Teen Life Skills Program

Abstract

This life skills program is a process , which prepares young people to meet the challenges of adolescence and adulthood through a coordinated progressive series of activities , which help them to become relationship orient . It requires creating opportunities and providing support

Opportunities for young people to get their developmental needs -love meaning , respect , power and belonging

Opportunities to belong without joining a gang , to experience power without a weapon , to make an impact without making a bomb and to leave a mark without tagging a building

Support that recognizes and

respects the whole person inside each youth .This program will provide tools to assist youth to learn how to build relationships and understand their self worth

The goal of the present is to discuss the important concepts and theories in the sphere of social systems knowledge applied to the human services field . The researcher stands on the point of a school counselor at an alternative high school , working with at-risk youth aged 16-21

Nowadays , young people in the USA are involved in the cases of delinquency , violence , substance abuse , sexually transmitted diseases (STDs , and premature pregnancy and parenthood , as well as school-related problem behaviors (any abusive or violent , disruptive behavior that results in disciplinary punishment ) intervening with effective future-oriented learning (Ketterlinus et al , 1994 , pp . 17 21 . Knop et al (2001 after Roberts , 1996 ) observed contemporary youths experiencing problems when planning for the further social activities because of the high level of life stress , unstable environments and the erosion of adolescents ' familial and social support networks (after Hamburg , 1997

. 38

Taking into account the constant processes of change affecting the US school system , the current social system in regard to the high school adolescents seems to be essentially unstable and provocative . The same may be said about the smaller systemic units (adolescents ) and the major units (such as family , neighborhood and school communities , as well as the American modern society in general . Various programs are designed to help the young people in their personal and professional promotion eliminating risk-taking behavioral patterns and victimization , achieving positive life outcomes and social stability

This seeks to establish theoretical framework for describing the high school adolescents ' context as a social system . Two major theoretical approaches (holistic and atomistic viewpoints ) are discussed here to pave the road to analyzing interrelations within a social system affecting the youngsters aged 16-21 . Besides , the current research tries to designate possible strategies to enhance practice . The motif for strategic planning is dictated by the need to apply social systems theory to the real environment in to motivate and facilitate positive breakthrough

First , it makes sense to discuss the key characteristics of an alternative high school environment altogether with its elements . It is argued here that this is a social system or , better say , community in terms of strong emotive bounds within it . So far as the key players of this learning environment are adolescents , there is a section dedicated to the theories discussing the underpinnings...