C of Courage #2

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A supplement to the book Reclaiming Youth at
Risk Our Hope for the Future

• By
• Larry Brendtro
• Martin Brokenleg
• Steve Van Bockern
• Created by Reclaiming Youth International
• Lennox, South Dakota
• www.reclaiming.com
• 605 647 5235
• Copyright, 2009

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(No Transcript)
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In 1990, three friends and colleagues teaching at
Augustana College in Sioux Falls South Dakota
wrote a book titled Reclaiming Youth at Risk
Our Hope for the Future.
4
Larry is a psychologist. He was President of
Starr Commonwealth in Albion Michigan, a
residential school and treatment facility for
youth before he became the education department
chair of Augustana College. Retired from that
position, Larry writes, speaks and consults
internationally. He is the President of Circle
of Courage Inc.
5
Martin is a sociologist. Martin, a Lakota, was
born on the Rosebud Reservation in western South
Dakota. Currently, he is an administrator and
teacher at the Vancouver School of Theology,
Vancouver British Columbia. He expects to retire
from that position in 2009.
6
Steve teaches at Augustana College in the
education department. He acts as the President
of Reclaiming Youth International, a not-for
profit organization whose work is to better equip
adults to meet the needs of at risk youth.
7
The book describes in detail the philosophical
model called the Circle of Courage. This model
has been shared in over 23 countries. It is
being used as the unifying theme for the care of
children in schools, juvenile justice,
residential treatment and social service
facilities.

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Desmond Tutu

• It is a very,
• short-sided policy
• if we fail to redeem
• and salvage our most
• needy young people.

The book is in its second printing. The forward
was written by South African Archbishop Desmond
Tutu.
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The Circle of Courage suggests four key needs or
values that humans must have met in order to live
as humans. Those needs are belonging, mastery,
independence and generosity. When these needs
are met, humans generally do pretty well. This
model blends contemporary research, traditional
native ideas about raising children and the
practice wisdom of youth work pioneers and the
authors.
10
The authors use the medicine wheel or sacred
hoop as a way to represent the key needs. This
particular medicine wheel was created by George
Bluebird. It has been trademarked and can be
used with permission.
11
The circle itself is often considered the perfect
geometric shape. It has no beginning. It has no
end. Each point on the circle is as important as
the others. If any point on the circle is
missing, it stops being a circle. No point on
the circle is higher or lower than another point.
What happens to one part of the circle effects
the whole.
It is suggested that the medicine wheel has a
relatively recent beginning although the concept
of circle has always been part of indigenous
thinking. Wayne Starboy, a Lakota, suggests that
it was native people in what is now called Canada
who first decorated the wagon wheels from the
pioneers broken Conestoga wagons.
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Living outside, you pay attention to the
roundness of the sun, moon and other celestial
bodies. You notice the movement of things in
circles, dust storms, and water whirlpools. Even
the seasons seem to go in circles. There is a
never ending repetition of patterns that can best
be expressed as circles.
13
The colors represent many things according to
Martin Brokenleg. For some, they speak of the
races of the world. For others, the colors
represent the seasons of our lives or the seasons
of the year or the four directions.
The number four is a significant number in many
native cultures. The four directions and the
four seasons are given as reasons for this.
In the center of the circle, some indigenous
people place a turtle. Standing in the center of
the circle, if you can turn to all directions and
find those needs have been met in your life, you
are living as a human being is meant to live.
The center of the circle is a good place to be.
But for humans, it seems we are always moving in
and out of the center of the circle. That can
make life difficult.
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Dont confuse needs with wants. Humans want
all sorts of things that dont necessarily
contribute in good ways to their being human.
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Generosity
Belonging
Independence
Mastery
The four needs are common to all humans. People
need to be connected or belong to others. We
need to experience mastery or competence in our
lives. We need the power that is part of
independence in order to take responsibility for
our lives. We need purpose or generosity that
gives us a sense of living beyond ourselves. If
we dont have our needs met we are dis-couraged.
Belonging, mastery, independence and generosity
can be thought of as the birthrights of all
children. Children are hard wired to have
these needs met. Unmet, we are not as we are
meant to be.
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Our children at risk are our children who have
not had their needs met. They are not broken
children but their lives have been broken or
disconnected from what is necessary
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Our work in one sense is to make sure the needs
of all our children are met.
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Tribal communities met the needs of their
children. They had developed elaborate
democratic institutions, governance systems,
family life and models of education that worked
well for children. It can be argued that these
primitive peoples actually were more advanced
than those from more so called civilized
societies that often imposed obedience training
systems on Indian children..
19
European social anthropologists often described
the Indian children as radiantly happy,
courageous and highly respectful of their elders.
Hupa Tribal Children (1901)
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In contrast, modern society produces millions of
children of discouragement.
21
Martin Brokenlegs father was captured by the
boarding school staff who traveled the
reservations each fall to find students for their
schools. Generations of Indian people were
parented artificially by these punitive systems.
Children were beaten if they spoke their first
language. When he was six, Greg, now 56, recalls
how the 30 children in his sleeping room cried
for three months after they were taken to the
school. After that, there was silence. The
children had learned that crying did not get the
help they needed.
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There are great similarities between indigenous
ideas of education and ideas expressed by
respected education reformers those on the
cutting edge of best practice. Behavioral
scientists are now discovering principles that
tribal peoples have known for thousands of
years. Martin Brokenleg
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Maria Montessori, Italys first female physician,
was one of those cutting edge reformers. She
created schools for disadvantaged youth. She
wrote passionately about the need to build inner
discipline.
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Janusz Korczak championed the rights of Jewish
orphan children. He died with some of his
students in the gas chambers of Treblinka. He
proclaimed the childs right to respect
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John Dewey, the American education pioneer of
progressive education saw schools as miniature
democratic schools that encourage teachers and
students together to pose and solve problems.
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Anton Makarenko after the Russian Revolution
brought street delinquents into self-governing
colonies where youth became leaders of youth
councils.
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Johann Pestallozzi declared that love, not
teaching, was the essence of education.
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In his classic book Wayward Youth, (1935)
Austrian August Aichorn argued that relationship
was at the heart of the re-education process.
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The wisdom of indigenous peoples understanding
of education and early pioneers is validated by
modern psychological research.
30
Stanley Coopersmith in his highly acclaimed The
Antecedents of Self-Esteem (1967) concluded that
childhood self-esteem is based on four things
1. Significance is a product of being nurtured in
environments where everyone is treated as a
relative. This fosters a sense of belonging.
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2. Competence is encouraged and nurtured through
opportunities to experience success of self and
others. This fosters a sense of mastery.
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3. Power is fostered through guidance without
coercion. Young children learn to make wise
decisions. Doing so, they foster the sense of
responsible independence.
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Coopersmith found that to feel good about
ourselves we need to believe we have virtue (4).
Learning to give to others, to extend our lives
beyond ourselves is generosity, the preeminent
value or virtue in indigenous thinking.
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Circle of Courage
GENEROSITY INDEPENDENCE BELONGING MASTERY
Research Foundations

• The Circle of Courage
• Belonging
• Opportunity to establish trusting connections
• Mastery
• Opportunity to solve problems and meet goals
• Independence
• Opportunity to build self control and
  responsibility
• Generosity
• Opportunity to show respect and concern

Self-Worth Research Significance The individual
believes I am appreciated. Competence The
individual believes I can solve
problems. Power The individual believes I set
my life pathway. Virtue The individual believes
My life has purpose.
Resilience Research Attachment Motivation to
affiliate and form social bonds Achievement Motiv
ation to work hard and attain excellence Autonomy
Motivation to manage self and exert
influence Altruism Motivation to help and be of
service to others
The Circle of Courage needs or
values surface in studies on resiliency and
self-worth.
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John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth were early
pioneers in the study of attachment.
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Robert White, interested in achievement, coined
the term competence motivation. We are wired
to solve problems, understand, seek answers and
explore.
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We are born wanting to exert our will. Often
times adults dont know what to do with this
independence or sense of autonomy. Self-efficacy
is a good thing.
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Diane Hedins research in altruism shows that
when children help others achievement increases,
they increase their problem solving abilities,
develop more complex patterns of thinking and
they become more motivated.
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Peter Benson Search Institute
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Peter Benson, of the Search Institute has
surveyed hundreds of thousands of young people to
determine how many of the 40 identified
developmental assets are part of their lives.
External assets include the categories of support
from adults, empowerment, boundaries and
expectations and constructive use of time. The
internal assets include commitment to learning,
positive values, social competence and positive
identity.
The Search Institute has found that the more
assets that are part of a young persons life, the
less likely they are to engage in harmful
behavior like alcohol use or early sex. On the
other hand, the more assets, the more likely the
child will experience school success and maintain
a healthy life style.
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Sybil Wolin
Ruth Smith
Bonnie Benard
Those who study resiliency or the ability to
bounce back from adversity suggest attachment,
achievement, autonomy and altruism as keys.
Bonnie Benard, Steve and Sybil Wolin, Ruth Smith
and Emmy Werner are a few of the many who point
to the strengths of the human spirit as a way to
overcome difficult odds.
Emmy Werner
Steven Wolin
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The Circle of Courage captures the essence of
resiliency and asset development.
Once the needs of belonging, mastery,
independence and generosity are given primacy,
they become revolutionary qualities.
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Broken Circle
Selfishness
Alienation
Helplessness
Failure
Few would suggest that kids need alienation,
failure, helplessness and narcissistic
selfishness the anti-needs of belonging,
mastery, independence and generosity. Yet our
modern culture seems to push values that are not
in harmony with who we are as human beings.
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Urie Bronfenbrenner suggested hyperindividualism
breeds an ecology of alienation (Bronfenbrenner,
1986).
45
Urie Bronfenbrenner suggested hyperindividualism
breeds an ecology of alienation (Bronfenbrenner,
1986).
46
There is nothing wrong with competition but an
overemphasis of winning and winners in our
schools ensures there will be losers steeped in
failure.
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Power through domination creates helplessness for
those subjugated.
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A culture that equates worth with wealth and
material possessions provides its young a
sanction for selfishness.
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Our schools, which reflect the larger society,
often unknowingly and unthoughtfully become mired
in hundreds of years of thinking that is
punitive, commanding and factory like. Schools,
without malice of intention, can be places of
anti-belonging, anti-mastery, anti-independence
and anti-generosity. These abstracts ideas can
be operationalized by comments spoken - with a
degree of hyperbole - about schools
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• Anti-belonging (alienation)
• Report to the office warning signs
• Make guardians and students sign discipline
  policy statements as a first priority
• Emphasize all forms of exclusion (OSS and ISS) as
  the primary discipline policy
• Be businesslike. Dont get entangled in
  unprofessional relationships
• Create segregated alternative settings to isolate
  the trouble makers
• Build large schools
• Ring bells every 50 minutes to mix 2000 kids in
  narrow hallways
• Hire security guards and have metal detectors at
  every door
• Put only the best student work from the best
  students on the bulletin boards

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• Anti-mastery (failure)
• Manage kids through grades
• Equate successful teaching with a good bell curve
• Organize instruction around separate and
  specialized subjects
• Expect youth to do well in all school activities
  all the time
• Dont allow failure
• Switch to a different group of students each
  period, each quarter, or most certainly every
  year
• Link mastery with attendance (12 unexcused
  absences failure of the subject material)
• Emphasize competitive learning and eliminate
  individualized and cooperative learning
• Lecture and use lots of worksheets
• Ignore sleep and nutrition issues as they relate
  to learning
•  

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• Anti-independence (learned helplessness)
• Create token or artificial student government
  councils
• Announce trouble makers over the intercom system
• Keep students anchored to their desks
• Impose rules by fiat
• Have surprise locker searches
• Keep students in submissive roles
• Dictate student schedules through computer
  scheduling
• Dictate all student products dont give them
  choices in demonstrating competence
• Govern through permission slips
• Make teachers sign-out

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• Anti-generosity (selfishness)
• No service learning
• No student volunteering in the community
• Eliminate peer mediation
• No cooperative learning
• Leave affective, social and emotional education
  to guardians
• Motivate through reward and punishment
• Eliminate cross-age tutoring
• Dont allow students to teach or share their
  passions

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Humans express unmet needs in distorted or absent
ways. When belonging, mastery, independence and
generosity needs are blocked, thwarted, ignored,
undermined or simply forgotten, humans end up
hurting self or others. But the human spirit is
resilient and that spirit is within all.
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The Circle of Courage
generosity
independence
belonging
mastery
We understand the Circle of Courage by
considering traditional native ways of raising
children, contemporary research and practice
wisdom. We begin with belonging
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Spirit of Belonging
Theologian Martin Marty of the University of
Chicago observed that throughout history the
tribe rather than the nuclear family ultimately
ensured survival of a culture. When parents
failed in their responsibility, the tribe was
there. Marty thinks the problem today is that we
have lost the tribe.
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Every child needs at least one adult who is
irrationally crazy about him or her. Urie
Bronfenbrenner
We are meant to love and be loved.
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Pioneer Native American educator and
anthropologist Ella Deloria described the spirit
of belonging in these simple words, Be related
somehow to everyone you know.
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In the tribe, a larger circle of significant
adults serve as teachers and mentors of younger
persons, not just the biological parents.
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Each child belonged because all claimed
relationship. The ultimate test of kinship was
behavior not blood. Relationships were
manufactured for persons left out.
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Anna and Noah Brokenleg
Native people often use a quiet, soft-spoken
manner of dealing with others. It is a result
from a world view that all belong to one another
and should be treated accordingly.
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The sense of belonging extended to nature.
Stories taught that if harmony was upset,
tragedies resulted. Ecological balance is a way
of ensuring balance in ones own life.
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Belonging can be expressed in cross-generational
relationships and telling of stories.
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Belonging Attachment Friendships Cooperation List
ening Laughter
Living with and loving other human beings who
return that love is belonging. Belonging in that
sense is the most strengthening and positive
emotional experience in the world.
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The spirit of belonging can be translated into
practice in our schools and other institutions
that serve young people.
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Relationships (connections) are fundamental to
everything. Research shows that the quality of
human relationships in schools may be more
influential than the specific techniques or
interventions employed. Attachment is necessary
in order to foster mastery, independence and
generosity.
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Adults who are liked and respected know their
days will be less frenzied and more productive.
Likeable adults are able to offer warm,
consistent, stable, and non-hostile attachments.
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• Modeling is the most significant teacher of
  belonging. What needs to be modeled
• actions of caring
• concern for the life and growth of another
• knowledge or deep understanding of anothers
  feelings
• respect or seeing another person as they are and
  allowing them to develop without exploitation
• responsibility to act to meet the needs,
  expressed or not, of another human being

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Crisis often becomes an opportunity to grow and
develop our relationships. Love the unlovable or
learning to see the goodness and strengths in all
builds relationships. Relating requires that we
know how to disengage from the conflict cycle.
Doing so allows adults to earn the trust of youth
of whom many have good reasons not to trust
adults.
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Know that building relationships takes time but
it can happen in the childs life space. It
requires that I treat others as I want to be
treated, that I teach joy and I invite children
to belong. Connecting to another human being can
happen in a blink since it is biologically based.
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Peer group relationships must be healthy.
Staff teamwork relationships are vital to the
creation of positive climates. Teamwork
relationships with the parents and guardians are
necessary.
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Spirit of Mastery
iáh tekarihonniénni yah de gah ree hun nyen
ne He is well taught.
For the Iroquois children were not considered
good or bad. Instead their behavior was a
direct result of how they were taught by the
adults in their lives.
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The overall spirit of mastery is reflected in the
idea that all need to feel competent so all must
be encouraged in their competency. Success
became a possession of the many, not the
privileged few.
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The purpose of native education was to develop
cognitive, physical, social and spiritual
competence. Self-control and self-restraint were
important to learn.
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Wisdom came from listening to and observing
elders. Ceremonies and oral legends transmitted
ideals. Stories were used to teach ways of
living and perceiving the world. Stories are
compatible with the way the brain works.
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Mastery was cultivated by games and creative play
which simulated adult responsibilities. Games
challenged, were fun and enhanced skills. Art
was about making articles of utility and
adornment it was an integral part of everything
that was created. Play was encouraged.
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Older children were given responsibility to help
care for younger children.
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Mastery produced social recognition and inner
satisfaction. You accept recognition with
humility you are generous in your praise of
others accomplishments. Striving was for
attainment of a personal goal, not being superior
to ones opponent.
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Mastery translated into theory
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Mastery It is natural for children to explore,
acquire language, construct things and cope with
their environments. The human brain does not
need to be activated, organized, directed,
controlled, motivated or managed in order for
learning to occur. It is fundamentally designed
to learn.
82
Success is the best motivator. Adult domination,
obedience, lack of affection, not setting
expectations or pushing kids from the nest to
early, discourages motivation.
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Failure can provide a base of information and
motivation upon which to construct future success.
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Mastery demands non-threatening environments
since danger, stress or any other kind of threat,
downshifts the brain from the thinking brain to
the emotional brain. Threats can come from
tests, irrelevant, outdated and uninteresting
curriculum. Warmth and nurturing foster learning
by freeing the higher brain.
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Mastery requires experiential or active learning.
Learning is best achieved when it is active,
interesting and relevant.
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Mastery requires social learning. The human
brain has developed so that it functions better
in social rather than isolated settings.
Cooperative learning is a good example of this.
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Conversation, discussion and story rather than
lecture and recitation, are more powerful ways of
presenting information.
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The Spirit of Independence
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The spirit of independence is expressed when
humans play a meaningful role. It created
personal power.
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The child must first have opportunities to be
dependent in order to become independent. Autonom
y is always balanced with social demands.
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In tribal communities, high value was placed on
individual freedom. Persons answered to
self-imposed goals and not to the demands of
others. Instead of obedience training, native
children were influenced by the concept of
guidance without interference. Elders teach
values and provide models, but the child is given
increasing opportunities to learn to make choices
without coercion.
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Any external discipline had the purpose of
building internal discipline. You can not make
a child responsible by imposing ones own will on
them. Children need to be allowed to work
things out for themselves but always with the
guiding hand of an adult within reach.
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Children must be approached with maturity and
dignity. The main strategy of behavior control
was kindly lectures not a pedantic or preaching
lecture. The lecture often explains how the
behavior would hurt or disappoint others or how
cruel or cowardly ways would result in no friends
(inductive discipline).
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Children were not offered prizes or rewards for
doing something well. The achievement itself was
the appropriate reward. Harsh punishment was seen
as destructive. In place of rewards and
punishments were modeling, group influence,
discussion and positive expectations. Discipline
never really succeeds if it does not recognize
the universal need of all persons to be free, to
be in control of themselves, and to be able to
influence others.
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Adults generally feel that without extrinsic
controls and motivation, children will behave in
immature and destructive ways. When adults
attempt to dominate, it creates
counter-controlling youth that are in conflict
with adults. By providing children opportunities
to exercise influence over their own lives adults
encourage the development of self-discipline.
Democratic child-rearing produces children who
behave in more responsible ways.
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Freedom without guidance, boundaries and rules is
not helpful. Adults who focus their efforts on
providing structure and values rather than
control are more helpful.
97
With growth and development, children show a
strong need to be independent and free this need
accelerates during adolescence.
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• Resiliency research suggests a number of specific
  skills that characterize the resilient youth
• thinks for self
• solves problems
• can tolerate frustration
• avoids making other peoples problems their
  problems
• shows optimism and persistence
• resists being put down and sheds negative labels
• has a sense of humor
• can build friendships based on care and mutual
  support.
• A theme that runs thorough these skills is the
  attainment of a sense of autonomy or internal
  locus of control.

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Children should be seen as our social equals.
100
Discipline (proactive, natural consequences,
social skills taught, control with inner values,
no physical psychological punishment) is better
than punishment (reactive, arbitrary
consequences, obedience, control by external
rules, physical psychological punishment is
used).
101
If punishment is occasionally and judiciously
used, it is essential that it come from adults
who communicate an acceptance of the child.
Rules are to values as obedience is to respect.
102
Authoritative rather than authoritarian is a
better way to approach children. Demand
greatness rather than obedience. Create climates
where children understand they are responsible.
Make caring important.
103
Tap the spirit of adventure in children. Get kids
helping kids.
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The Spirit of Generosity
105
The highest virtue was to be generous and
unselfish. Generosity is the most important
value in native thinking.
106
Children were taught by elders telling them what
to expect in life and how to lead good lives.
Training in altruism began in earliest life.
Core values of sharing and community
responsibility were deeply ingrained. A
fundamental tenet is all have responsibility for
the welfare of all others.
107
Giving was part of many ceremonies.
108
Prestige was accorded those who gave
unreservedly. Those who had nothing to give were
pitied.
109
To accumulate property for its own sake was
disgraceful. Material goods were acquired to
better help others. Natives valued simplicity,
generosity and nonmaterialism.
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Altruism is part of being a human being. Genuine
altruism is evoked by empathy with another
person. Empathy is the ability to de-center and
take the perspective of another. There is both a
cognitive and affective side to empathy.
Pseudo-altruism is done to gain rewards or avoid
punishment and also to reduce feelings of
distress.
112
Young people must be empowered to care and
contribute to the betterment of their families,
friends, schools and communities. There needs to
be a curriculum of caring. Service learning can
be an antidote to the narcissism and
irresponsibility of modern life styles. The best
service learning projects are exciting and
spontaneous, balanced between short term and long
term commitments. Activities that involve direct
person to person interaction have better learning
value. Projects that appeal to the strength of
the children bring greater satisfactions than
those that are less challenging. It is always
important to involve the young people in
planning, developing, executing and evaluating
the projects.