So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish
Tonight was my final session as a youth worker. After 9 years paid in the job, and a few years as a volunteer before that, I never really thought this would happen. I thought I would always be a youth worker.
I fell into being a youth worker quite by accident. I dropped out of school early because of various problems, with left me with virtually no self esteem. I ended up at a unit for kids who'd been excluded from school, where I met a guy who was totally cool, and I latched on to him. Then one night I joined a local drama group, and he was there. At the time I wasn’t doing much and was looking for a YTS placement. So he got me a place in the youth work office, doing paperwork.
The drama group closed, and I was dismayed. However the leader of the team suggested I took it on. I was baffled. Me? Lead a group? Well anyway, I stayed doing that for a few years and absolutely loved it. Eventually it came to a close, and I found myself doing another project. I kept trying to get work as a youth worker, only because I had nothing better in the offing.
Eventually, in 1997, another youth worker who’d taken me under his wing was helpful in my winning a youth work post. To be honest, in those early years I never really took it seriously. Then one year I was ordered to take the youth work training course.
On that course, I was forced to revisit my youth. It was a very painful experience to go back to days I hoped I had left far behind. However, it helped me make a lot of sense of things, and from that moment on, I knew what I had to do. I had to be a youth worker.
I knew I wasn’t like other youth workers. I couldn’t hold my own with some of the more difficult young people, who reminded me very much of the kind of young people who had made my life hell. But I had in the back of my mind the strange notion that if I could make a difference in one kid’s life, if I could show someone that there is life beyond your teenage years, then it was all worth it.
It’s a simple yet bizarre equation. If I hadn’t been through such a tough time, I wouldn’t have been excluded from school, and I never would have met the youth worker who changed my life. Sometimes I still struggle to get my head round that.
Well I know I’ve achieved that. Just by being someone they can talk to, I’ve given young people happiness. Now a lot of the young people I initially worked with have grown up and some of them have kids of their own. I remember a couple of years ago a young lady coming up to me with a pram and saying ‘I was a cheeky little kid, but I remember you and and all the other youth workers who put up with me and I’ve changed so much'. The feeling that gave me is something money can’t buy. That’s why the politics of the decision to close the youth service upset me so much. But now is not the time for that sort of talk.
I look back on my years as a youth worker with some great memories, some great friends and I know it changed me. I was perhaps slow to pick up a lot of the skills, but I’m there now. As most of you know, I’ve been training for a computer teaching diploma this year. I’ve really enjoyed the course. If you’d asked me 10 years ago to consider being a teacher, I’d have laughed in your face.
Now I’m moving on. I start a job on Monday in the Avon Call Centre, and it feels like my life is changing completely. I feel like we’ve all been dumped on by the county council. Not just the youth workers, but future generations of young people too. Hopefully something will happen. Maybe I’ll find the time to do some work with young people, even in a voluntary capacity for a while. Maybe I won’t do anything any more. Whatever, I can look back on the last few years with pride that I achieved something not just for the young people, but for me personally. I don’t know where I’d have been without it.
In the words of Aerosmith - Life’s a journey, not a destination.
I fell into being a youth worker quite by accident. I dropped out of school early because of various problems, with left me with virtually no self esteem. I ended up at a unit for kids who'd been excluded from school, where I met a guy who was totally cool, and I latched on to him. Then one night I joined a local drama group, and he was there. At the time I wasn’t doing much and was looking for a YTS placement. So he got me a place in the youth work office, doing paperwork.
The drama group closed, and I was dismayed. However the leader of the team suggested I took it on. I was baffled. Me? Lead a group? Well anyway, I stayed doing that for a few years and absolutely loved it. Eventually it came to a close, and I found myself doing another project. I kept trying to get work as a youth worker, only because I had nothing better in the offing.
Eventually, in 1997, another youth worker who’d taken me under his wing was helpful in my winning a youth work post. To be honest, in those early years I never really took it seriously. Then one year I was ordered to take the youth work training course.
On that course, I was forced to revisit my youth. It was a very painful experience to go back to days I hoped I had left far behind. However, it helped me make a lot of sense of things, and from that moment on, I knew what I had to do. I had to be a youth worker.
I knew I wasn’t like other youth workers. I couldn’t hold my own with some of the more difficult young people, who reminded me very much of the kind of young people who had made my life hell. But I had in the back of my mind the strange notion that if I could make a difference in one kid’s life, if I could show someone that there is life beyond your teenage years, then it was all worth it.
It’s a simple yet bizarre equation. If I hadn’t been through such a tough time, I wouldn’t have been excluded from school, and I never would have met the youth worker who changed my life. Sometimes I still struggle to get my head round that.
Well I know I’ve achieved that. Just by being someone they can talk to, I’ve given young people happiness. Now a lot of the young people I initially worked with have grown up and some of them have kids of their own. I remember a couple of years ago a young lady coming up to me with a pram and saying ‘I was a cheeky little kid, but I remember you and and all the other youth workers who put up with me and I’ve changed so much'. The feeling that gave me is something money can’t buy. That’s why the politics of the decision to close the youth service upset me so much. But now is not the time for that sort of talk.
I look back on my years as a youth worker with some great memories, some great friends and I know it changed me. I was perhaps slow to pick up a lot of the skills, but I’m there now. As most of you know, I’ve been training for a computer teaching diploma this year. I’ve really enjoyed the course. If you’d asked me 10 years ago to consider being a teacher, I’d have laughed in your face.
Now I’m moving on. I start a job on Monday in the Avon Call Centre, and it feels like my life is changing completely. I feel like we’ve all been dumped on by the county council. Not just the youth workers, but future generations of young people too. Hopefully something will happen. Maybe I’ll find the time to do some work with young people, even in a voluntary capacity for a while. Maybe I won’t do anything any more. Whatever, I can look back on the last few years with pride that I achieved something not just for the young people, but for me personally. I don’t know where I’d have been without it.
In the words of Aerosmith - Life’s a journey, not a destination.