Taffy Bowes Looks Back on 26 Years Guiding Madison's Youth
Taffy Bowes, who has been running programs at Madison Youth & Family Services (MYFS) for 26 years and will retire at the end of this month, may have discovered the fountain of youth.
“I love high school kids,” she says. “They were put on the planet to stretch, challenge, entertain—all those things. They’re just an amazing population, and the kids that I’ve worked with here have just been real gifts.
“Some of them have challenged me to think in a wider framework; some of them have challenged me to be able to just be more adept at explaining things,” she continues. “I just really love working with them, and the programs that I work with give me an opportunity to really see the best of who that particular kid is being at that point in his or her life, whether he or she is struggling or having the best year ever or whatever.”
Taffy says MYFS’s most recognized program is Peer Advocates.
“It’s what’s called a positive youth development program, and the whole theory of positive youth development is based in the idea that if you give kids a chance to learn more about themselves and then you train them in a skill, give them an opportunity to utilize that skill, and then give them feedback on how they’re doing, they’re a whole lot more apt to feel good about themselves, make healthier decisions, et cetera.”
Peer Advocates is comprised of students who genuinely want to help their peers while learning a lot about themselves in the process.
Taffy says, “We take kids who apply, because they’re interested. We train them in cross-age groups, hopefully pulling kids out of different friendship groups to train together so they have to stretch outside their comfort zone. We give them five sessions in really looking at themselves—‘How did you get to be you and not somebody else?’—and then we give them training in a specific kind of listening and a lot of information on how to intervene if they’re concerned about a friend or acquaintance. We help them find out the resources they should go to, et cetera. We do four trainings a year of 15 kids each, so we’re probably training about 60 kids a year.”
Taffy says that over her 20-plus years at the agency, the number of kids who have come to her or one of the other MYFS staff members out of concern for a peer is “staggering.”
“Kids say, ‘I’m worried about someone because I think that they have problems with food,’ or ‘I’m worried about someone because they’re really depressed,’ or ‘I’m worried about someone because he or she has said, “I hate my life and I don’t think it’s worth it,’” she explains, adding, “Those things are all confidential, but the numbers are pretty staggering in terms of how, once kids are trained to say, ‘It’s okay to flag something, and here’s somebody you can tell,’ they’ll come forward.”
Side-by-Side
Taffy considers herself incredibly lucky to have had this job.
“To me it’s such an amazing gift to actually kind of walk beside a kid, in a sense, as they go through high school,” she says, “because they come into high school kind of like emotional toddlers in a way, not really clear on who they are, just getting to that stage. By the time they’re ready to graduate, they’re more formed in who they’re going to be as they grow older. It’s just so amazing to be part of that journey with them.”
Thanks to their youthful energy and desire to grab life by the horns, teens are Taffy’s “favorite population on the planet.”
She says, “They’re fun, they’re brilliant, they’re great—they have such insight and they want to help. Given an opportunity to help someone, I think 9,000 percent of high school kids would leap at the opportunity. They really, really want to be of help, be agents in the world, make things change, make things better.”
Taffy facilitates a few other teen-centered MYFS groups as well, including a girls’ group called WOW (Women of the World) that meets at Daniel Hand High School (DHHS); a gay-straight alliance called Genders and Sexualities Program (GASP), which also meets at DHHS; and a program called Perspectives, which is an “interfaith, interracial group of kids who discuss challenging topics and create programs, especially on hate language, that they present to 7th graders,” Taffy says.
“The programs that I have run at MYFS are all aimed at helping kids know themselves better, be more open to the differences among us humans, and more accepting of and open to those differences, more skilled in listening to and being available to each other, and more apt to make healthy decisions for themselves. The programs all give kids an opportunity to listen to each other and to stretch their awareness.”
Taffy also co-teaches a five-session Violence Reduction curriculum in all of the Junior Health classes at DHHS, where she has office hours two days a week. She carries a small counseling case load as well, and will remain on the clinical staff through early June.
Taffy’s Own Journey
Taffy grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, and her parents were also secondary education teachers. She received her bachelor of science in foreign service from Georgetown University, a master’s of arts in education from Goddard College, and a master’s of arts in religion from Yale University Divinity School. She is a licensed professional counselor with almost 20 years of experience.
Before taking over her role at MYFS, Taffy taught in both Madison and New Haven. She also has been a potter and a painter, run a women’s center, written for a newspaper, done clothing alterations, and cut hair.
Taffy and her husband, Jay, began dating as sophomores at Georgetown University and have been married for almost 49 years. They have three grown children who are scattered about the country.
“I like each of them immensely as well as love them, and they have married good and interesting people whom I also like and love. It’s great to be able to say that about in-laws,” Taffy says.
Their daughter Katie Bowes Balestracci lives in Guilford with her husband, Chris, and their sons, Mike and Brendan, who both attend Guilford High School. Their daughter Suzy Bowes Hannen lives in Colorado with her husband, Brian, and her daughter, Zoey. Their son, John Bowes, lives in Kentucky with his wife, Sarah, and their daughters, Callie and Reese.
Jay is also passionate about helping young people. He founded St. Martin de Porres Academy in New Haven, a middle school for grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 that works with “kids who would otherwise slip through the cracks,” Taffy says. “It’s a pretty phenomenal institution.”
Her impending retirement will free up time in Taffy and Jay’s schedule to visit their far-flung children and spend more time with their nearby daughter and her family—but don’t expect her to drop completely off the radar.
“I have to do something and I want to stay connected with kids in some way if that’s possible,” she says. “I have loved this job. I feel like not everybody gets to have a job that is exactly what they would do if they were given time to figure out what they wanted to do, and I have had that. I’ve gotten to hang out with high school kids, watch them grow and develop, and just be, quite frankly, entertained at times.”
To nominate someone for Person of the Week, email Melissa at m.babcock@shorepublishing.com.