Graphics Created with Meaning in Mind

Raising a teen is no small feat, and raising a teen in foster care is truly a work of angels on earth. For this training, I did extensive research, watching TED Talks, reading scholarly articles, and interviewing veteran foster parents to learn exactly what works and what doesn’t work when raising a teen in foster care. This training centers around building a positive and healthy relationship with a teen.

For this training, I created a visual representation of a positive parenting strategy for dealing with behaviors of concern in a foster home. The participants will learn, discuss, and work through scenarios to practice using this new methodology to build a positive relationship with the teens in their lives. I utilized Canva to create the puzzle-piece look of the graphic and the provided company colors to complement the atmosphere in which this would be viewed. This simplistic representation helps the foster parent have a takeaway from the training while also being easy to remember and hopefully easy to implement.

Hands-on Activities for Meaningful Learning

Trainings can very easily become monotonous and repetitive without the right manuals to complement the content being taught. However, with the right components the information can be strategically introduced, practiced, and absorbed for later flawless execution.

For this activity, I had foster parents work as a group to create a list of behaviors that they currently see their teen demonstrating or behaviors that the foster parents fear may become an issue. Once the parents have exhausted all potential behaviors of concern they are then sent into small groups to sort behaviors into behaviors that need to be addressed immediately and behaviors that can be addressed at a later date. These answers would truly be different from person to person and family to family however the group activity would help to put parents’ fears, concerns, and current situations into perspective. This group discussion style allows parents to share without the fear of judgment allowing for a deeper synthesis of parenting strategies.

The discussion questions at the end help parents tie a pretty bow around their learning and allow them the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the content retrospectively.

Thoughtful Trainings Created with the Trainer and Student in Mind

We have all been in a learning environment where crickets are chirping in the background after the instructional leader asks a question and nobody wants to share or knows the right answer. It is so important to support our trainers in those moments and in the movements where we have to cut the participants off because the discussion could go on for days.

Within this training manual, I have nested “example scenarios” of teenage behaviors that could be an issue for their foster parents. This can help the trainer to keep the conversation going and also help the trainer to know when they can successfully move on because they have covered a vast majority of the content in mind.