Coffee & Youth Development: 4 Lessons from a Starbucks Ad

Here’s the thing -- even the most inspiring job cannot inoculate you against the occasional tough morning.  In Brainfood life, we work with teenagers, food, gardens, and shared kitchens, all of which can be at turns inspiring, unpredictable, and time consuming.  This combination, as any mother, chef, or gardener can tell you, is not necessarily conducive to a good night’s sleep. 

There are many bleary mornings where the good things that will happen in the afternoon seem distant and largely fictitious.  Perhaps you’ve left the house with your shirt on inside out, which makes successfully explaining emulsification to 20 high schoolers later that day seem like an insurmountable task. Perhaps you can’t remember if you watered the squash seedlings yesterday, and are now doubting your ability to support and nurture your young human charges in the classroom.  (I’ve done both and wondered both.  It’s not fun.) These moments of temporary mental saturation aren’t unique to youth workers, but perhaps they seem more treacherous because our own errors could lead young people astray.  We could somehow let down the youth we work with, and this. is. the. worst. 

Luckily, there’s an antidote for those vulnerable morning moments, and it’s coffee.  Call it a dependency or a bad habit, but when I can’t quite muster the energy needed to properly be an adult working with teenagers, coffee is the first place I turn.  It’s the friend I don’t need to call, the reset button on my inner hard drive, and the aromatic promise that success is thick in the air around us, just waiting to be distilled and savored.  Like any committed devotee, I’ve learned to forgo my pickiness and take joy in any form of coffee, whether it’s hand-poured in a cafe or instantly dispensed in a gas station, gussied up with cream and sugar, or a single neat espresso shot.  

So when I first saw the Starbucks DoubleShot commercial, I chalked up my guilty sense of delight to nostalgia and the fact that I love coffee.  (Full disclosure: I once had a brief fling with the DoubleShot canned espresso drink while finishing up my college thesis.  I overindulged, and have not touched a DoubleShot since because I now find them revolting.)  But as it turns out, the things we love have an amazing ability to bring us back to the other things we love.  After some studious reviewing, I realized why a bland corporate coffee commercial made me smile: it captures the essence of that thing we all need, every morning, even on the days we don’t realize it -- youth development.

Don’t believe me?  Watch below.  Then keep reading.  

Now that you're feeling inspired, let's explore some of the youth development lessons at work here.

  • It’s not just “at risk” kids who who need youth development --  Unfortunately for self-assured adults everywhere, youth development is really just an age-specific form of human development.  Take a look at Hank: he’s a white 20-something armed with a suit and a briefcase. He’s doesn’t fit the stereotypical profile (person of color, poor, struggling) of someone who "needs" structured, intentional support.  But the reality is, as youth workers, we’re committed to working with all young people to help them realize their full potential. We all need positive caring role models -- a favorite teacher, a rad boss, your personal trainer -- whether we admit it or not.

 

  • Youth development is not (always) about glory -- As far as I know, there’s not an awards ceremony for youth workers where former students share appreciations for the teachers and adult mentors who’ve helped shape their lives.  Just like Hank, focusing intently on the task ahead of us means that some of our strongest supporters remain in our periphery.  Want to empower young people to be leaders?  Be content with seeing just a small sliver of awesomeness during the time you work with a young person.  Be ready to celebrate profusely when youth you taught start running their own kitchens, graduating from engineering school, or working for Google.  For extra credit, think about who helped you as a teenager and write them a note -- it’s never too late to say thank you. 

 

  • Being a youth worker means being a radically positive adult -- The over-the-topness of the DoubleShot ad is catchy, but it’s also revealing. As youth workers, we sign on to go above and beyond to show our support every day.  Whether it’s bragging about teens to their parents, stepping in to correct youth stereotypes, or getting teary-eyed when talking about awesome former students, we’re called to wear our emotions and our belief in youth potential on our sleeves. This might induce eye rolls, get us labeled as “cheesy”, or result in the embarrassed glance that Hank gives his emphatic cheering squad, but that’s ok.  If there’s a penalty for enthusiasm, we haven’t seen it yet.

 

  • You don’t have to go it alone -- There will be youth who evade even your most persistent beams of positivity.  Accepting the truth of this may bruise egos, but it also leads to a more comforting realization: ushering a single person safely through the wilds of adolescence and into the wilds of adulthood isn’t on one of us.  It’s on all of us.  To lapse into sports metaphor, the game-winning assist is just as important as the game-winning shot.  Whether it’s connecting youth to other supportive adults or calling home to check in with a mom about a student who’s been missing class, youth work is more effective when it’s a group effort.  

 

“Mastery and Sense of Future” is one of the developmental outcomes that many youth serving organizations (including Brainfood) track.  It’s a long phrase for the compact concept of self-efficacy, our internal belief that we can change our lives, achieve our goals, and move forward in the direction of our choosing.  But thinking about and defining the future we want is a big task at any age.  It makes our minds boggle, makes us appreciate what we have to make the journey seem possible, whether it’s a cheesy card from an old teacher, a job where we feel valued and supported, or just a cup of coffee.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.