Description

This is an introductory course on understanding and working with children who experience social and emotional challenges. The opportunity to understand youth at risk and the adults who work with them in New South Wales, Australia provides an added benefit of a comparative perspective. The content of this course will come to life when we visit first hand in Sydney, Newcastle, and Canberra, programs and agencies dedicated to serving youth at risk. There will be opportunities to interact with children and youth in these programs and the men and women who serve them.

Youth at risk have been referred to by a host of labels including emotionally disturbed, behaviorally disordered, youth in conflict, delinquent, deviant, wayward, maladjusted and at risk. Most labels for these children are pejorative and fail to elicit empathy. We choose to use the label at risk with the understanding that all of us carry that label at some time in our life. In contrast to many courses in this field, this course seeks to emphasize strengths that might compensate for weaknesses, health instead of illness, normality instead of pathology, and hopefulness instead of professional cynicism. This population is particularly threatening to untrained adults who are regularly lured in counter aggressive or avoidant behavior. The course will emphasize the unmet needs that characterize troubled children and the powerful changes that can occur when adults are able to provide corrective human relationships. Those corrective relationships cannot happen without an understanding of self. The troubled child presents a challenge that does not yield to simple answers. Since no single approach holds all the answers, it is necessary to bridge various concepts of education and treatment to offer the best opportunity for positive change and growth.

The course will be useful for those who choose to become teachers, special educators, youth workers, social workers, psychologists, youth ministry workers and parents.

Agencies and schools visited, guest presentations, mentoring experiences, reflective journaling and course assignments are designed to understand intervention and prevention from a positive, strength-based perspective. Equally important, the work, play, and living that we do on this trip will provide insight in understanding self in relationship to others and hopefully, develop those personality traits that allow us to succeed with children who are often in pain.

The Circle of Courage", developed by Augustana professors Brendtro, Brokenleg, and Van Bockern, provides a unifying theme for understanding the needs of youth. It will be the theoretical model that is the centerpiece of this course. It will guide much of what we do. This model has been practiced in over 23 countries including schools and agencies we will visit in Australia.