June 12th, 2019

        I think empowerment occurs in a specific context. The UEU (shared schooling unit) where I work offers a different context, puts value to it, and maybe it transforms it into virtue. My role and the one of my colleagues is to keep that possibility alive. I will try to explain it with an example:

The year before she started at the UEU, María (let’s call her that) attended high school. In her case, she didn’t go that much, and the few times she did, she would get expelled.

In her house they didn’t value education, there was a family issue and probably some instability and lack of educational

limits. There was no motivation to reach academic or professional success.  

She arrived at the UEU and when she gets nervous for an exercise that overflows her, she does what she’s used to: making a scene. Instead of taking her out of the classroom, however, we asked her what was wrong. We focused on her. María feels ignored and lonely, with a lot of emotions that she can’t control, and she feels in a hostile environment when someone focuses on her and asks how she is. She thinks she’s being attacked.  

Working in the UEU it’s about playing with a lot of things to make possible that these teenagers that didn’t fit in a school can be together in a classroom, with an established working dynamic. What’s very important is regularity, systemation and order; specially in working spaces.

They have lived in an unstable field for a big part of their lives, and as any other mammals, they are animals of habit, and they ask for stability. Giving it to them allows being a direct reference and, most importantly, allows a bond, and why not, some affection. At university they always tell you “no”: you can’t connect emotionally in an educational relationship. But c’mon, if you’re not a psychopath, if you spend two to three days a week with some people, you start making an emotional connection.

Another example: Two girls in a group were more talkative than usual while we were doing an exercise. They talked and distracted the group. I started telling them to stay quiet, until I had enough and said it loudly and in a manner worse than I used to. They stayed quiet and felt

sad. It hurt. They thought it was unfair and got mad, but they didn’t show it there, making a scene. They stayed quiet and after class we had a word.

They reproached me that I had yelled them, but it was more because of the tone, the offense, and the sadness, from the helplessness of injustice. I acknowledged that I was wrong, and so did they for being so talkative.

If this had been at the beginning of the course, without a bond between us, this wouldn’t have been possible. And instead of an experience of recognising  everybody’s mistakes and a collective sense of improvement, this would have been a fire of hate, frustration, and distance. I would have shouted at them, they would have felt attacked, and since 

they wouldn’t have a concept of authority, they would have raised their voices, and I would have had to expel them.

And what happens when you expel someone who you don’t have a bond with, when they have been already expelled from many other contexts, when the value of punishment is not clear because at home they haven’t

applied an equal sense of support and reward? That they feel attacked, rejected, in a hostile environment and unable to recognize doing anything wrong.

Otherwise, having spent some months together living many different situations, and having picked some appreciation and bond, made possible this positive exercise: the exercise of accepting mistakes, solving conflicts, and ensure wellbeing. Feeling like you belong.

You have to use common sense when you know the modus operandi of the group and the possibilities this can offer, choosing exercises and projects that could go well and turn into experiences of success. You have to make work rhythm oscillate, based on the day of the

group, and making sure not to push too much, but never make it stop.

Maybe they end up very tired and bored of having to make a two-page summary, but that in an unconscious part that may one day be conscious they are happy for being able to concentrate to do something that they don’t like, but being able to do it without giving up. Or maybe they are happy from the start for making a vertical garden or mural, that at the beginning regard as shit, but when they start doing it and they see that it starts taking shape, they feel it as their own and want to make it good. Because “it’s my project, mine and of the people like me”.