Submitted by Mark Freado

In the aftermath of a school tragedy, we often hear and read that counselors were made available to the students and staff to help them work through the trauma and grief associated with whatever the tragedy may have been. Last Friday I was one of those counselors. While training in Alberta I was informed that Sherrie, a nine-year-old, grade 4 student, died at the end of the school day on Thursday afternoon. She had medical problems with her heart and was functioning with a pacemaker; her second in her nine years of life.

Submitted by Erik K. Laursen, RYI Board Member and Vice President of Learning & Program Development at UMFS, Richmond, VA

Autism spectrum disorder is the fastest growing disability in the US. 1 percent of US children ages 3-17 have an autism spectrum disorder (1) and it is currently estimated that one in 110 births is born with an autism spectrum disorder. (2) 

Over the last few years I have been involved in supporting youth on the spectrum and have increasingly been confronted with the question about our understanding of normalcy. I was intrigued when I learned the word “neurotypical” which was invented by the autism community to describe people who are not on the autism spectrum.

By: Dr. Martin Brokenleg

I come from the Lakota nation, called Sioux, by the government. One of our traditions is to study the natural world for lessons on how to live life well. Many lessons come from studying the North American bison we call Buffalo, Pte Oyate, in our language.

When buffalo sense danger they move into a protective formation. The buffalo bulls surround the community. They take their instructions from an elder Buffalo cow that stands in the middle of the herd. The buffalo cows form a secondary protective ring inside the circle of bulls. The calves are in the very centre, since they are the most precious and the most vulnerable in the community. A function of the herd is to protect the young since they are the ones who ensure the survival of the herd into the future. From this, we Lakota see that it is the task of the adults to protect the young, if we want them to have a good life and to live well into the future.

In my Reclaiming Youth work, I mostly encounter professional youth workers such as teachers, counselors, and child workers. I see parents less frequently but I see them as the main protective front line for youth. Of course we expect parents to have the most time in

By: Reggie Newkirk

RYI Board Member 

Private Consultant, Parity Consulting,  Lumsden, SK,  Canada 

In the past, I have explored the connection between a healthy identity and a positive sense of belonging. I suggested that our sense of identity is under attack from many sides, and in addition if identity is described only as a material and social entity, it is then subject to the capricious whims of the natural world. As long as I am young, healthy, beautiful, wealthy and intelligent, I will belong and be in demand—a “thing” of value. As soon as any of my material currency is lost or devalued, I begin to tumble on the scale of belonging and worthiness like numbers on a stock market!

The inner identity is the enduring measure of human worth. It is based on the intrinsic metaphysical nature of the human being which is often referred to as the rational soul, the spirit, the heart or in today’s jargon the “inner-scape”. This identity is not subject to the capricious winds, worldly values and fickle fads that inform present-day society. It is gradually formed by the values we are taught, the examples we encounter and the successes we achieve. The Circle of Courage illustrates the central elements of the “inner-scape”: belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. In this article we can barely scratch the surface of the epiphenomenal relationship between the “inner-scape” and “social-scape”, which is the foundation of youth behaviours.

By Judge Ernestine Gray, Juvenile Court Judge, New Orleans, LA

 How many times have we heard this said about youth with whom we are working? How many times have we said it ourselves? What do we really mean when we make that statement? What standard are we using for comparison? Have we thought about the impact that such a statement has on the persons that we are trying “to help?”

It All Counts - Forgiving Even the Small Things to Live in the Present

By Azim Khamisa

• Someone pulls out in front of you on the highway.
• A teller gives you bad treatment.
• The computer freezes up on you for the third time, erasing your document you've worked on for hours.
• You receive an e-mail that puts you down.
• Someone takes your parking spot, the one you've been eying for 5 minutes.

There are many instances when you may get flustered and fall short in the realm of forgiveness and tranquility. God knows I have fallen short at times.

Dr. Scott Larson, RYI Board Member 

scott@straightahead.org

 There has been much written on the process of transformational change in the business sector over the past few decades, but very little has been done in applying these proven principles to working with challenging young people. Instead, many in the human services field are focused on incremental behavior change that focuses on adapting one’s behavior to fit within a particular system, but does little to get at deeper character change.

 Transformational change involves being more than doing. It is defined as “becoming something new, that has never before existed.” It occurs in the context of how one thinks about what is happening. In other words, if I continue to think as I’ve always thought, I will act as I have always acted, and get what I have always gotten. Or, as the Chinese proverb declares “If I don’t change my direction, I will likely end up where I’m headed.” When it comes to kids, the transformational change of the direction happens not so much in the altering of circumstances or environments, but in helping them to change the way they think about what is happening to and around them.

Franky D’Oosterlinck( RYI Board Member) and Eline Spriet

Our work with children and youth who struggle with emotional and behavioral disorders and the staff members who work with these often-demanding youngsters, have caused us to ask, “How can we create a positive school in the midst of so much conflict?

Submitted by Beate Kreisle, RYI Board Member

Time is something we all need to take into account. It is the one thing of which everybody claims they do not have enough.

There are words of wisdom about time. Pericles suggested time is the wisest counselor of all. Henry Van Dyke said “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” Benjamin Franklin, said “Time is money”. Carl Sandburg argued that “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” Albert Einstein had thoughts about time, too. “When you spend two hours with a girl, you think, it was a minute. But if you sit on top of a hot oven for one minute, you think, it was two hours. That’s relativity.”

Submitted by: Linda Lantieri, Director of the Inner Resilience Program and Reclaiming Youth International Board Member.

More and more of us throughout the world are realizing how important it is to go beyond reforming education today and are beginning to talk about educational transformation. Educational transformation is what young people need from their schooling to be fully prepared to meet the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century. A US poll of registered voters released by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (www.21stcenturyskills.org) in 2007 reported that 66% felt that students needed a broader range of skills than just the basics of reading, writing and math. 80% said that the skills that students need today to be prepared for the jobs of the 21st century are very different from what was needed 20 years ago. How can schools prepare young people to live healthy, engaged lives as active citizens in a democracy which honors diversity and helps young people have all of the skills they require to tackle the tough questions of life with deep meaning and purpose?