Think about it. We only have so much time to make a positive contribution to the lives of others. Design a program as you would a piece of art and you will ensure you make the most of these finite opportunities.

When I’m working with an organization, these are the top 5 elements I look for:

1. Relevant

Here’s how you can make sure your content is as relevant as possible. First, refine your message to those components most likely to pique student curiosity. Present these components in small, pithy bursts. Try to do this in less than ten minutes. Use the next ten minutes to encourage students to ask questions and interact with you and each other. Then provide another nugget of content, followed by focussed interaction. This is relevance-making in action!

2. Responsive

We’re inclined to view student questions and comments as a barrier to getting through content. But what if we designed programs to invite questions? Questions are our primary tool for learning. Why not encourage students to exercise this tool?

A word of warning. The value here is in students asking questions, not in you answering them. The process, not the product, adds value to learning.

3. Punctuated

Reading a book without periods, pages, or chapter headings would be a disorienting experience. The previous two elements work best where clear structure exists. Students need to know what you are talking about in clear terms. Once they’re on board, you can open the conversation. The structure you provide will serve to accelerate the learning process.

4. Coherent

Research on the brain indicates that when our brains can’t connect two concepts in a coherent manner, we’ll flush both. Work to make your material build upon itself in a logical manner. This takes work. It’s like rearranging furniture. There are innumerable possibilities, but some make a lot more sense than others. This may sound  rudimentary, but I see this a lot. What flows to us may not have a natural progression for the people we serve.

5. Actionable

Can students clearly identify how they will translate your curricula and program into action? If not, we’re wasting everyone’s time. Budget time to help students determine in clear terms how they plan to translate your conversation into actionable steps.

How are you doing on these 5 elements? What design changes will help your program be a piece of art? Making these changes requires courage.

Abandon script!  Structure learning in the same way Christopher Guest makes films (Best in Show, Waiting for Guffman, etc.). Establish points A and B in clear terms, then trust students will arrive according to the most meaningful, personalized path possible.

Present our content like Beethoven, Dostoyevsky, and Picasso—refine, refine, and refine until we arrive at the most essential, brilliant elements.

Look to jazz and rap to inspire our methods—set a beat, a key, a progression, then invite students to interact with one another for a deeper understanding.

Use only those teaching tools with which we have a personal relationship and that suit the goal of cultivating brilliance—Isaac Stern referred to his violin as an appendage.

Consider the following similarities:

1. Excellent poetry motivates the reader to want to know more.

2. The poet engages his or her reader by doing less.

3. Poems leave large margins of space.

4. Poetry confuses the reader at first, encouraging him or her to pursue a deeper understanding.

5. I have to work to understand the true meaning of a poem.

6. Only the poet’s essential message makes it to paper—no extraneous details!

7. When I finally arrive at an understanding of the poem, my understanding is personal, meaningful, and has the power to change how I see things.

2. Teacher asks convergent questions and students furnish predictable answers.

3. Teacher asks divergent questions.

4. Teacher invites students to contribute ideas and opinions.

5. Teacher becomes curious about student ideas and opinions.

6. Students become curious and ask earnest questions.

7. Fueled by a sense of wonder, students and teacher collaborate for meaningful answers.

Robinson just released his new book The Teen Age: 40 Reflections on Relating with Teens. Robinson’s book is not another self-help manual it’s a well researched, proven look at how each of us can better communicate with teenagers. Readers will find a clear, engaging and reliable roadmap to connecting with teens in ways that will positively impact them for life.

In reading The Teen Age you will also rediscover the things that stood out in your life and will find those same magic moments can impact the teen age around us. “Residing within each of us are resources that, when fully expressed, can make a world of difference in the life of a teen,” asserts Robinson, an educational coach who translates adolescent brain research into relevant applications for organizations throughout the U.S. In this collection of keen, compassionate and disarming essays Robinson both amplifies and models his thesis that the requisite for creating positive change is to risk bringing our full, authentic selves to relationships.

Throughout this highly accessible book Robinson paints memorable word pictures to illuminate both the complexities of the teen psyche, and the ways in which we may succeed—or fail—to secure a trusting, transformative relationship with the teens we care about. “I hope this book will both challenge our assumptions and affirm our deepest intuitions as we reach out to teens,” says Robinson. “I know the sea change that can occur in teens when they experience us as whole, vulnerable individuals who genuinely get them. This can literally save their lives.”

“The Teen Age is an invitation to think beyond our original boundaries—it encourages us to come along side teens, to come alongside one another, respectfully, with an eager curiosity,” says Christine Barber, a counselor with over 30 years of clinical experience, “I find myself fully absorbed in this book, and like a good meal, it lingers with me, naturally continuing to ask questions, to reflect on what I have read.”

“Like missives from a battlefield, The Teen Age gives you the sense that the author, Andrew Robinson, has been there and wants to help you in the work you do with young people,” says John Santin, a Project Coordinator with Oregon Research Institute.

The Teen Age: 40 Reflections on Relating With Teens is available at www.peoplechangepeople.com and on Amazon (click here). This is the author’s first book. About Andrew Robinson: Andrew Robinson is writer, trainer, and speaker who’s received enthusiastic reviews for his energetic and provocative presentations. Through his website, newsletter, blog and podcasts he advocates for effecting positive change by availing ourselves of our creativity and compassion. Robinson’s interest in the dynamics of change and relationships led him to pursue a master’s in education, with a marriage and family therapy specialization, at the University of Oregon. He earned his M.A. in 2001, and in the years following directed a youth development program, which grew to reach more than 50,000 students annually. He is now honored to partner with groups from all parts of the U.S.

During the last call I asked participants to ask a question of students for which they had no pre-determined answer. I appreciated the follow-up question I received and thought I would share the exchange.

Participant question:

The last item you discussed yesterday was asking a question of a student that we don’t have the answer, I was a little confused regarding that. Could you please give me an example?

My response:

Too often we ask questions for which we have prepackaged answers. Our goal in such cases is to transfer our answers to students. This process has more in common with bluetooth data-transfer than learning.

When you ask a question for which you have no answer, you level the learning field. You and the student are learning collaboratively to find the answer(s). For instance, you may ask a student you work with, “How is it that the media influences people?” This doesn’t mean you don’t have your own ideas. You do. But what if the student with whom you are working could add clarity to your existing understanding of this topic? Asking this question allows for this opportunity. It also encourages the student to arrive at a new, fresh understanding of the topic.

For learning to be powerful and life-changing it must be personal. These videos walk you through three ingredients that must be in place to move educational approaches from abstract and impersonal to concrete, personal, and life-changing.

I want to thank the University of Oregon’s Substance Abuse Prevention Program for this opportunity. Bryan and Sabine, thank you for your help planning, filming, and formatting the footage.

Part 1: Introduction to Personalized Prevention Education

Part 2: C.P.R. A Meta-Curriculum for Personalized Prevention Education

Part 3: Crystallize Your Message

Part 4: Personalize Your Methods

Part 5: Relationalize Your Approach

Part 6: Get Away from Group-think

The results of this study were notable. Students who received the high-fear booklets were more persuaded of the risks of tetanus and the need for shots, and more inclined to report that they intended to visit the campus health clinic for a vaccine. But all the differences between the two groups vanished when Leventhal looked at how many students actually went to the clinic to receive a vaccination–a scant 3 percent. Leventhal tried the study again with one simple change: the addition of a campus map to the booklet. This raised the vaccination rate equally in both the high-fear and low-fear groups to 28 percent.

Adding the map, Gladwell points out, moved the information from something abstract to something more personal. “And once the advice became practical and personal, it became memorable,” he writes.

This study highlights a reality we can easily forget: When things become personal they become powerful. Until a concept becomes personal it has little power to influence the decisions we make. We can help people make healthier choices by aiding them in the process of translating the abstract and impersonal into the concrete and personal.

In college I volunteered for Project Open Hand, a nonprofit organization devoted to meeting the nutritional needs of people living with HIV and AIDS, as well as the homebound, critically ill, and seniors. Our job was to prepare and deliver hot meals to people infected with AIDS in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Most of these people were so ill they could not leave home. Handing a hot meal to another human being living in the shadow of death forever altered my understanding of the disease and its victims. The concept of AIDS became powerful to me because it became personal.

This is the task of education: to make something abstract more personal. This translation must take place for us to say in truth that we and the people we serve have learned anything at all. Whether we experience something firsthand or not, process is what morphs a concept into something more meaningful and personal. Think of process like digestion: We derive sustenance from what we eat by breaking it down and making it part of our bodies.

Are you up for a challenge? The following is an exercise I introduce during my Epic workshops with youth development and prevention organizations. I will give a copy of my new book, The Teen Age, to the first three people who do the following:

1. Commit to trying the following steps.

2. Let me know how it goes.

I’ll coach you through the process ahead of time if you’d like. Send me an email or give me a call. If you are an administrator or director, see if one of your staff will try it.

To increase student process and learning:

1. Begin with the message you bring with you to those you serve. Take, for example, a message about the risks of underage drinking: Being under the influence of drugs will likely damage your health, relationships, and your future.

2. Introduce process to help students break down and personalize the message. A great way to do this is to ask students what questions they have about this truism. They may ask, for example, “What does it mean to be ‘under the influence?’” or, “How can alcohol damage my relationships if I don’t hurt anyone while I’m drunk?” Collect as many questions as you can from students. This helps pique student curiosity–an essential key to process.

3. Trust the process. Ask good questions. Listen. Facilitate dialogue among students. The clarity and meaning that emerge from this will stun you. Keep in mind that the value of process lies in students arriving at their own personal conclusions, not mimicking yours. We short-circuit process if we jump in with our answers before students have had time to process their ideas.

4. Summarize the discussion. Work with students to coalesce the dialogue into a succinct synopsis.

5. Motorize the summary. A more personal understanding led more students at Yale to the campus health clinic. How will a more personal, meaningful understanding of your message influence students’ decisions? Work with your students to arrive at clear, measurable objectives.

Download the three free tools from the Epic website to strengthen this process even more.

I look forward to hearing how your individual processes unfold.

It’s great to be working with you to promote positive change in the lives of others!

Best,

Andrew