What’s the Buzz with Teenagers?

Book excerpt: Pre-teens and teenagers are faced with a continually changing and complex social world that not only involves face-to-face action, but also online and social media interaction. What’s the Buzz with Teenagers? offers a highly practical programme designed to explicitly teach young people to get along and maintain healthy relationships with their friends, family and the broader community. Embracing current thinking on ‘self-awareness and behaviour transformation’ in adolescents, it uses highly interactive role plays, film-making, thinking exercises, quizzes, group discussions and confidence-building games to improve social skills and promote inclusion in a fun, effective and appealing way. Easy to implement in upper primary and middle schools, in healthcare settings and beyond, What’s the Buzz with Teenagers?: is a deeply structured resource to teach young people in the 12- to 15-year-old developmental range; offers a connecting approach to bring young people together to learn without the pressure of ‘getting social interaction right’ all the time; aims to normalise the anxieties, sensitivities and loneliness that many young people experience during adolescence by sharing thoughts and exploring this common ground; explicitly teaches how to ‘read’ the emotional needs of others, show empathy and build relationships; and uses a developmental model that ensures relevance and inclusion to young people with a broad range of backgrounds, abilities and challenges. The programme provides lessons that educators and health professionals can adapt to suit their individual circumstances and time frames, and creates a framework for a warm, engaging and interactive space in which learning is optimised. The book is complemented by the website www.whatsthebuzz.net.au, which offers online downloadable resources and a further six lessons. Also available are What’s the Buzz?: A Social Skills Enrichment Programme for Primary Students and What’s the Buzz? For Early Learners: A Complete Social Skills Foundation Course.