Youth as teachers

By Chris Trout | October 12, 2008

Largely because of you, the focus of my work has begun to expand from How do we effectively help youth to be resilient and successful? to What do resilient youth have to teach us about being resilient and successful? So often, you write me or come to me after presentations and say, "This will really impact my work with youth, but what I'm really thinking about is how it's going to change my life/marriage/parenting/goals/friendships..."

So let's ask them what they've learned. In last week's Strengths Ezine, I shared designer Stefan Sagmeister's project called "Things I have learned in my life so far." (A 4-minute video about the creative ways he communicates these ideas can be found here.)

I am inviting you to ask the young people in your life: "What have you learned in your life so far?" Give them the tools and guidance to create art, music, dance, rap, poetry, photography, video or any other expressive communication to share these ideas.

Then send them to me. I will create a web page just for these projects - to share them with and inspire the world. Who knows, maybe we'll go "viral" and inspire millions!