Planned Parenthood Teen Outreach Program: Shining a Light on Hope and Ambition

When kids have known little more than poverty, drive-by shootings, and the narrow confines of their inner city communities, how do you persuade them that life has rich possibilities?  How do you keep them from short-circuiting their potential by dropping out of school or getting pregnant or both? How do you give them hope and ambition?

One answer is Planned Parenthood’s Teen Outreach Program (TOP®), an opportunity for kids to learn healthy behaviors and life skills, find an adult they can confide in, and encounter opportunities they could never even imagine.  Each of these components plays a critical role, and combined they can be transformative.

At Miami Northwestern Senior High, serving one of South Florida’s poorest and most crime-plagued communities, TOP works within the required Freshman Experience class throughout the school year. Teaching the classes are professional educators, called facilitators, selected in part for their youth and their ability to inspire the trust of their students.  Their mandate is to be non-judgmental, to listen and be open to whatever the students say.   

With honesty and candor each facilitator guides discussions of sensitive, sometimes controversial subjects including sexuality, healthy vs. unhealthy relationships, effective communication, goal setting, decision making, health and hygiene, and more. Lessons are presented creatively, with videos, outside speakers, role playing and other activities.  Each session includes time to reflect on what the students have learned and an opportunity to spell out what they’ve learned in writing.

On one recent Wednesday, the focus was personal values. Class began with the ninth graders working to distinguish between their genuinely held beliefs and messages they receive from family, peers, media, church, and neighborhood.  Do they really believe, that boys are not attracted to smart girls?  That money does not make you happy?  That you can’t love someone else until you love yourself? That boys manipulate you so that you will submit to sex?  

After a discussion of the validity of these messages, it was time to put their money – play money – where their values were, as the facilitators held a “values auction.” Each student received $500 that she could use to buy the values she most highly prized. The bidding was fast and furious as travel, college education, physical fitness, true love, freedom from HIV and STDs and other valued aspects of life came up on the auction block. 

Why did you feel excited about the value you bought, the facilitator asked when the auction was over.  In the ensuing discussion, the students acknowledged that they were willing to pay more for some values than for others, and they came to identify the values that were important to them.  Before the class ended, they spent a few minutes mapping out how they could begin to live their values – working to get good grades, hanging around with the right crowd, staying away from gangs.

In addition to the once-weekly classes, the students with their facilitators complete at least 20 hours of community service.  They research possibilities, identify a need, help design activities and then choose which ones they will participate in. Afterwards they analyze the experience – what happened during the project, the meaning it has, and how might they apply this experience in the future.

Miami Northwestern students attend an anti-bullying summit

The kids have walked for domestic violence and breast cancer awareness, read to younger children, participated in a park clean-up. They have painted a mural for the school, conducted an anti-bullying campaign, made hygiene kits for residents of homeless shelters, shot a film.  Through these project, they venture into unfamiliar environments to help people with unfamiliar needs. They collaborate and cooperate with each other, learn new skills and see that their effort has an impact.  Suddenly, community service takes on a whole new meaning.  Whereas previously community service was what a judge ordered if they got in trouble with the law, they now come to see it as taking ownership of and responsibility for the world around them:  their school, their neighborhood, the larger community.

The program adopted and implemented by Planned Parenthood of South East and North Florida in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties comes from the Wyman Center in St. Louis, MO. Now over 30-years old, this nationally replicated program is found to reduce risk of school suspension by 56%, course failure by 60% and pregnancy by 53%. 

Painting a mural at Miami Northwestern

These numbers are evidence based.  Nevertheless a skeptic might reasonably ask:  Given the temptations outside of school, how can this program reduce truancy?  With all the fears and frustrations found in impoverished communities, how can this program discourage delinquent activity?  Given adolescent peer pressure, the boyfriend who says, ‘Make a baby for me,’ the promise of unconditional love, the fantasy of being special and important, how can this program reduce the likelihood that participants will not become pregnant?

Again, each aspect of the program contributes to the answer.     Whereas many of the students are already sexually active, it is in this class that they first separate fact from myth and learn about how women really get pregnant.  They also learn how easy it is to get HIV or an STD, and they are put off. Combine this lesson with others on respect, self-respect, and goal setting, and the instruction is powerful.

Reinforcing the classroom lessons are the community service projects and special events, which open the students’ eyes to new, exciting experiences and opportunities. As the students identify needs, plan projects, and execute their plans, they develop skills, gain a new sense of themselves and what they can accomplish. In turn, ambition, interest in education, and academic achievement all improve.  Suddenly, they see staying in school as a ticket to this tantalizing future.  Getting in trouble with the law appears as an impediment, as does having a baby.  

"Sock It to Breast Cancer

Perhaps the most critical ingredient in the TOP program is the trusted adult.  Although the facilitators are with the students in class only one hour a week, they spend abundant informal time together on the service projects and going to community events. They are available full time in school throughout the academic year. And, when necessary, they give the kids their cell numbers so they can to call or text at night and on weekends.

“The process of building trust with this program is so unique,” said teacher Denise Simmons.    It begins with her non-judgmental approach to sensitive subjects and difficult questions in class.  It continues outside of class with an open invitation to discuss anything and everything, which usually means relationships, drugs, marriage and sex.

 “I don’t talk about these things with my parents,” said ninth grader Keshawnna, who values being able to confide in her TOP facilitator.

Knowing that the facilitators will be honest, thoughtful and candid, the kids share intimate secrets and secret problems. In one instance, teacher Twyla Russell encountered a student who was especially aggressive and outspoken.  In time and after much conversation, Twyla learned the girl had nine siblings, was left to fend for herself most of the time, and felt unloved and resentful.  She needed shoes for ROTC, and Twyla worked with school resources to get them for her.  More important, she needed parenting.  More conversation, and arrangements were made for the girl to live with her godparents, where she received the guidance and attention she needed. With this support, her behavior and grades improved.

In another instance, a student appeared to be overreacting to a class discussion on rape.  In speaking with the girl, Denise learned that she had been raped by her uncle and was now feeling guilty because this man had begun raping his daughter.  Denise notified the proper authorities, the girl is receiving trauma counseling, and now she sees how she can help others.

At Miami Northwestern Senior High, four full-time facilitators teach 10 classes, with no more than 25 students per facilitator.  In addition TOP operates as a once weekly extracurricular middle school activity at two Miami Northwestern feeder schools, Brownsville Middle School and Charles Drew K-8, where two facilitators run both groups. A program director rounds out the staff. All told an estimated 450 Miami-Dade County students experience this extraordinary program, now in its seventh year. 

For four years TOP has also been operating in Palm Beach County, where a staff of seven runs the program ad 10 schools serving 650 students. Budget in Palm Beach County is $400,000 and derives from several national and local sources.

In Miami-Dade, the $300,000 budget comes principally from the Hiram Brown Foundation. With additional funds Planned Parenthood could launch this invaluable program at additional schools.

Teen Outreach Program

Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida

7900 NW 27 Avenue,
Miami, FL 33147
P: 789-505-4866   F: 786-517-6138

christina.wright@ppsenfl.org

www.ppsenfl.org