Listen Up
I’ve spent a lot of years (relative to my age), and countless amounts of time and energy on working with young people, mostly in the realm of sports. These experiences have brought me so much joy, many lasting and powerful relationships, and validation that I’m contributing positively to the people who in my eyes and heart matter the most.
During my time at Boston University, I had the incredible privilege to work with Dr. John McCarthy in a Positive Youth Development program called Get Ready. This program was housed at The English High School, which is the oldest public high school in the country and is what’s called a Title 1 school. These schools are the lowest-resourced and often the most neglected public schools in the country. The students at English are from all over the Boston area, and many of them come from very trying (to say the least) and oppressive social, racial, economic, and political situations. I can say without a flicker of doubt that spending that year with those kids was one of the most eye-opening, challenging, inspiring, and transformative experiences of my life, and among all the things I learned, my time there taught me two valuable lessons:
1) We as individuals and as a collective desperately need to learn perspective and humility. I grew up as an upper middle-class white kid in a small, liberal town. I lived in the woods, had open spaces and clean air and water, and although I certainly dealt with challenges and went through difficulties, my racial, socioeconomic, cultural, and political foundations were the rock-solid status quo (White, upper-middle class, straight, cis-gendered, educated parents, liberal). I thought - was even comfortable in my knowledge - that I had some understanding of how other people experienced the world because I’ve traveled, I’m educated and well-read, and my parents raised me to be respectful, open-hearted and -minded, inquisitive, and grounded. Those are all valid and valuable positive influences, and yet what I thought I knew about life challenges was painfully naïve.
At Get Ready, when faced with a 16-year-old young man from El Salvador whose family depends on him for support and whose life and safety depend on the asylum that was granted, then ripped away, by our government, I was humbled. I was uncomfortable, and more than a little ashamed of my own presumptions. I was mortified by this reality of our broken system that is still so much better than what that young man is facing should he be forced back to the land of his birth. I had thought that I knew what strength and humility looked like; I was wrong. This led me to the second lesson:
2) We have to learn to listen with compassion and without falling victim to the limitations on our ability to understand imposed by opinion and judgement, and by social conditioning and the information that we’re fed on a daily basis. We cannot assume that we know what someone is dealing with. We cannot know what a kid needs from us as mentors, parents, teachers, coaches, police officers, community members, or policy makers unless we ASK THEM. Children and teenagers and young adults are keen observers of their worlds, their communities, and their own experiences. Most importantly, they are astute witnesses to the ways in which the systems work – or, quite often, don’t work – for them.
These shortcomings are not the faults of the child; they are the faults of the system and of the adults that run it using adult perspectives and adult priorities. In our efforts to “reform” or “fix” things, we forget to ask the very people we claim to represent what they really need in order to feel safe, and what they need in order to feel like they are being set up to succeed.
I thought I knew kids really well, and in some ways, I did; in other ways, I let my ego take the wheel. There was a built-in power dynamic; I was the adult, the coach, the authority. I was educated and experienced, and I KNEW what needed to happen. And the thing is, the kids mostly trusted me, and we all assumed that our system was just the way things are. The thing is, what I didn’t do was stop to ask if I was right about what I thought I knew, and whether things were actually working as well as they could have been. Although I did a lot of good (compassion, love, patience, dedication and humor go a long way), I believe that I, and we as adults, can – and must - do better. It begins with opening our eyes, ears, and hearts; with giving our egos a break from running the show; with learning to exercise compassion; and with listening to the people who know their lives, their experiences, and themselves the best.
Originally published on March 9, 2020