WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS is intended for use by teachers, counselors, and others who encounter adolescents in a great variety of settings. With minimal adaptation many of the ideas may be used by those who work with younger children as well.

Key ideas about adolescents, ideas referred to as markers, are presented in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 provides 70 Critical Incidents that invite dialogue and discussion. Chapter 3 and subsequent chapters are filled with ideas designed to enable people who work with adolescents to make more effective choices in communicating with them -- plus these chapters suggest many ways to help young people make their own choices more effectively.

The text of Chapter 3 follows, then additional materials are described in brief.

** Choice is defined here as any behavior over which the person has some reasonable degree of control. Words and actions, and many thoughts and feelings, can be seen as choices.

** It is important to bring the reality of constant choice-making to awareness, and practice the skills of effective choice-making.

** Every day affords a great many opportunities to choose, and each choice can be made in a great variety of ways. People make many choices on the basis of habits, labels, attitudes, and expectations -- but they choose.

** Relationships often fall into stereotypical patterns of choices that evolve over time, but choice patterns do not have to remain fixed.

** Acting on long range relationship goals may improve many relationships since long range goals tend to be both global and positive.

Debbie D. works with adolescents in a halfway house in a rough, inner-city setting and loves her work. Paul P. is a teacher in a highly sought-after school situation, but by his own admission he is a failure and plans to leave teaching. Why is it that some people enjoy their work with young people in circumstances that offer a great deal of challenge, while others in less-demanding settings are frustrated and discouraged?

Work with adolescents requires continuous interpersonal interaction. Those who succeed in their work with young people communicate well and make effective interactive choices. Four essentials affect success in working with young people. Those who succeed:

1. understand the adolescents with whom they work,
2. master the tasks for which they are responsible -- and the content, in the case of teachers,
3. use effective management techniques and procedures,
4. develop communication skills that can help them interact effectively with young people in the positive and negative moments that inevitably occur.

All of these essentials involve choices. Debbie D. makes effective choices in her work in all four of these areas. Paul P. handles content well but lacks understanding of students and of good management procedures.

Think about the truly excellent teachers, counselors, and other people you have known. It is likely that they were unique in your eyes because of the effectiveness of the choices you saw them make in relating to you and to others.

** You can achieve greater success and find greater joy in your interactions with others through making more effective choices. More effective choices can lead you to more moments in which you feel a greater sense of meaning in life. And as you find more success, joy, and meaning in your life, you provide the adolescents and others around you with a positive model for their lives.

** Choice is defined here as any behavior over which the individual has some reasonable degree of control. What we say is a choice. What we do is a choice. Much of what we think and feel is a choice.

Nobody pulls a string in your back and makes you do what you do, and nobody makes you say the words you say. Policies, rules, curricula, and the like aside, exactly what you say and do in your interactions with young people and others, and how you say and do those things, are choices you make.

The converse of effective choice-making, choicelessness, seems pervasive in our society. Other labels for choicelessness include powerlessness and irresponsibility. You hear evidence of choicelessness when young people make these kinds of statements:

"They made me do it."
"I couldn't help it."
"It's not my fault."
"I didn't mean it."
"I had to get back at 'em."

Adults, too, deny their power to choose; they just use more sophisticated language to voice their feelings:

"That's my personality."
"That's just the way I am."
"I was in a bad mood."
"There was nothing else I could have done."
"They should have learned that years ago."
"My boss (The administration) won't let me."

Our society allows us great freedom in our choices, but we often deny both the freedom we have and the responsibility that accompanies it. We excuse many things we do on the grounds that we "have no other choice." Many punitive actions taken in schools and in other settings, e.g., suspension of privileges, work release activities, suspensions, expulsions, and paddlings -- are rationalized: "There was nothing else we could do."

** We always have choices available to us. At the very least we can choose to take action based on positive, caring attitudes toward the person involved in an infraction.

The literature on various discipline approaches supports a strong relationship between choice and discipline. Dreikurs, et al. (1982) put forward the point that discipline requires both freedom of choice and the understanding of consequences. Glasser (1969), too, suggested that behavior is a matter of choice, and, therefore, the focus of discipline, regardless of the environment involved, should be that of helping young people make responsible choices.

In exercising choices in general and with adolescents, most of the limits you experience you set for yourself. Where it is appropriate, you can learn to go beyond previous limits and choose more effectively -- using the Choice Awareness system to counter feelings of choicelessness. The process and the outcome can be positive for you and for the adolescents whom you serve.

In your work with adolescents you need to give attention to the basic verbal and non-verbal communication you present to them, since the ways in which you talk and act are central to the outcomes you see. The basic skills you have available to you are your words and behaviors: how you use your voice, your body language (Jones, 1987), how you reinforce, and how you cope with the words and actions of young people.

Charles (1992) extrapolated from the discipline model presented by Dreikurs (1982), and made an interesting suggestion which he applied to teaching, but which has implications for a variety of other adult relationships with adolescents: that those who wish to use a democratic discipline model need to spend considerable amounts of time talking with young people about how their actions affect themselves and others. "[T]his puts teachers [and others, we would add] into a counseling role, which can produce very good results for [those] who have counseling skills. Unfortunately, most have never had such training" (Charles, 1992, p. 76). In this source we do not suggest that you attempt to function as a counselor unless that is your designated role; we are convinced, however, with both Charles and Dreikurs, that good communication skills "can produce very good results," and much of Part 2 of this source is designed to help you develop those skills.

You can develop effective communication patterns with young people, and to do that you need a repertoire of effective skills and procedures -- which we see as choices. Effective communication requires effective choices, and effective choices do not come automatically on a single reading. They must be learned and practiced and improved over time. Pianist Lorin Hollander once lauded the virtues of practice in a PBS radio interview, saying, Practice until it becomes easy. Practice until it becomes habit. Practice until it becomes beautiful. The skills of communication, too, need to be practiced until they become easy, until they become habit, and if not until they become beautiful, at least until they become comfortable and effective.

** It is possible for you to make each of your choices in a great variety of ways.

You pass a boy in your charge and compliment him on an accomplishment of which you have become aware. A girl tells you that she is sleepy, lost, and behind in her work (or homework) because her parents have been fighting late into the night for weeks. As you listen and respond to these two adolescents you make many choices. You do this continually throughout the course of your day, with young people and others, until you have made hundreds upon hundreds of choices. If you are like most people, you make many of your choices as if you are programmed to do so, but you are not.

** One basis on which you make your choices is your habits. Many of the things you do and say are basically habitual actions, and your habits can be useful or detrimental. If you are habitually generous with reinforcement, great! Keep it up! But not all of your habits are likely to be positive.

Studies have shown, for example, that when teachers call on students they habitually allow more "wait time" with those they expect will respond well than with weaker students. In one way this is understandable -- since much of the time if teachers wait for strong students they will respond successfully. But, obviously, weaker students need more time to formulate their responses, not less than those who are strong. If they are given less time, they become discouraged and are likely to give up. The good news is that habits are learned, and new habits can be learned, too.

** A second basis on which you make your choices involves labels. Labels become habits -- patterns of choices of long duration. Do you see yourself as a doer or a procrastinator? A responder or an initiator? A day person or a night person? The labels you wear act as self-fulfilling prophecies, and are part of the patterns of habits that affect your interactions with others. Even positive labels, the kind person, or the helpful one, may create pressure on you at times and cause you stress; you can become overwhelmed by the neediness of young people, for example.

Many adults who work with adolescents see themselves as responders; they wait until young people have misbehaved and then they react. They could be initiators and make the first move -- with positive statements, for example.

"I'm really pleased; you're off to a good start today."
"Thanks for cooperating."

Initiating an interaction may run counter to an important label of yours. Perhaps you think: I am a responder with other adults, but I am an initiator with young people. If that really works for you, fine. If it does not, you can change the way you think about yourself, or you can change your pattern of choices.

** A third basis on which you make your choices involves your attitudes. Many years ago, Viktor Frankl (1959) suggested in Man's Search for Meaning that people can always choose their attitudes even when all other freedoms have been taken away -- and he discovered that truth in a concentration camp. In most instances when you make a choice, you have a vast array of possibilities available to you -- but even when you do not, you can always choose the attitude with which you do what you believe you must.

Even when the responsibility you have is clear -- for example, you must meet a severe violation of the rules with a strong disciplinary action -- you still choose your attitude. You can be righteously indignant or fall back upon the old this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you line. On the other hand, you can calmly tell the boy or girl of the frustration you feel, discuss straightforwardly the action you believe you must take, and help him or her learn as a result of the infraction.

** A fourth basis on which you make your choices involves the expectations you have of yourself. When Teresa shouts out another smart remark, you may respond: "I've told you to keep quiet, now I want you out of here (to report to the director/the office) immediately!'' When Dan breaks a rule, e.g., on gum-chewing, you may growl, "Get that gum out of your mouth!''

Behavior X calls for response Y. Right?

STIMULUS -- RESPONSE.

Stimulus leads to response.

Is that the way life is?

Most young people think it is that way. Ask them what they do when someone hits them from behind. Some may say they punch the person. Others may say they yell, "What do you think you're doing?'' Next, ask them what they do if they turn and see that the "hitter" is a friend, an enemy, a younger child, the school principal, Mom, Dad, a police officer, or you. The response changes. They make different choices.

The stimuli you encounter do not lead you to inevitable responses.

** What you do or say is not just a response to a stimulus -- it is your choice. At the very least, when you take in a stimulus, you make an internal choice from among an array of possibilities -- then you implement your response. The formula becomes:

STIMULUS -- CHOICE-- RESPONSE.

The stimulus leads you to your choice, and that leads you to your response. But it is even more complex than that.

You make choices about the stimuli to which you will respond -- for example, you may ignore a behavior at one time and act upon it at another. And you even make choices during your response. If you see that your scolding is being ignored, or the person seems to feel hurt, you may switch your strategy in mid-sentence.

** A fifth basis on which you make your choices involves your expectations of others. Young people respond at least to some degree because of what they believe is expected of them. In Rosenthal and Jacobson's (1968) classic study, Pygmalion in the Classroom, teachers were told that randomly-selected students were likely to be late-bloomers. When teachers expected future growth of students they encouraged them more, and the outcomes were more positive. Higher expectations led to improved performance; improved performance led to higher expectations; and the spiral continued upward. If you expect more from young people than they have given in the past -- if you make that choice -- at least some of them are likely to improve their patterns of performance.

In a related point, it may be said that the expectations of you by the adolescents you encounter also become bases for the choices you make. Adults who work with young people are seen by them as fulfilling a number of psychological roles, among them: representative of society, judge, source of knowledge, helper, referee, detective, model, surrogate parent, target for hostility, object of affection, and so forth. Further, young people also assume various roles in the group: leader, clown, fall guy, instigator, scapegoat, and so forth. (Redl and Wattenberg, 1959). Clearly, a variety of expectations influences your choices and the choices of the young people with whom you work, but no one has to be controlled by expectations.

In addition to habits, labels, and expectations, a great many of the choices you make are based on the relationships you have with other people. If you are like most people, you let your relationships control many of your choices. Think about it. You probably interact quite differently with each individual member of your family, with various co-workers, and with casual acquaintances.

Think about the interactions you have with young people. Are they carbon copies of the relationships you have with friends and relatives? Do you use the same patterns of choices with those who are quick or slow, cooperative or troublesome?

In all probability, some of your relationships have evolved over time into narrow patterns of behaviors. You may "save" some of your most positive choices for your friends, and "spend" more of your negative choices on one or two family members or on a few young people. You may be a dynamic and skilled leader when it comes to your own tasks, but you may tend to wait for your supervisor or your father to take the lead within your relationship.

If you are like most people who work with adolescents you feel a great need to be predictable, so once you evolve a pattern of choices you tend to keep it that way. As a result, you may spend more time and energy in maintaining your relationships with young people as they are than you spend in improving them.

If you see yourself as a responder it is unlikely that you will make changes in the choice pattern you have with more difficult adolescents you encounter until they change. And guess what? The more difficult adolescents you know have also built habit patterns. Many of them see themselves as responders -- so they believe they cannot change the interaction pattern until you or others do. If you are aware of your choices you are in a better position to make changes that can break the stalemate.

As Glasser (1990) suggested, for those young people who come from atrocious backgrounds, there may be few places where they might meet caring adults, and they deeply need someone who is genuinely interested in them. Choosing to build positive relationships with young people is among the most significant things you can do.

What do you want from your relationships with the person to whom you feel closest in this world, with your friends, with the adolescents you encounter, and in particular with any young person with whom you have been in conflict? If you take a moment to think about it, you are likely to find that from your closest relationship you want warmth and love; with your friends you want closeness, sharing, and trust; with young people you want respect and cooperation; and in your relationship with an adolescent with whom you have had conflict you would like to have a pleasant, easy pattern of interaction.

Your goals with others around you probably remain unspoken and unexamined. As a result, all too frequently, you may make choices that run counter to your goals. The view is taken here that looking closely at your goals with family members, with friends, and with the adolescents you encounter, can help you make life better for yourself and those around you.

The long range goals you have for your relationships are likely to be global, simple, and positive; and the extent to which you reach your goals depends largely on how you act upon them -- through your choices. You cannot control the choices of an adolescent or any other person, but you can control your own choices. And you can do it more effectively if you keep your goals in mind.

In moments of stress, pause briefly, consider your goal for the relationship, then make a choice. If you find that you often make choices that run counter to your goals, either admit that your goals are not what you believed they were, or change your pattern of choices so that you move toward your goals instead of away from them.

It may never have occurred to you that you have goals for your relationships. In fact, your reaction to this point may be that you do not want to have goals -- "Che sera sera -- whatever will be will be," may be your thought. If that is a sticking point, what concerns you can probably be summed up in the word manipulation. You may think, "If I have goals, and if others do, too, might we not be manipulating one another to achieve our ends?'' The key to avoiding manipulation is focusing on long range, relationship goals, rather than on short term goals, such as getting back at the person for something that happened recently, or a moment ago.

The alternative to making effective choices based on positive goals is acting out of habit. If you avoid relying on habit, if you choose your attitudes constructively -- on the basis of both thought and feeling, and if you consider your goals, you are free to make more effective choices, both for yourself and in your relationships with young people and others in your life.

At the close of each chapter in the body of WORKING WITH ADOLESCENTS, Chapters 3 - 14, a cluster of items is presented that help readers reflect on the ideas introduced and assist them to build journal entries. The additional materials for Chapter 3 are presented below in abbreviated form.

Three people who work with adolescents are introduced.

Julie Y. is a classic example of denial. She repeatedly says such things as: "Their parents should have taught them that." "I can't do it -- it's not written into the program." She makes choices all the time, but she seems unaware that she is doing so.

Ruth Z. began to modify some of her interactions soon after she was introduced to the idea that she had goals in her relationships. She made the biggest change with Zack, a young man she was supervising in a community service program for probationers. After some time she wrote in one of her journal entries, "I wanted a better relationship with Zack, and when I went after it, patiently, persistently, and with a caring attitude, I succeeded."

Todd R., a high school teacher, felt burned-out. When he realized that it had become unpleasant for him to get up in the morning to face his classes, he decided to try to regain the joy he had once felt about teaching. His attitude began to change after he planned his program to include at least one enjoyable experience each week in each of his classes. "I'd started to see teaching as a job instead of a profession," he told a friend. "I thought I was putting too much of myself into it, but it was draining me because I hadn't been putting enough positive energy into it."

In each instance the reader is asked to compare him/herself to the individual in some detail, and to consider whether changes are warranted.

This section encourages the reader to apply ideas from the chapter directly. The following is one of the three ideas from Chapter 3.

** Stress your positive habits. Select one or two of your more positive habits to emphasize in your interactions with young people. For example, if you see yourself as habitually optimistic and creative, emphasize those qualities, and appreciate them within yourself -- every day. Suggestion: Letter a card that says, "I am optimistic and creative," and post it on your mirror.

Each chapter contains a critical incident, some of which are teaching-focused, others of which are not. Readers are encouraged to adapt the situation to their environment. In Chapter 3 readers are to assume that they have been given a fourth period assignment that is unrelated to their teaching credentials -- a filler for a free period, an overcrowded class of adolescents who are difficult to challenge. The reader is told:

"You have become aware that you sometimes feel negative about the group. Today you have just started class when a member of the clerical staff brings you a new student. 'I'm sorry. There's no place else we can put her. It's the only time this class fits her schedule.'" Readers are invited to state what they might say at that moment -- knowing that the new girl and some class members are listening.

A few moments later you have class members working at their seats. One of the students you like best, a boy you have in another of your classes, comes up to you with a question. You answer him and he moves away, then he turns back to you and says, "You don't like this class very much, do you?" The room is hushed and the students who are seated close by look up. Readers are invited to state what they might say right at that moment, and to consider what kind of long range strategy they might use to change the atmosphere.

In each chapter, as they explore their own choices, readers are encouraged to present related ideas to the young people with whom they work. The specific suggestions for Chapter 3 appear under the following titles: We make many choices. Each opportunity to choose allows for a wide variety of choices. Choices can be based on goals. The reader is referred to the appropriate section of Chapter 16.

Readers are invited to make relevant journal entries related to each chapter. At the close of Chapter 3 suggestions are made for journaling about choices, relationships, and goals.

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