Time and Motion

Mark Krueger

Like youth work (our term for Child and Youth Care work), this column can be thought of as a continuous journey. In the first column last month, our study of our stories about moments with youth was introduced and followed with a story by John Korsmo. In this column I will begin to share some of the thoughts that have emerged from our study and from reading other stories by youth workers. The premise for our study, as well as this column, is that stories inform us and challenge us to think differently about youth work.

Time in youth work, for instance, is usually thought of as being linear. Workers and youth move forward in time. The clock governs the length of what they do. They plan activities on the hour or by the minute. Sometimes it is as if time rules what they do. What can we do with this hour? Or this day, and how can what we do fit with the allotted time. A youth gets a time out. Another youth gets a special time, each time fixed according to the clock.

But in youth workers' stories about their moments with youth, time is not always linear. An event often occurs in the context of past, present, and future, and not always in that order. Sometimes moments, like moments in great novels, spiral forward and back through stories. A youth feels connected to a worker and recalls it later with fondness. Or a youth struggles with a worker then later understands what the worker was trying to say.

Workers and youth are often lost in time, immersed in their activity. Time stands still or moves with them rather than forces them forward. They are with each other, their togetherness and involvement in that task at hand governing their activity as opposed to the clock.

Motion and time are often interconnected. Workers and youth move together through time. In this context, motion is, as Aristotle said, the mode in which the future and present are one. Workers and youth act with purpose in time and subsequently what they are doing and where they are headed is in harmony. Their goal is to be in the moment or to do something purposeful for themselves or others, and subsequently time is embodied in what they do.

Their movements together connect them. They are as Henry Maier said, “rhythmically in synch." While running or playing or struggling their movements are in harmony. Sometimes an existential hum also moves just beneath the surface. An inaudible sound that drives the characters forward, creating something at the edge of their reach that calls to them. It is as if they are riding this underlying current of sound toward a nonexistent sense of resolution only to discover that it is the journey upstream that matters.

These notions of time and motion, like many other phenomena in stories, challenge us to think differently about youth work. They encourage us to pay attention to time and motion in ways that we might not have otherwise. In the next Moments With Youth column, stories by youth workers about silence, another key phenomenon in the stories of youth workers, will be presented.

(Some of the ideas about time and motion were also included in an article I wrote, Story, Time, Motion, and Place, for the South African journal Child and Youth Care, 19, no 8.)

For more information about time and motion see:

Maier, H. (1992). Rhythmicity: A powerful force for experiencing unity and personal connections. Journal of Child and Youth Care Work, 8, 7-13.

Magnuson, D., Baizerman, M., and Stringer, A. (2001). A moral praxis of Child and Youth Care work. Journal of Child and Youth Care Work, 15-16, 302-306.

Also see the stories coming up in this column.