Reflections on the practice of youth development.
Lloyd and Anthea Martin have taken young people into their home, provided alternative education and taken them on adventures in the outdoors. This collection of funny and sad stories spans thirty years of teaching and youth work in their community of Cannons Creek Porirua. Each story is followed with a short reflection linking ‘what actually happens’ to emerging ideas about how we support the development of all young people.
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A wealth of examples which both affirm and question the substance and direction of youth work in the present environment.
Howard Sercombe, Professor of Community Education, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
Lloyd and Anthea’s book is an invitation to actively embrace the opportunities for learning that exist right under our nose, in the ‘small’ stories that surround us every day.
Sharon Davis, Teen Parent Services, Te Ora Hou Aotearoa/ New Zealand
An essential road map to navigating the complex and ever changing world of youth, and direct hands-on engagement with young people.
Professor Rob White, Director, Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
Small Stories use the power of narrative to convey deep truths hidden beneath troubling statistics and diagnostic labels.
From the foreword by Larry K. Brendtro, PhD. (Circle of Courage Publications, South Dakota) and Martin Brokenleg (Dean, Circle of Courage Institute), British Columbia, Canada
Jointly published by
Circle of Courage Communications
Praxis Pacific
From the introduction
In between the big ideas of social policy and world trends are the ordinary, often overlooked small stories about how people, families and communities get on with their lives and look after each other in the process. This book of stories has grown out of our choice to get involved in the lives of young people in our adopted community of Porirua, New Zealand, as teachers and youth workers. Each story is a snap shot from our involvement over 30 years. Layered between the stories is a series of reflections, as a sort of conversation between what we did then and what we think about it now.
We have woven a third guest into this conversation, actually a group of them –they are the ideas of theorists from a variety of other disciplines ranging from psychology to education and from theology to community development. We have come across these people along the way and found their ideas helpful. Their explanations have helped us to understand why some of our efforts succeeded, and others failed, quietly or spectacularly -we have tried to be honest about both in these pages.
The stories are organised around an essential theme, an idea that we believe is often overlooked by the people who are responsible for designing the larger narratives of social policy. This idea rarely appears in the wider narratives; it is usually invisible in quantitative research and the budget lines in funding contracts. Yet without it the larger stories of youth development, organisational practice and government policy towards young people are destined to failure, or at least to mediocrity.
From the foreword by Larry Brendtro and Martin Brokenleg
Circle of Courage Publications is proud to include Small Stories in its library of leading-edge resources for helping all young people flourish. The authors draw on decades of experience in teaching and youth work with indigenous teens and families in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Consistent with resilience research, their focus on universal growth needs makes this book relevant in any setting.
Many professionals try to keep their distance and dish out a cure to a client from a troubled background. The Martins move care to the forefront, joining with the community and people they serve. They show how to connect with adult-wary youth in the natural environment, using moments of crisis as well as shared activities of hilarity and joy. Most outsiders saw only violence and dysfunction in these turbulent neighbourhoods. While the authors recount real pain, they also reveal the joy, inner strength, and social support that enable these persons and cultures to thrive.
Small Stories use the power of narrative to convey deep truths hidden beneath troubling statistics and diagnostic labels. Reflections interspersed with these stories link practice with theory, drawing from fields as diverse as behavioural sciences, theology, and community development.
Success in education and helping roles requires an abundance of practice wisdom – seasoned with a broad knowledge of evidence-based principles. This book helps both the aspiring youth worker and the established professional develop the personal awareness and expertise that usually come only with years of experience and study.
The reader joins this journey as the authors struggle to find their place among people whose cultural tails are quite unlike their own. This becomes a foundation for building trust, the currency of connection. The focus expands to developing communities of caring, as well as organizational climates that replace coercion with reciprocal respect. Finally, since eager helpers often fall victim to burnout or compassion fatigue, the authors share insights of how to nurture our own personal spirits so that we too can flourish – in partnership with those we serve.
Larry K. Brendtro, PhD
Editor, Circle of Courage Publications
Martin L. Brokenleg, EdD
Dean, Circle of Courage Institute
