A vision of success...

The last week has been spent using drama techniques to try and teach ambition to year 9 high school students…funnily enough it’s really, really hard…

The students we’re working with have been identified as having potential but for a variety of reasons they aren’t fulfilling it. As usual the reasons for this are complex, often deep rooted and invariably intertwined: Lack of confidence, difficulties at home, a peer group that undermines their efforts to succeed, learnt behaviours or coping strategies that do not include conforming to others expectations, a resentment of education…the list is sadly endless.

However there is a universal theme that has emerged through the workshops we’re delivering and that is the student’s inability to visualize and/or articulate what success would look like for them. The question is met by the majority with general answers of “Money,” or “A good job,” or “A big car,” but very few of these potentially able young people know what kind of job or how they’re going to be able to earn the money or how they’re going to afford the car.

The consequence of this is that they are moving through life without a road map…with no destination they have no idea whether they are on the right track, no grid references to check their progress and in turn this makes things so much harder. Makes success, which is hard enough for young people with their life experience anyway, even more unreachable…

All this is indicates another potential way in which we can offer assistance as educators. In finding ways to help young people to see in clear terms what they want…in assisting them to draw their vision of success…in giving them the words or courage to articulate it to others, so it can be affirmed and developed in the telling and the hearing, we arm them with an invaluable tool to aid them in the process of actually reaching it…and that to me sounds like a worthwhile way of spending the day…