Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Empower Youth Now


This post will be slightly different from my previous ones or perhaps not. I'll let you be the judge! One of my first careers, (oh, I've had a few), was a grade school teacher. The experience was rewarding till I had a class of 40 children from the inner city where there were major behavior problems and general student apathy

I was a student teacher then, yet I noticed that even the senior teachers were stressed out teaching this temporary class of mine. The students did not show violence toward the teacher, then, but there was peer bullying, poor grades, etc.

Fast Forward to 2010 and I was in San Diego in an Intensive 5 day workshop where  participants comprised of teachers, pediatricians, coaches, nurses and other disciplines. One of the early morning breakout session was conducted by a recently retired teacher, who used certain techniques to her class of below average students with behaviour problems. Parents wanted to know how to do it with their children.A few months after daily use, the students grades showed improvement and parents' relationship with their children changed for the better. The principal implemented these techniques to other classes in the school and the SAT scores at the end of the year improved  tremendously. A year later, that school was one of the top performing schools in San Diego.

 Presently, Ritalin appears to be the drug of choice for many students with labels of hyperactivity, ADD, etc but how many of the teachers or parents realize the side-effects of Ritalin??? This link shows the latest research. www.asktheneurologist.com/ritalin-side-effects.html

So what do we do?  Well, teachers and parents, there is hope. I have used some of RET to help
youth who are hyperactive, with ADD and other issues. It has been effective. Just like adults are negatively affected by anxiety, fear, anger, stress and panic, so are the children of all ages. The symptoms children show are slightly different from adults. Now with the right tools, solutions, it is a joy to work with children again. and they are happy, too when they find out how to use these tools to be calm, in control and get wonderful results. Recently this is what a client in grade 3 commented of the session. " It is fun to work with PC." (3rd grader)

I will be presenting workshops to  teachers' associations and parents' council upon request. The programs that are geared to the youth are  A. Empowering Students - a comprehensive package  B. Anxiety Busters.
More on these programs on the next post.

PC Nicholas

DIGG