Speaking to a room full of young children and/or teenagers and engaging them through a workshop can be both fun and challenging at the same time. If you’re considering youth worker training, and are hoping to lead youth workshops in your career, you will need to learn how best to entertain your young audience and keep them fully engaged — whether through speaking with them, engaging them in activities, or any other method you choose.
If you love working with children and think this career path might be right for you, read on to learn some of the ways you can lead youth workshops and ensure a gratifying experience for you and all others involved.
Know How Best to Discuss Your Topic with Young People
Leading a youth workshop will require you to have clear goals in mind. You might teach young listeners about important life skills, such as teamwork or problem-solving, or you could lead a workshop that’s tied to school subjects, like arts and crafts, computer skills, or drama. Regardless, you’ll need to effectively organize your ideas beforehand, and writing an agenda of talking points could be a good way of doing this.
Additionally, since you will be speaking to children and adolescents, you will need to avoid complex, overly technical explanations of your subject matter and explain topics in terms young people will understand. Either way, you’ll want to be sure about how best to present your workshop, and what you want the outcome to be.
Keep kids engaged during a workshop by having them participate in group activities
Get Kids Involved and Engaged
Youth workshops are most successful when there’s involvement and active participation from everyone, so be sure to prepare activities, group exercises, and other ways your young participants can engage with the workshop to keep things fresh and exciting.
You can split your young participants into individual groups and have them work on activities as a team. You may want to walk around the room and see how things are going, before asking for each group to tell you what resulted from their exercise once it ends. You can openly invite questions from the children and encourage open discussion among everyone during the workshop’s conclusion to gauge how they enjoyed it, and what they learned. Make sure they’re able to participate and freely exchange ideas, so that it can be a fun and fulfilling experience for all.
Be enthusiastic and communicate well with children in your workshop
Apply the Skills You Learn in Child and Youth Worker Training
If you’re studying to become a child and youth worker, you will learn how to cultivate practical skills such as interpersonal communication and patience, and how best to use them with young people. For example, KLC College’s Child and Youth Worker program includes a practicum/work placement, where students take what they’ve learned and apply it to a practical environment. This can be through a paid position or as a volunteer, and can be done either during their studies, or as their program is ending. It can also lead to employment opportunities like working in education, social service agencies, or children’s mental health facilities.
A youth workshop is an environment where your communication skills can truly come in handy, and can be a great way to showcase what you’ve learned from your child and youth worker training in a fun, relaxed setting. Be outgoing, energetic, open and empathetic to the children’s ideas and opinions, and receptive to questions. You’re hoping these children can take something positive and informative out of the workshop, so enthusiasm is the key to success!
Do you want to enroll in a child youth worker college program?
Contact KLC College for more info!