Train Tracks

Train Tracks with LR Schmidt Students

In grade 11 at Newington – my high school – a bunch of “leaders” were called together to do a workshop with Rising Generations, Australia’s leading forum for young leaders. Having already attended a camp earlier in the year, where everybody was open and willing to embarrass themselves for the greater good of having fun and showing others they were leadership-material, I was a little sceptical as to how RG’s tactics would work in opening up a group of generally sensible teenage boys with egos to rival Kanye West’s*. So when our two RG mentors decided to play a game where every time they said train tracks we would have to pump our arms up and down and “toot” to mimic a train,  I sighed and shook my head in disbelief. How could they expect a group of young men to embarrass themselves in this way?

Team of friends and leaders atop the zig zag path 

In hindsight I realise that responsibility is one of the biggest motivators for any kind of person, whether they are kids, teenagers or adults. Responsibility is infectious. Responsibility is an insect-borne disease that spreads as each person proverbially bites another and spreads it. And perhaps, most importantly, responsibility induces change.

So when the two mentors gave us the responsibility of tooting whenever train tracks were mentioned, they gave a seed of responsibility to each of us sitting in the room that day. It took a couple of goes before everybody felt it, but in the end, everybody did. From then they built up what our responsibilities were and eventually gave us the responsibility of leading the school.

Working together on the community garden

The other day when we were taking a group of kids who were relatively unruly, I thought that I would try the train tracks game to see if they changed their behaviour, and sure enough, with enough simultaneous tooting, they began to gel with themselves and with us leaders. The boys who had been crass and rude had suddenly become attentive and willing to join in with our activities. It is truly an incredible moment when you see someone’s attitude change right in front of your eyes – something really serendipitous. Our games were played with so much vigour and excitement, and as we came out of our skins to ourselves and each other, we planted the seed of responsibility for each other. Ultimately, the idea is that they will slowly become responsible for their own bodies, their friends, their school, their community, and finally the world – making change in a local way to impact the world – to build the train tracks before building the train. Kids especially seem to lap up responsibility - especially in this community. We have already given the responsibility of food security to many young people in the first village community garden which would operate in future to sustain those without garden beds and food. 

Working on food security with the community garden in Greyton

I feel like I've become more responsible through my travels and taken on a lot more than I would have done otherwise. I've learnt that all sorts of things like the environment and the development of people are things that I really need to feel responsible about – despite only being a small cog in the bigger scheme of things. For me, the reason I am responsible is because I am a Christian and I act as a person of God, for others, it is for the future of the world, economically, environmentally and personally, that drives them.

So I pray everyone who reads this will also pick up some burden of responsibility and be agents of change in their own communities... Happy training - toot toot! 

* Not a fair generalisation of my class of ’12 to be honest, more of a generalisation of guys around that 16-17 age group.

P.S. I realise that this is a bit more of a serious post than I would usually post and also one that has come after a long absence from my page (SORRY!!). I haven’t been feeling creative lately amidst all of the community work that’s been going on. I’ll do my best to update with photos, videos and posts more regularly and I apologize for not doing so sooner!