ValleyTeens began as a series of interviews. We asked teens, parents, teachers and community members about what teens in the Pioneer Valley need to fulfill the developmental asset (as per the Search Institute) “constructive use of time”. We got great advice, suggestions, stories and advice. We’ve posted summaries of the interviews here.
Chief Barry, Granby PD
“Lack of something to do, and lack of transportation” are two predominant problems for teens in Granby, says Chief Barry. Chief Barry was most willing to discuss teens and resources that might benefit teens in his town. He has done a lot of work with teens during his time on the force in Granby, writing several grants that have helped to develop programs for both children and teens. One such grant-funded program was the New Horizons program they ran successfully for two years at the high school until the grant funding ran out and they were no longer able to staff or run the programs financially. He was frustrated by the fact that grant-funded programs often provide opportunities for a community to get a great program up and running, but that it is often difficult or impossible to sustain that program after the funding runs out. The New Horizons program offered programming for young teens during the “problem hours” after school, between 3-5 p.m., before parents typically get home from work. Through the grant they were able to address many of the problems that hinder programming for teens during this time period, including paying for trained staff and running late-late busses to meet transportation needs of students.
Keeping teens busy between 3-5 p.m., the after school hours, before parents are home, is a major concern for Chief Barry. He said that most of the calls to the police station involving teens come in during that time period, or on the weekends when teens are home alone. When I asked him what he might tell a parent who asked him how to keep their teens out of trouble this summer, he said without hesitation, “stay home.” Though he readily agreed that most parents do not have that option, he emphasized that this is a crucial element to keeping teens out of trouble, not only due to an adult presence in the home, but also for what that adult can provide, such as transportation and supervision.
Sports programs both in schools and in the community offer great opportunities for kids to find a place to be involved, keep busy after school and during the summer, and to develop their skills, keeping them occupied in constructive ways, according to Chief Barry. Granby has a DARE basketball summer camp that is open to all levels of play and has been a hugely popular program in this community. There is also a DARE cheerleading camp similar to the basketball camp arrangement, where all levels of skill are represented and accepted. Besides sports, there is very little else in Granby for a teen to be involved in after school or during the summer. There is a cooperative program between several towns around Granby that involves performance arts opportunities for kids of all ages in the summer. Churches in town also offer youth programs on a limited basis. Besides that, Chief Barry says there really isn’t much in town for teens. Job opportunities are limited, and with job opportunities comes the need for transportation which has already been identified as a major obstacle for most teens in Granby.
Another area of great concern to the chief is the technologies that kids are all using (including cell phones, IM, and social networking sites such as facebook and myspace) and the fact that their parents haven’t been educated on the safety and monitoring of these technologies. He emphasized that parents need to stay up-to-date on what their kids are doing online, just as you would, and more so, if they were in the house with their friends with no parent supervision. Most of the parents he has talked to say that they do not allow their kids to have friends over to the house when a parent is not home. According to Chief Barry, being online without parent supervision is potentially more dangerous. He said he wishes that there was more he could do to help parents understand that they need to be aware of what their kids are doing online.
After talking with Chief Barry I started to think about what kind of resources could be researched for teens in this area that would address the obstacles identified by Chief Barry: lack of something to do, and transportation. Becky and I both agreed that the PVTA bus route could address the needs of many of these kids. Locating cool and constructive things for teens to do with their time when they are not in school along the bus route is our focus.
Addressing the concerns that the chief has over the social networking sites that kids are spending so much time on when they are home, we hope to find some good resources for both parents and teens on just what these sites are and how you can have fun, socialize, and be safe.
Nate Cartell, Mercy House, Amherst
Mercy House in Amherst is a church that has a large population of young adults. Realizing that like most teens, the young adults that attended their programs were really into music, they looked for ways to incorporate music into their programming. On a pretty regular basis Nate Cartell has started organizing heavy metal, hardcore music concerts for teens. I interviewed Nate through email recently. Following is a brief description of how and why they started this programming for youth in the area.
I gather you are most interested in our concerts, so I will talk a little bit about them, -why we started, etc. We actually have a very large youth congregation, and some of them were in the local music scene, and that is how this idea of doing shows began. We decided very early that it is an outreach tool and not about the money, so we only ask for 50 dollars from the show to pay bills. All the people who work the shows are volunteers who give up their day or Saturday nights to provide a safe place for the kids to go. We also put a price limit on what a band can charge to play, no more that 10 dollars. We have a cafe that we open downstairs that is all donation based, so people can get drinks even if they have no money. At some point in the future we hope to bring the kitchen up to code to also offer snacks and such. The whole reason behind these shows though, is to gather these kids into our church. We don’t have an agenda, we just hang out with them, and most of them know we are a church first and that this is part of our outreach. We just hang out with them and provide a safe non-judgmental place.
It seems that Mercy House has taken something that was of interest to the teens they knew and developed this venue for them to be involved, hang out and have a good time.
Asking about other venues for teens to hang out, to have something constructive to do, Nate said that there are several places in and around Amherst that he finds teens like to hang out and get involved. Giving teens a way to start giving back to the community is a priority and a way to help teens start to think about something other then themselves. He said that several area churches have food pantries that need help bringing the food in on a weekly basis, distributing the food, and some prepare meals for those in need. According to Nate, at any given church in the area that offers these programs for the community you will find teens volunteering and helping out.
Nate really hit the nail on the head when he talked about hanging out with the teens where they want to be, providing something that teens want, and making it accessible. Teens, typically, don’t have the money to attend many music concerts. Mercy House has taken that into consideration and offers these concerts free for area teens. Mercy House is on the bus route, and is accessible for those who might not have transportation of their own.
Karen’s Teen Interviews
Three area teen boys wanted to share their thoughts on “What do you want to do?” with me. These teens are all 16 years old. None of them have their license yet, or expect to anytime soon due, in part, to the new driving school rates that have doubled since last year, and lack of a job to help pay for driving school. The issue of transportation was huge for them. When asked what prevented them from doing what they wanted to do, they presented three strong obstacles: transportation, money and parents.
In their words, what they want to do most is to be with their friends, no matter what their friends may be doing. What they are doing is secondary, in their opinion. Being together is their main objective.
One of the boys is into skateboarding and has become quite skilled at it by practicing as much as he can. The frustrating thing to him is that most businesses and any public areas are usually off-limits to skateboarders. So he has to get creative in order to find the right kind of surfaces to practice on. He has built a few ramps and rigged up some rails and other objects to try tricks on, but needs something a bit more challenging. He spends a good amount of his time in the summer at the Northampton Skateboard park that just opened about a year ago. When I asked him how he gets there, because he lives in Granby, he said usually they can find a ride at least one way, and sometimes they can take a bus if they can get to a bus pick-up point.
The other boys both like to bike, and they, too, are frustrated with the fact that there aren’t many places where they are welcome to practice their skills. They aren’t officially allowed to bike at the skateboard park, so that is another problem. They find places in and around Amherst and Northampton, places they really aren’t supposed to bike, but usually get away with it as long as someone is always on the lookout. They have to move around a lot to avoid getting into trouble. Mountain biking is another thing that they have done, and that is easier with the Mount Holyoke Range that bisects Granby, Hadley, South Hadley and Amherst. There are hundreds of trails available throughout the range. One teen shared: “I’ve gotten lost up there many times!”
Two of the boys are in bands with their friends. Music is a big interest to these boys. Making music is something they really like to do. There are opportunities at times to be in competitions with their bands like a “battle of the bands” competition that some schools have, or area parks in the summer. They are always looking for opportunities to showcase their music, and practice weekly at each other’s houses.
All of the boys like listening to music and playing online games when they are home alone. They also spend a lot of time on Instant Messenger with their friends when they aren’t together.
After interviewing these teen boys I could feel their frustration with the limitations they have to being able to do the things they really love to do, or want to do. That being said, when there is something they really want to do, they will do what it takes to make it happen, like getting to a bus pick up point, or finding someone with a parent or older sibling home that can take them where they want to go. Helping them to connect with resources that may be of interest to them in their community is the goal of this project.
Officer Dineen, South Hadley PD
In addition to his duties on the police force, Officer Dineen works as the outreach officer at a high school, which puts him in a unique position to understand how teens in the Valley use their time. Dineen listed lack of transportation and lack of “things to do” as some of the main stumbling blocks toward teens’ constructive use of time. He said that there seems to be a divide between those teens who become actively involved in school activities (sports or arts, etc.) and those who, for whatever reason, don’t.
One of Dineen’s most interesting observations was regarding the influence of parents on how teens use their time. He said that some parents actively contribute to teens’ problems by allowing them to drink or do drugs in their home, ostensibly because it is a “safer” environment than they might find otherwise. According to Dineen, this is a misguided effort that often results in more trouble for teens and families.
Because of Officer Dineen’s comments, we decided to include a “parents” page on this site. Also, though we designed it primarily with teens in mind, we realized that in fact, this resource might be just as useful to parents and community members
Becky’s Teen Interviews
Two high school girls and two high school boys offered to give their input for ValleyTeens. The two girls, Megan and Dana, both mentioned that they spend a lot of time online, especially on Facebook, and that the majority of their free time is spent on social networking.
As a Facebook member myself, I couldn’t conceive spending that much time on the site. So what were they doing? Dana sheepishly admitted that she spends a lot of time “creeping” on Facebook. Creeping is looking at the Facebook pages of friends (or acquaintances, or enemies) and gathering information, discovering gossip, checking out pictures — it’s basically a sanitized (and centralized) form of cyber-stalking, but it’s completely indiscoverable (as of now).
Neither Megan nor Dana had ever had any bad experiences with cyber-bullying or damaging gossip, but they did mention that their preference for Facebook over MySpace had partially to do with the “openness” of MySpace. They both said that they felt more comfortable with the more secure Facebook model. This led us to consider including a “social networking safety” component to our resource that both teens and parents could use. When I asked the girls if they felt that they used their time “constructively,” both seemed to feel immediately guilty. The said that they don’t consider most of their activities constructive (even though Megan is seriously involved with dance), and when I explained the Search Institute’s definition to them, the scoffed. So what is a constructive use of their time? Homework, according to Megan and Dana. They classify almost everything else as procrastination.
I also spoke with two boys, Andrew and Ernesto, who both have access to cars (so transportation is not so much of an issue), and who spend most of their time “texting” or “chilling.” Unlike the two girls I spoke to, online social networking is not a large part of the boys’ days; instead, they like to drive around, going to chinese buffets and “looking for stuff to do.”
Like the girls, Andrew and Ernesto did not believe that they used their time constructively. Neither teen belongs to a sports team, though both play informal or pick-up games. Andrew, the elder of the two, is college-bound (entering UMass next year), and says that he “just wants to have fun” until he starts college. He said that money is a concern for him in terms of entertainment and activities. Ernesto really surprised me during our interview. Despite his many pronouncements that he couldn’t tell me how he “really” spend his time (he proudly declared that it would either scandalize me or compromise my position as a mandated reporter), he eventually revealed that he spends a lot of time working on his passion — cooking. (It was actually a great talk; he comes in every day now to look at the Culinary Institute of America’s website.) Cooking is literally the LAST activity I would have guess that Ernesto liked to do; it got me thinking about what other kinds of things teens might be in search of.
Morgan, Case Manager for foster children in the Pioneer Valley
Morgan has a case load of 12-18 year old males in the foster care system. Because of the specific program that his teens are in, they are not permitted to have access to the internet (though he suspects that most of them find ways around that). He said that his clients play a lot of video games, spend time on the phone, and spend time texting their friends.
In terms of interests, Morgan said that his clients liked everything from sports to music to reading. Specifically, he said that they like science fiction and “military fiction,” and they like music — mostly hip-hop and rap — and for some, “art is very big.” He mentioned that many of his teens read magazines, mostly sports or gaming magazines. He said that many of his teens are very interested in anything having to do with New York; they seem to see it as more “authentic” and they are constantly in search of music, art, or books from the city.
“We ask them to be constructive about their time,” Morgan said. After school jobs, bowling, going to the library, or seeing movies are all acceptable activities. “Roaming street, like from store to store, is bad” he said. (Of course, that is how most of us spent our own teenage years.)
Part of what makes his job hard, he said, is the lack of options for his older teens. “The Boys and Girls Clubs want younger teens,” he said, “but my kids could use the exact same thing.” Also, he faces resistance from his agency (and other agencies) about his clients’ time spend texting or on the phone. “Text messaging and talking on the phone are constructive things, but the larger agencies don’t see it that way,” he said. “They’re using socialization skills. Communication is a big deal to them, and a big skill to learn. It helps them fit in, and for kids in the system, that can be a very hard thing.”
This interview made us think about including some scholarly articles about the benefits of social networking and communications between teens.
