by the test results. In each of the key areas students demonstrate positive responses. Nearly all of the students, for example, agree smoking is not in their best interest. You then sit down with the class and pose one final question, “Can you tell me what this message of not smoking means to you?” Thirty students equals 30 unique meanings—and it is at the level of meaning that we must operate if we are to make a positive difference. It’s all too feasible that we could find consistency among student recall that would make the industrialist proud. The questions on the survey only help you measure how well you do in standardized terms. But accurate recall does not make for better decisions, for the simple reason that a student’s ability to recall data has little to do with whether the data has any meaning—and therefore any power. Behavior change is preceded by a process wherein meaningless content becomes meaningful. Personalized education encourages students to partake in this process.
One simple step you can take toward helping students make your message their own is to pose these questions that pertain to meaning during your presentation:
What do you think about this message? How do you relate to this message? How might this message affect your life? If this message seems irrelevant, please, by all means tell me in detail how this seems irrelevant.
Note the freedom and multiple points of entry these questions offer students.
Please don’t misunderstand me: Prevention education should have standards for content. Standards help provide consistency and program fidelity, components that are essential at a number of levels, not the least of which are assessment and evaluation. So while content is something we should define in clear terms, the process of learning–in order to be meaning-filled and potent–should encourage exploration and student process. The message has to progress from being ours to being owned by the students; from being pertinent from our perspective, to becoming a transformative element in how students see themselves and the world. Only when students personalize our message can we have any confidence that our work is effective. To ensure the most promising outcomes possible we must retool our training and implementation.
I was presenting on this topic a couple weeks ago in Florida when one participant noted what I believe is the primary reason we shy away from personalizing education, no matter how much good we think this will bring to students: “It feels really vulnerable,” she said. She got it. More than our fear of getting in trouble for not fulfilling standards, there is a deeper fear, multifaceted, that sabotages our efforts. I suspect, based on my own experience, it’s one of the most powerful fears–fear of the unknown. We wonder, “If I give students freedom, what might they say or do?” This is one reason we’re drawn to standardized education. In it we discover safety and control. It provides a Trojan horse within which we can house our fears. We do well to recognize this, enter classrooms anyway, and open the horse. An honest assessment of our fears is a bold first step that will help us be more effective.
Each of us hopes that our work in prevention education will help youth surmount substantial obstacles. We address this goal in prevention education best not by telling students about something, but instead helping them come to know our message in a personal way. Only then can the power and richness of this message help create the positive change we all seek.
Tags: educational reform, personalized education, prevention education
The Future of Prevention: Part One
February 2nd, 2010
Let’s pretend you have a serious weed problem in your yard. Possible solutions include:
1. Applying weed killer
2. Enhancing the soil and planting more grass
Carrying this analogy to the realm of prevention programs and policies, my observation is that most efforts have concentrated on “killing the weeds” by setting up funding streams that target specific risk behaviors among youth. Risk behaviors such as alcohol and tobacco use, sex, and suicide, all have their own funding streams. The idea behind these streams is to create programs that focus on reducing the prevalence of a particular behavior. Having worked in prevention for some time now, I’ve developed two main concerns with this approach:
1) “Prevention” as a term doesn’t seem helpful. There are times we certainly want to prevent things. I prevent my two-year-old from running into the road, for example. I’ve counseled youth and tried to prevent them from taking their own life. But prevention should describe only a portion of my efforts. Instead of trying to keep youth from doing certain things, we should inspire youth toward something better. When I think of the term “prevention” I picture standing in a doorway. Above the door is a plaque with the name of the behavior I’m trying to prevent. I don’t need to say a thing. My position says it all: Don’t go into this room. But what do we know about human nature, especially youth? They are intrigued most by what we forbid. By trying to block the behavior we may be drawing attention to it. I believe that if we can inspire youth toward something better, we have hope of succeeding in guiding them away from poor choices.
2) Risk behaviors travel in clusters. Anyone in the field of prevention will agree. Teens who smoke pot are more likely to drink alcohol, have sex, and so on. But our government addresses each of these behaviors not as facets of a whole, but as separate isolated behaviors. There are excellent programs that have long known this and attempt to address the interconnected nature of the behaviors. But this should be the norm, not the exception. Federal resources that fund such programs would do well to allocate their funding in ways that mirror the reality in which these risk behaviors occur.
There are groups and some funding that address the relational and environmental landscape–the soil–in which youth grow, some of which is downright uninhabitable. I hope this holistic approach will become the standard, for it’s at the level of the soil that we infuse youth with the nutrients to grow. Rather than restricting our view of youth to a single, undesirable behavior, we should target deeper elements that give rise to behavior, healthy and unhealthy.
Another tragic side-effect of these splintered funding streams is that the process encourages cronyism and adverse competition. Each prevention field has within it strong, vocal camps that fiercely defend their territory. They believe they are right, others are wrong. They believe they deserve the money more than others. They really believe this. In some cases, they are right. There are many organizations whose efforts deserve recognition and accolades. These groups should inspire others to serve youth in profound ways. But what happens all too often is that organizations within a field square off against each other and against other fields–forgetting that we are here to serve youth, not ourselves.
Prevention groups can encourage work that changes the lives of youth, no matter what funding source paid for it. We can work to develop and refine programs that appreciate the complexity of risk behaviors. Programs can address not merely behaviors, but the deeper causes of behaviors–like one’s sense of self-efficacy, worth, and personal beliefs and values. The behaviors are most conspicuous, but we should not identify them as the primary problem.
Tags: adolescent health, prevention education, prevention policies, risk behaviors
Jamie Oliver: Mentor Extraordinaire
January 5th, 2010
Jamie Oliver caught my attention last month when he received the prestigious TED Prize for his work to “create change on both the individual and governmental level.” I had been aware of his work to encourage people in England to make healthier choices in their lifestyle and diet. Many of you are probably aware of Oliver’s efforts to ban unhealthy food in England’s schools in favor of a diet based on fresh, nutritious fare.
Fewer people may be familiar with Fifteen Foundation, which Oliver started in 2002. Each year his foundation trains teens in the restaurant business. Most significant to me is that these teens often have criminal records, a history of drug use, and other high-risk behavior. At first glance these youth don’t necessarily commend themselves to the culinary arts. What’s clear is that Fifteen Foundation is the vehicle for human enrichment. While Fifteen’s cadets become exceptional chefs, more importantly the Foundation encourages youth to develop character, self-respect, and ambition.
Trusting relationships between mentors and young people are at the heart of this remarkable enterprise. The training process utilizes an apprenticeship model in which the master chef shadows the apprentice. Mentor-chefs introduce youth to food, farming, and cooking. Throughout the apprenticeship they also help the youth with a range of personal challenges.
None of this good work would be possible without a funadamental shift in perspective on the part of Oliver and his staff. Most of the world sees these youth as destined to a life of crime, drug use, and dependency on government resources. Fifteen Foundation views youth through a different lens–seeing beyond the exterior and behavior, the coarseness and tattoos, to unique humans endowed with brilliance, gifts, and promise.
Eating good food is not only healthy, it can also be beautiful. Oliver, through the vehicle of food, is introducing youth to a higher plane of living. I hope he inspires you as he has me, and that we all can find ways to emulate his quality of mentorship in our own relationships.