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Working with Teens in Groups

As a psychologist and consultant, I frequently worked with more than three or four people at a time. For example, when I worked with juvenile delinquents, there were anywhere from 30-45 fellows at a time in my unit receiving group guidance that routinely led to decreased violence during my shifts. As a college counselor, I left my door open for people to “drop in and relax” unless a particular student had made an appointment for an individual session at that time. Other psychologists tended to keep their doors closed all the time, and thought it strange that I often had a room-full of students talking about college social and organizational issues in my office, while their contact was limited to individual sessions with only a handful of students a day.

When I directed a clinic at a university hospital for people who were suffering from long-term pain disorders and stress, I treated most of my patients in groups rather than individually. As Chief Psychologist for a Children & Youth Division of a State Psychiatric Institute, I started out the young children’s day with a group session in the classroom. Most had received diagnoses of Attention Deficit Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Before I arrived at the Institute, the children were placed routinely on medications for several months before they demonstrated improvement. I used group therapy in the classroom at the start of their school day to make their adjustment to the hospital easier. I used drumming, chanting, calming rituals, and social skill training and practice, so that within a week, the children learned to trust each other to self-correct if they had hurt someone’s feelings. I have made presentations at medical conferences on the use of ritual in therapeutic sessions to explain what I was doing.

My experience working in groups goes back to the late 1960s, when intensive sensitivity training was seen as a way to help people change their attitudes quickly. By the early 1970s, I had been influenced in graduate school by one of the most respected experts on group therapy theory, and begun conducting group therapy in a university institute. By the 1980s, I had advanced practitioner of group therapy certificates on my office wall. I wrote and co-wrote articles on using group approaches, as I worked with colleagues from the Journal for Specialists in Group Work. All this to say, from my perspective, working with groups of teens makes sense, and so I recommend group work for those who want to use this book to help Black teens develop. Here are some helpful hints.

Simple Group Themes

Merely getting teens together to talk can generate a lot of anxiety in a group. In the first few sessions, a lot of things have to happen. The teens have to learn what the group is all about: its goals, its objectives, its rules. They have to learn to trust the group leaders. They have to learn to discuss ideas courageously, and disagree without insulting others or putting them down, and find common ground in talking about the values they believe in.

It’s hard to get a group of teens together without getting a clown or two. Clowns let you know their identity quite quickly. This is also true for a group of people who are older than teenagers! Don’t worry about checking the clowns. The teens in the group will help keep them in line if they see the need. On the flip side, clowns create a lot of energy in the group. They bring humor. They bring insight. They ask questions that take the conversations to new levels. They’re like comics; they can be relied upon to say what the problem is when everyone else keeps silent. Don’t keep them out of your group. Bring in the clowns.

When teens discuss certain topics, like sexuality and male-female relationship issues especially, they don’t like to open themselves to criticism or disapproval from authority figures. So it’s important to maintain group confidentiality. Make sure the teens obtain parental consent before they join the group. Have the teens sign an agreement that what gets said in the group stays in the group and an understanding that they will respect each other’s right to safety in the group. No insults, no threats, no rudeness, and so forth. I always give teens a chance to make up the rules, so that they are invested in maintaining limits of proper composure. Those who are not members of the group, therefore, should not be present. So don’t bring in passers-by, parents, siblings, friends, spectators, pets, auditors, or others.

Each member of the group should have their own copy of Training Black Spirit, which has lots of topics involving ethics. Some topics are concerned with personal intellectual, physical and spiritual development. Others are related to family and friendship relationships, while others encourage the development of citizenship. If you plan to work with your teen group over several sessions, you might cover a couple of similar topics in each meeting. Give reading assignments at the end of each session, with someone from the group calling members to check off if they have finished the reading. This is a way of developing leadership and building camaraderie within the group.

Develop opening and closing rituals for your group. For example, if one of the group leaders is an elder, you may have that person call the group to order each session, and to ask the teens to focus their attention and energy onto the group’s objectives, and onto the needs of the those in the group. Another ritual teens enjoy is for the group to sing a particular song at the beginning and/or end of the meetings. As part of the opening ritual, it is important that group leaders begin each session with a recount of the objectives and the purpose of the meeting.

Depending on the size of the group, you may want to divide the group into sections so that everyone gets to contribute to small-group discussions. The larger the “small-group”, the more likely that a few participants will dominate the exchanges. It is important that everyone in the group feel included.

While we’re talking about size of the group, let me tell you what I sometimes do when I have a lot of people in front of me. Let’s say I have 50 participants. I have them count off by fours in order. All those who said “One” go to the left back corner of the room; the “Twos” go to the rear right corner; the “Threes” move to the front right corner, and so forth. This makes the groups’ size pretty equal, and also splits up people who came in together. Assign someone in each group to write down the main points they discussed in order to make a report to the large group.

Don’t be in a hurry, because the teens will pick that up and react. Spend five minutes with the opening, take a couple of minutes to get into groups, or a circle. Discussion for 20 minutes. Take 10 minutes for Reflections and Wrap-up. Use a minute to assign a topic for the next session, and perform your closing ritual. Take your time, but end each session at the allotted time. After a few sessions, you will see a rhythm evolving. I hope these pointers help you structure your Training Black Spirit discussion sessions. Relax and trust the process!

“If you wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

— Chloe Ardelia Wofford aka Toni Morrison