The Place To Be Is Where You Are

Note: The words above are engraved in a wooden plaque hanging over the door to the forge on Penikese Island.

There is a certain quality to Penikese Island, something timeless and immutable that can get to even the most willful and stubborn among us. A Penikese sage once pointed out that most new students and staff start out intending to run the show but inevitably come away having been changed by Penikese rather than the other way around. Some cases are tougher and take longer than others, but in the end the island almost always has its way.

For this person, every stint on the island is a chance to re-experience Penikese’s transformative powers and learn its lessons anew. My preparations begin well before setting foot on the island as I dig out and pack up my island-only gear, clear my schedule of commitments and let people know I’ll be away, and emotionally steeling myself for the exhausting work that lays ahead.

Upon arrival, most shifts have an unpacking and settling down routine, in part necessitated by the students who need to adjust to a new set of parents to live with for the next five days. It is quite an adjustment for staff, too, transported by boat from the modern comfort of office, home and family bosom where gratification is but a finger-click away to an 1850s farmhouse and school, stuck on an island crammed with wild and crazy teenage boys.

I can take particularly long to adjust. My mind tends to be a ten-ring circus anyway, but at least on dry land I have the din and distraction of the outside world to help drown out the noise inside. The relative solitude and simplicity of Penikese can make those inner voices suddenly seem VERY, VERY LOUD. As a result I tend to be a tad wound up when I first arrive, scanning for things to stress about, working too hard, trying to get too much done all at once, and in general taking things way too seriously. Over the years this has not escaped the notice of others. Once a student turned to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, drawing the last word out like an exhaled breath, “Toby, chill out, man, you need to relaaaax!”

So what can you do? Not much but to try and go with the island flow. At first, almost everyone focuses on time passing, but somewhere along the way something changes and they find themselves more in the moment than trying to get past it. This is the point when you find yourself gazing out the kitchen window noticing how the wind blowing across the grass on Tubbs Point makes it look alive, or a student who two weeks ago couldn’t have hated being on Penikese more now notices with amusement the guinea hen squawking at the rising moon.

Somehow, all those things that seemed such a big deal at the beginning of the shift now seem less so. Just for today, you do what needs to be done and set the rest aside to take care of in its own time. With the students you find yourself letting go of minor battles and accepting their unpredictability; they are teenagers after all. By shift’s end you are utterly exhausted but in a different place, reminded yet again that all your efforts to be in control can never change the fact that there is no better place to be - in fact no other place that you can be - than where you are right now.

Sizzle Please (But Hold The Steak): Remembering A 1997 Presentation on Youth Violence

Every week the Boston Sunday Globe runs a column titled Q&A that features a brief interview with the author(s) of a recent publication. This week's subject was "The Spirit Level," link here, researched and written by two British social scientists in which they examine the underlying socio-economic reasons for a broad number of social ills from drug addiction to violence. 


Through their research the authors found the strongest correlations to be between not how poor a particular country is or how poor its poorest people are, but the gap between its richest and poorest. The greater the gap, the wider the prevalence and severity of these social markers. 


In Q&A the authors state that they are merely pointing out their findings and disclaim any political axe to grind. All that is well and good with us. We strive to be apolitical in our blogging, too. We will say, however, that this is not the first time we have heard of this correlation between wealth disparity and violence. A quick and tangentially related story follows:

In the mid-1990s we attended a symposium on youth violence in Boston. The keynote speaker was a well-known local criminologist who makes frequent media appearances whenever something particularly awful happens. Predictably, the keynote ascended the podium in tweedy professorial air and proceeded to decry the media’s sensationalization of violence while spinning lurid tales of violent crime and referencing his expertise on same for a packed and spellbound house of therapists and social workers.

After that exercise in hypocrisy and self-promotion and a long day's worth of workshops, the conference concluded with a closing presentation by Dr. James Gilligan, who was presenting findings from his book, "Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic." In contrast to the keynote, Gilligan put on dignified and scholarly affair in which he presented slides and graphs establishing the same link between violence and the gap between rich and poor as the book featured in this week's Q&A. 

If they were to be believed, the most striking findings presented by Gilligan were those illustrating how violent crime in America sharply increased with a sudden shift in wealth that began in the early 1980s. Gilligan pointed out other factors such as the appearance of crack cocaine in the inner cities around that same time (once only a boutique drug, crack made cocaine affordable to everyone), and then discussed his work and observations with violent offenders in the prisons. There among them he found a universal sense of worthlessness, powerlessness and not-mattering to others, people who had suffered deaths of the self and soul by countless daily cuts to the point of violent despair.  

Not excusing the horrible things these people had done (we don't, either), Gilligan couldn't help but point out that for these rock bottom losers in our winner-take-all economy, holding a gun to someone's head was the only way possible to feel that they had, at least for that moment, the undivided attention and respect of the person at the other end of the barrel. Could any of us, he asked, imagine living our lives in this way, so utterly stripped of self-worth, dignity and control that we would resort to possibly killing someone just to get a momentary sense of something that the rest of us take for granted every day? 

Though far less colorful and demonstrative in his presentation style that the keynote's talking head, Gilligan nevertheless gave quite a riveting talk, one that still informs our work years later. Gilligan opened our eyes a bit wider to give us a better perspective of life in their shoes. Rather than from relative security and entitlement, those we work with experience life and its societal institutions solely from a short-end, down, judged and disrespected point of view, and us as agents of this same tilted system. Effective interventions and treatment, even if stringent, must begin with at least some modicum of compassion and respect for the dignity of others, even if we abhor and censure what they have done. To conduct yourself and treatment otherwise is to only add yet another cut and doom any chances for successful treatment - and all it might effect.

If you couldn't tell by now, Gilligan had us at hello, but as far as the other people attending the conference, most had long since said goodbye. That auditorium, once so packed at the beginning of the day, was virtually empty at its end. It seems even us counselors and therapists have our appetite for sizzle and can be quick to pass on substance. Over a decade later, we are still grateful to have stuck around for Dr. Gilligan's main meal.

Snowmageddon averted

Forecasts for this week's snowstorm brought out the media's hyperbolic best as TV weathermen and women called for everything from a snowicaine to -  dramatic pause - snowmageddon. Geez, wouldn't a blizzard have been bad enough? 

Out on Penikese Island, staff and students monitored the marine radio, secured the area, and then spent the night bedded down toasty and warm inside while the wind howled and  the house shuddered and groaned.


When everybody woke the next morning they found about six inches of snow on the ground, the chickens and guinea hen huddled in the barn, and the anemometer showing maximum gusts of 50 miles per hour the night before.


All in all not so big a deal, so after a quick coffee and hot chocolate, what did everyone do? They went sledding, of course.

2010 NATSAP Conference in San Diego

We just got back from attending the annual conference of the National Association for Therapeutic Schools and Programs  (link here for association information), this year held at the Torrey Pines Hilton in San Diego. As it does every year, this conference brought together representatives from hundreds of schools serving troubled children from across the country, along with educational consultants and treatment professionals of every stripe. 

Each year we discover once again just how much more there is to learn about this business and its best practices of helping kids and their families, and each year we return with batteries and passion recharged to take another run at this uphill but worthy mission, easier to do knowing that there are so many other extraordinary people doing likewise. 

Yes, the conference involved a lot of work making connections, doing marketing and sales and strapping on the learning cap, but we did manage to get away one brilliantly sunny afternoon for a hike through the nearby state park and down to the edge of the sea on the country's other side.  

Note to NATSAP: we hereby submit this request for next year's conference to be in San Francisco, near to our former Left Coast home and college alma mater in Santa Cruz! Until the next time, here are a few pictures to hold you in thrall.