The first person who presented—let’s call him A.—decided just to stand up and describe his ritual without any visual aids (he and his mentor both claimed to be “unable to draw,” and since content was my first priority, I saw no reason to object). He was the one I mentioned who was a bit anxious during the first session. Since he has trouble writing, his mentor wrote down all his ideas and just served to prompt him with a question here and there whenever he paused during his presentation. As A. started describing his ritual, I realized that he was describing a quest. He imagined a tribe of explorers and hunters in NYC. To gain membership, initiates—15 males and 15 females—had to be between the ages of 15 and 18. The boys have to dress all in dark blue sweats, sneakers, and tank tops. The girls are similarly garbed in black. They would be divided into two mixed-gender teams and instructed to search for two different pairs of 8-in rare blue diamond-encrusted stilettos. One pair would be hidden in Manhattan, the other in Brooklyn. Rather than competing with each other, each team would be assigned to one borough and they would have to face people outside the tribe who have been hired by the tribal leader to hurt or mislead them. Since the challenges involved include strangers trying to harm them physically or lie and mislead them away from the shoes, initiates have to have “mental strength” in addition to physical strength, in order to keep their wits about them and locate the shoes in three days, with the only hint being that they should look at any store that sells shoes. Each team must come back intact. Even if someone finds the shoes, it doesn’t count unless everyone returns alive. (A. did not articulate this explicitly as a value, but he obviously prizes loyalty, cooperation, and caring for your companions.) The individuals who do locate the shoes then get to be celebrated in a special ceremony. Although they do not get to keep the stilettos (they go to the leader’s daughter), they get a brand new set of clothes: the men are given a crown, a suit, and dress shoes; the women a dress, high heels, and a tiara. Then they get to feast at a banquet with all kinds of food (A. loves to cook and wants to be a chef), surrounded by bright lights and rainbow-colored balloons. After the celebration they are considered adults who are ready to go out on their own, get a job, and take on anything the world has to offer.
You might notice that very visual and narrative nature of this ritual. Indeed, when I later spoke to A.’s mentor, she said that he was very interested in film and that she helped ease his anxiety about the activity by telling him that he didn’t need to write or draw, but just envision everything in his head as if it were a movie. I hate to sound so hyperbolic about this, but that is world-class mentoring. She is the reason why A. was able to deal with his anxiety productively during the follow up session. As much as I’d love to take all the credit for how well the Tribal Rites of Passage workshop went, so much rested on the relationships already established between the adults and the young people in the group.
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Indexes of engagement « Minds On Fire · March 19, 2012 at 1:04 pm
[…] The second person who came in was the one of the youths who struggles with reading and writing. I’d been warned that one of his defense mechanisms is saying he’s “bored,” so I knew what to expect in the first session. Last Thursday I greeted him when he walked in and he smiled brightly and asked what we were going to do. I explained that they were all going to design their own tribal rite of passage, but that it would be a “no pressure zone,” meaning each young person could choose how they wanted to present their project (by drawing or writing their ideas out) and to what extent they wanted to lean on their mentors. The mentors are used to reading and writing things out for their partners, since the point of the group is to work on self development, not academic skills. The group facilitator and I discussed beforehand that we would let mentors present for the youth, if that is what they preferred. Again, he smiled at this. There was no trace of the anxiety that plagued him during the last session. There was a significantly visible difference in his demeanor. (I’ll return to this in a later post.) […]
A tribal ritual that hits close to home « Minds On Fire · March 20, 2012 at 2:56 pm
[…] A.’s ritual was infused with a spirit of adventure, B., the second young person to present, described a rite of […]
Rites of passage for the Costa Familia « Minds On Fire · March 21, 2012 at 9:33 am
[…] they might not have a woman in their life to cook for them. (This was A.’s mentor, and as I mentioned, A.’s passion is cooking.) C. held her ground, however, and we didn’t have time to […]
Play exposes the self « Minds On Fire · March 26, 2012 at 4:30 pm
[…] by allowing the imaginations and creativity of the youth to run free—their rituals could be as fantastic or pragmatic as they wish—I framed the activity as play, rather than as classroom work or an […]