Life Skills Boot Camp is getting positive results

Feb. 3, 2011 - PRLog -- The terminology "Boot Camp" conjures up many powerful images and opinions on whether they actually work or not.

After successfully launching their preventative measures course to provide young people with the skills to increase their personal safety and ability to achieve at the highest level, the Life Skills for Children team were asked by a few local schools to provide an intense learning experience for young people that were on the fringe of being removed from main stream education as a direct result of their behaviour and attitude towards teachers.

The educational boot camp provides young people with an intense learning experience, where they are taught some powerful key skills to improve their attitude towards school, teachers and in many cases their parents.

Prior the boot camp commencing, the school provides the Life Skills team with some basic information on the problems the child is creating and where the child is sitting in the school disciplinary system. A child that has been through the school system and is at a point of being permanently excluded will be treated slightly differently from a child that is just popping up on the school radar as being a potential problem.

The boot camp experience is designed to educate young people demonstrating an array of different problems such as severe low confidence, general bad behaviour to violent personalities.

Different modules within the boot camp tackle the symptoms that cause all of the problems that young people bring to school.

The boot camp is so flexible that young people can be divided into groups to speed up the learning experience. Young people that suffer from a sever lack of confidence can be housed together and taught as can young people that repeatedly behave badly in school.
Another popular delivery model is to separate the boys and girls that experience the boot camp so the modules within the course can be tailored to a specific group.

So far the boot camp has been delivered over either five full intensive days or ten half days, however the modules within the course can be adjusted to be delivered over a shorter time period if required.

Young people experience a series of modules that include:

Understanding the affects of anti-social behaviour
The destructive qualities of our personalities
Identifying the reasons for my actions - All talk and NO action
Developing a negative Life Plan
Physical Team building boot camp
Positive qualities of your personality
Life Skills training – Take away the excuses of feeling unsafe
No excuse is big enough
Goal Setting for the future
Positive Key skills training
Developing a positive Life plan

All of these modules are delivered under a strict code of conduct, where the rules and regulations that govern the school are reinforced with physical exercise penalties for failing to comply.

One of the many objectives of the boot camp is to get young people actively involved in physical exercise. All of the team building activities surround physical exercise and whilst many young people initially refuse to participate in many of the activities and penalties, they soon realise that the only way to complete the course is for the whole group to complete together. Our experience is that by day two every child regardless of their tantrums is participating at some level and by the close of the boot camp all participants have significantly improved in the area of physical exercise.

There are many modules within the boot camp that enable young people to express their opinions on school life, teachers and their personal problems. Very often participants will use these open forums to share problems with other members of the group, which in turn provides the school with the opportunity to provide the required support and advice.

We know that many of the young people that experience the boot camp return to broken or unhappy homes at the end of the school day, which is why we engage with the parents to provide them with the skills to address some of the problems the family face.

As a direct result of the need to educate parents, the Life Skills team are in the final stages of producing a 10 point parenting guide comprising of modules used within the boot camp. The parenting guide will be used as an early intervention tool for parents before their children decide to push the limits of their bad behaviour and possibly get into local gangs.

"The life Skills Project proved to be an invaluable intervention program for some of the year 8 pupils at my school. Over a period of 10 weeks Gary worked with a group of pupils who for varied reasons had become disengaged with school. Some of this group had also become involved in some undesirable and often dangerous behaviour both in and out of school.

Working on areas such as self esteem, attitude, morals, conflict resolution and target setting I witnessed in the majority of pupils a significant positive change in both their attitude to school and towards their fellow pupils and teaching staff. Feedback from teaching staff and parents was extremely positive which is not surprising considering none of these pupils have been in trouble since.

As Head of Key Stage 3 many of these pupils viewed me in a negative light as the majority of my interaction with them was of a disciplinary nature. By the end of the course my relationship with these pupils could not have been better. Pupils who would normally avoid interaction with me were openly discussing their problems and sought my advice where in the past they would normally have reacted to situations without thinking first thus making them much worse.

Life Skills definitely makes a difference, it equips pupils with the tools needed to cope with everyday life and the confidence to use them. I would recommend this program without reservation".

Darren Freeman BSc (Hons), MSc
Head of Science & Key Stage 3
Lincroft Middle School
Oakley, Beds

The boot camp clearly demonstrates that through education we can guide many of these young people onto a path of success.

Further information on the Life Skills services can be found at: www.lifeskillsforchildren.co.uk

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Life Skills for Children provide educational programmes for Children aged 5-16 years in social responsibility, knife awareness, personal safety and communication skills. Taught within Schools, Sports Groups and Social Clubs. DVD tuition for Worldwide.