Vol 18, No 3 (2009)
Approaches to challenging youth are being transformed by an impressive body of knowledge about resilience, the human capacity to surmount adversity and thrive. The Circle of Courage synthesizes this research into four universal needs: attachment, achievement, autonomy, and altruism. This new paradigm is providing a blueprint for building strengths in all children and youth. This special issue explores practical applications of this research to education, treatment, juvenile justice, and positive youth development.
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Culture and Development
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Becoming Our Own Leaders: Decision-Making at School and Home
Ron Rubin, Jonas Schoenefeld
Children’s lives in today’s culture are filled with numerous decisions in a pressure-cooker atmosphere of frequently self-destructive peers and overly materialistic, sexually exploitive, and violent media that affect their daily welfare. As a result, too often tragedies result from children’s lack of healthy judgment and choices.
Turbulent Transistions: A Day in the Life of a Homeless Teen
Sheila Moriarty
Homelessness for young people has immense challenges. This author’s composite of stories from many of the youth she has encountered provokes thought regarding youth who find it impossible to live in their home environments. All names have been changed.
A New Business: Redirecting Black Youth from the Illegal Economy
Vickie Cox Edmondson
Young Black males are an at-risk group for earning a living through illegal activities in the U.S. Rather than writing off youth who become involved in the illegal economy, organizational leaders and academicians could encourage these youth to transfer their ambitions and aspirations to legal business opportunities.
Campus Kids Mentoring Program: Fifteen Years of Success
Jerri Shepard
Pairing youth at risk for academic failure with college students as mentors results in
improved attendance and school performance for youth as well as a deeper understanding of poverty and social injustice and an increased sense of responsibility and commitment to action for college mentors.
Humour and Connecting with Kids in Pain
John Digney
Emotional pain which manifests itself in problem behaviours is, for many children and youth, a part of their everyday struggle through life. Kids growing up in residential care or in a dysfunctional family or setting suffer this pain. Connecting with kids in pain, the primary task for youth workers, is made all the more difficult, the greater the pain that the young person experiences.
Navigating a Strange Culture: Nurturing New English Learners
Kyounghee Seo, John H. Hoover
Goodlad’s notion of “nurturing pedagogy” suggests that it is an educator’s responsibility to provide an environment that encourages learning and values each student as “capable of learning”(Goodlad, n.d.) by accounting for student interests, their well being, and developmental levels. Not to be overlooked is the need to provide high-quality services for new English language learners.
Hurt People Hurt People: Female Bully-Victims
Lynne Edmondson, Laura Dreuth Zeman
Current research about young women who play roles of both bully and victim is expanded to reveal new insights and unique experiences from the perspective of female bully-victims.
Educational Innovations
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From Punishment to Responsibility
Bonnie Fuller
Incorporating the Response Ability Pathways (RAP) approach at Boxelder Job Corps gives high-risk students the skills they need to be successful in life.
Whole Schooling and Reclaiming Youth
Michael Peterson, Patricia Diane Taylor
Whole Schooling, which has been designed totally with regular public school settings and students in mind and is imbued with the values and philosophies of the Circle of Courage, may be just what regular public school administrators are looking for to set up a truly democratic and nurturing school.
Gentle Interventions
Joannie Halas, Cathy van Ingen
By examining specific examples of how teachers at an adolescent treatment centre interpret the day to day challenges that shape the lives of their students, insights can be gained about how schools can effectively re-connect even the most difficult students to a school environment.
Beyond Rewards
Philip S. Hall
Using rewards to impact students’ behavior has long been common practice. However, using reward systems to enhance student learning conveniently masks the larger and admittedly more difficult task of finding and implementing the structure and techniques that children with special needs require to learn.
Treatment and Family
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School of Urban Wilderness Survival and the Circle of Courage
Mike J. Marlowe, Nick L. Pearl, Jay M. Marlowe
The four Circle of Courage elements and the underlying foundation of physical and emotional safety are braided into a therapeutic wilderness program, School of Urban Wilderness Survival (SUWS) of the Carolinas.
New Tools Reclaiming Intervention
Mitch Beck
Recently mainstreamed, an elementary student struggles to succeed in his new environment. The New Tools reclaiming intervention puts him on the right track to making new friends.