This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
04/03/2018 03:44 PMLearning how to change a tire or cook a nutritious and delicious meal in a dorm’s microwave oven are valuable skills for teens to master before they leave home to live on their own. But for most, these are things only learned under pressure: getting a flat tire on your way to school or facing a night without a meal after missing the dorm’s dinner hours. Fortunately, Old Saybrook teens can now learn these skills before they need them, through the new workshop series Essential Life Skills for Teens,
offered by the Old Saybrook Youth & Family Services (OSFYS) agency.
The workshop series, in its first year, was created and coordinated by OSYFS counselor Samantha Steinmacher to help teens build confidence and competence in the skills needed to be independent.
“The teens that have attended have been really interested in learning. They realize that these are skills they will use; they’re also talking about [the series] with their peers. And it’s picking up momentum,” said Steinmacher.
The Essential Life Skills workshops are scheduled throughout the school year with about one workshop per month. Most are planned for Monday evenings starting at 6 or 6:30 p.m. In this first year of the series, OSYFS has asked for a $5 optional donation from each participant per workshop to help offset some of the costs.
While most workshops are for Old Saybrook teens, for workshops that didn’t have a cap on the number of participants, like the Employment Skills workshop, OSFYS opened participation to teens from other shoreline towns. Attendees have come from as far away as Madison, Clinton, and Old Lyme. Steinmacher said she’s been contacted by youth and family services agencies in other towns that are now exploring whether they should offer their own Essential Life Skills for Teens program.
The list of classes already completed in this year’s series include Employment Skills; Basic Home Safety (with John Evans, deputy fire chief in Lyme); GRIT: A Resilience Building Workshop (with Alicia Farrell, PhD); Car Maintenance with Cardone & Daughter,; Modern Parenting: Life Skills for Our Kids (co-facilitated by Betsy Groth, APRN); and Dorm Style Cooking for Teens (co-facilitated by Lindsay More, Old Saybrook High School Culinary Instructor). Still to come are three more workshops. Financial Literacy will address earning, spending, saving, investing, debt and credit, budgeting, and banking. Household management, co-facilitated by Heather Tooker, Old Saybrook Middle School culinary instructor, will address skills like ironing, laundry, routines, sewing a button, and the importance of self-care. Health and Wellbeing will have a focus on both parents and teen children.
Students who have taken the earlier classes have had a positive reaction.
“It’s all about teaching them these skills before they need them,” said Steinmacher. “Teens learn through these hands-on experiences.”
Steinmacher described how students reacted in one of the workshops, Dorm Style Cooking. On the menu were quesadillas and nachos; each student prepared his or her own meal and then shared among themselves the different dishes they made. When they finished eating, there were still a few minutes left in the class.
“Students were curious about breakfast foods, therefore, we showed them how to make breakfast burritos with the quesadilla fixings and microwaved eggs. We only had three minutes left in the class, and the kids were flabbergasted at how quick it was assembled. Well, the burrito was cut into slices and the students tried it. And they loved it, saying, ‘Oh, this is actually really good,’” recalled Steinmacher.
The Car Maintenance class was held at Cardone & Daughters, a local automotive repair and maintenance business. Auto technicians who are the experts in their field taught the teens, who learned how to change a tire, to identify a fluid leak type by looking at the tell-tale driveway drips, and to check a car’s oil level and a tire’s pressure. They also got hands-on practice with these skills under the watchful eyes of the experts.
“After the Car Maintenance class, student were talking to their parents about what they had learned. Parents expressed their appreciation for the class. Everyone at Cardone & Daughter was remarkably generous and knowledgeable. There was even an auto technician who helped one of the attendees with her car after the class!” said Steinmacher.
Steinmacher said her goal is to help the teens learn through hands-on learning experiences that they can rely on themselves, that they can be confident and capable young adults who are ready to be independent.
A January class, GRIT: A Resiliency-Building Workshop
, focused on helping teens to build the skills they need to be resilient in the face of failures or disappointments. That session was facilitated by counseling professionals Alicia Farrell, PhD, and Steinmacher, and it led to a request by parents of middle-school students to offer a GRIT session like it for middle school students. That is in the planning stages.
Another session this year on employment skills attracted more than 30 parents and teens. The series’s success this year means that Steinmacher plans to continue it for another year. To help teens and parents to plan ahead to attend the sessions they are interested in, she plans publish the list of programs and dates at the beginning of the school year.
“We want the classes to be available to everyone,” said Steinmacher.
Anyone in the community who would like to facilitate or help present a workshop in the Essential Life Skills for Teens
series next year should contact Steinmacher by email at samantha.steinmacher@oldsaybrookct.gov.