Meet Arvin M.

In my basketball training, I think if I have a 30-minute session or an hour session, we will always include some type of social emotional development piece. I’m committed to that. And that’s something that I was already bringing in to my programing. And now it is something that absolutely 100 percent has to be a part of every session with young people — just giving them a chance to speak to each other, giving them a chance to share with each other.

 And it doesn’t always have to be heavy, but it just has to be an opportunity for them to speak, an opportunity for them to share and have a check in of some type. And so I’m already planning on adding that to my training, to all my in-person training — where we partner up. And we either have a topic of the day or we have a check-in system of some type where each young person has the opportunity to just share how their week was.

 We call it bricks and swishes. 

 So if you’re a basketball player, we don’t like to shoot bricks, basketball players like swishes. And so we just do a quick little check-in with the young people where, hey, what was a brick this week? You know, what was something that was a struggle or a challenge this week? And again, we don’t have to have an answer for it. 

 We just want them to be able to get it off their chest and share it. And then we also want them to be able to share what was a swish this week. What was the shot that you made this week? You know, what was something that you did good or something you did well, what was a success? And so that’s one simple check in that we use — bricks and swishes. I’m just creating more ways for young people to just talk to each other in a nonjudgmental way and to have some fun and let them share what they’re going through and let them share a little bit.

I think sometimes as adults, we’re hesitant to do that with young people because we’re afraid of what might happen.

And I think the things that we’re probably afraid of happening are the things that may need to happen. We’re worried about a kid sharing too much. Well, you know what? If an eight-year-old shares something with you that that they need to get off their chest, I don’t know that it is too much. I think it’s something that if they feel that they need to get it off their chest and I think we need to feel a way to be able to support them in whatever the channels are, whether it’s going to their parent or being a first responder, where we’ve got an automatic report situation, whatever the case may be.

But I think we’ve got to give young people the opportunity to share, to speak.