Alates kevadest 2024 on huvijuht katsetanud YWIS projekti raames valminud käsiraamatus toodud erinevaid praktilisi tegevusi. Neist ühe, enda jaoks kõige olulisema kohta, kirjutas ta pikema blogipostituse. Kuna tegemist on rahvusvahelise projektiga, siis on tekst inglise keeles.
Get acquainted – Be genuinely present – Listen
Since last spring I´ve tried out a few of the activities explained in the handbook “European Perspectives and Good Practices on Youth Work in Schools and Educational Institutions. Inspiration and Approaches for Youth Workers”, but there´s one that really had a bigger impact on my everyday work. It is called “Get acquainted – Be genuinely present – Listen“ and is under the category “Strengthening the sense of community”.
Anyone interested in the theory behind the category and the specific description of the above-mentioned good practice is welcome to read about it here (pages 103–105, 108–110). In this blogpost I am going to concentrate on my personal experience and the activities I´ve carried out during the implementation period.
Background
I am not a school youth worker as such, but a manager of extracurricular activities or activity leader, depends on the translation. In general I am the person, who is in charge of organizing all school events. Besides that I am also mentoring the student council and green school team.
I used to be a teacher, then I was a teacher and an activity leader concurrently until I stopped working as a teacher. The logic behind the decision was quite simple – I felt my interaction with students was somewhat reserved as for them I was still the person, who is giving them marks and asking for late homework to be handed in rather than the chill grownup, who is there to listen to their ideas, their worries and plan great events together.
The first thing I did after quitting teaching was to find myself a space. I was offered a small room in the middle of the school, which I was meant to share with others, but I turned that down as I knew it would be convenient for teachers to find me, but for students it would be too official and too close to the teachers´ room. Long story short, we cleared out an old home economics classroom (that was used as a storage space for a few years) and filled it with comfy second hand sofas and armchairs. The best part – it is not inside the school, but a separate small building between our two school houses.
Revelation
I thought all was good, I felt we finally had a space, where we can hold our student council and green school meetings, students are welcome to use the space by themselves or when the whole class needs to discuss something that would be more efficient in a relaxing environment with a roundtable seating.
But it was only until I read this handbook that I realized I myself was still being closer both physically and more importantly mentally to the staff than the students! Although I had this cool new space, I still spent lots of time in the teachers´ room, because it was easier to interact with teachers and a small, but relevant fact – the printer is there (fast forward – now I get quite an exercise from running up and down the stairs between two buildings when I need anything printed). Whenever students wanted to talk to me, they would quite often find me in the teachers´room, therefor they only came to speak to me if they really-really needed something, not because they wanted to just chat or share their random thoughts. And vice-versa, I only went to look for students, when I had something specific in mind.
So, I decided to change that.
Good practices
Location. I stopped working on my laptop in the teacher´s room. And I stopped working during breaks altogether. Whenever a lesson ended, I would wait a minute to see if any of the students come to my room and if not, I would go out to mingle with them in the school corridors. And especially approach students that hardly ever come to me by themselves.
Title. We have a rule in our school that all teachers should be called “Teacher” or “Teacher First Name”, “Teacher Last Name”. As I used to be a teacher, students still called me “Teacher”. I was encouraging them to call me “Huvijuht” (my new job title in Estonian), but it was not really catching on. So I asked the headmaster for a permission to let the kids call me only by my first name. And now they do, although the occasional “Teacher” still slips in. But I feel it has brought us closer as they do not have to refer to me with any title, but just my name.
Open doors. Although most of the students know where my room is, I felt I need to do something to make them not only know the physical location, but also come, see and feel that this is a safe space to hang out. So last spring we held an event called “Question and Cookie”, which the students quickly renamed “Cookie Wednesday” as it took place on a Wednesday and they were offered cookies. Why cookies? I think everyone agrees that whenever food is involved, children are more eager to participate and open up😊
So, every break, students were welcome in my room to eat cookies and answer questions I had set up on giant papers on the walls – What is your favourite subject? What kind of events would you like in our school? Finish the sentence: I like in our school…. In addition to that they were allowed to draw on the old wall tiles to make the room more theirs. Some of the students only came in, answered the questions, had their cookie and left, but many came several times, stayed for longer to chat and discuss the things that had written on the walls. I later shared the answers with my colleagues aswell.
At the request of the students, we held the event again this autumn. The idea was the same, but the questions different. This time I wanted them to give their perpective about me and my job in the school – What does the activity leader do? What are her tasks? What else should she do? But also some other topics – Who would you like us to invite as a guest speaker to school? What sound or song would you like as the school bell? The event itself was popular again and I got some good ideas from the answers. It was interesting to see what students think of my job. My favourite answer was – Her job is to make children happy!
Dates with me. Our student council has 2 members from each class from year 5–9. We have monthly meetings and get to discuss the topics their classmates have given or I use them to send information to their classmates almost weekly. Students from year 1–4 have no representative body, so I decided to invite their whole classes on dates with me. Last spring I only managed to meet one class as the summer holiday started, but this autumn I´ve seen all four of them one by one. Besides getting to know how they feel in school, what they would change, what they are happy with, these dates are a great way to introduce my work and get them excited about the future prospect of being part of the student council. I deliberately call these dates rather than meetings as I think a date is more exciting than a meeting 😊
Introduce myself. It is not very common that new students come to school in the middle of the year, but it does happen. So I always take the time to find them, introduce myself personally and explain, what I do at school and where to find me. We often take it for granted that everyone knows us, but it is not always the case.
Special clothing. To provoke students to interact with me more, I restyled an old kimono that now has a sign on the back saying “Mina olen HUVIJUHT ja tunnen huvi, kuidas Sul läheb?”. It is a wordplay, but basically means “I am the activity leader and I am actively interested in how you are.”. Whenever I wear it, every now and then someone answers the question and a conversation is started.
More food! As I mentioned above, food makes students more talkative. Add another feature – open air – and they are double as chatty! So one nice afternoon this autumn I lit our fireplace and started cooking pancakes. I deliberately chose pancakes, because they took time to cook and while waiting, I could have nice conversations with the students. I did not advertise the event beforehand, information about it spread by word of mouth (or the smell in the air!), so every break time there were more students around the fireplace. I know that not everyone is keen on talking, so they had a chance to write their thoughts down on paper aswell. They had to finish the following sentence “I like/do not like in school, because…”. Many of them chose to elaborate their thoughts further when waiting and eating the pancakes.
Results
My role is new for the whole school as this is the first time we have this position filled with a special person, rather than a teacher doing it as a side job. Now, after more than half a year of implementing this new strategy, I feel that I am getting somewhere. I think all those little activities have made me closer to the students and have shown them, that I am there for not only organising school events, but talking to them and listening to them is also part of my job description.
I find it very important that whenever I´ve asked them to answer any questions during those above-mentioned activities, I´ve always tried to act upon their answers. And even if some of the things they´ve written are not possible to fulfill, I always try to explain, why not. Although I think many of the students are more and more open to chat and express their ideas to me orally, there should always remain the occasional opportunity to write.
If I had to make only one suggestion to anyone in a similar position that I was last year, I would say, the number one thing is the location! Both physical and mental – be where the students are and where they are welcome and can easily find you.
Liise Kukk
huvijuht/activity leader/manager of extracurricular activities
