Dancing Man

I have always been a natural leader. Sometimes I have been great, and sometimes... not so much. I have two stories about being a "leader" and motivating my first "follower". First, I founded and grew a non-profit therapeutic residential program for high-risk foster youth for almost 18 years (when I closed it). We specialized in Unaccompanied Refugee Minors and LGBTQ+. Around 2012, I noted the foster care system using an acrocym CSEC, which stands for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children, and we were getting referrals for these types of youth. We had been working with CSEC youth for a long-time, but now it had more state/county attention and services were being sought to serve these youth.

We were working on our fourth program, which had yet to have an identified specialty, when doing some research I realized that there weren't ANY CSEC programs in California for CSEC foster youth who were still "in the life". That is, still attached to a pimp or "boyfriend". Not one single facility in the state was willing to work with these youth - which I decided the state/county believed to be "throwaway children" (an actual statement made to me by a licensing specialist for the state of California. There were facilities willing to work with CSEC youth who had "exited" but not currently active.

So my question became "what is happening to all these active CSEC youth if no one is willing to work with them to empower them to exit "the life"? and the answer was.... they are throaways. Youth who are homeless with out any resources unless they leave their pimp. And remember, why are these youth attached to a pimp in the first place? Most CSEC youth were highly vulnerable, coming from broken homes with sustance abuse and typically domestic abuse, and they found a "home" with their pimp. On average, it takes 7-9 years for a CSEC youth to "exit the life", so if they get into it around age 13, they are looking at 7-9 years of constant trauma before they get either strong enough to exit or die.

I decided the fourth program we offered was for CSEC "active" youth, and I got arguments from everyone, starting with my Chief Operating Officer (COO), Smitty. He said "no one does this work because it's too hard" and "Edgewood (in SF) did that years ago and shut it down". I continued to research the issues, and seek evidence-based and promising practices with "active" CSEC youth, and there were none. There are plenty for youth who exited, such as EMDR (Eye Movement-Direct Response), CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therpay) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), but again, none for "active" youth.

After spending some time sharing with Smitty my research, reasoning, and compassion for these youth, he eventually got 100% on-board with developing this program - the first in the state, understanding it would be experimental in nature. I was the dancing man, dancing alone for a while, then got my first follower (Smitty) and then more followers (the county social workers). Sadly, I was forced to close the program in December 2016 due to unbending state licensure guidelines for these youth (and all youth, no policy differences for different types of youth with trauma).

The second example is more recent, as a psychology instructor. I started teaching in August 2019, and selected regular textbooks for my courses. I had seen the college librarian talk about OER/ZTC, but seemed to difficult. I even had a different colleague tell me about OpenStax, which I promptly ignored. I was after I taught a statistics class, and five of my students could not afford the $80 access fee for the course. That was it for me, I became a Zero Textbook Cost / Open Educational Resources junkie after that. In this scenario, I did function as a follower of the librarian and my colleague, however, at my new college, Northeast Community College, I am the leader. I am spearheading the equity initiative across campus to attempt to get more faculty on-board with OER/ZTC. It only takes one.

The characteristics I needed to be the dancing man? Perseverance, knowledge, integrity, humility and a lack of caring about others negative opinions. The characteristics I needed to be the first follower? I need to see the value from a humanistic perspective, and then can be 100% in, regardless of what anyone else thinks. I think it requires FEARLESSNESS.