‘We swear if they get lazy’: The classroom alternative with an unconventional approach

Teens Take Control is no ordinary school for naughty kids. For starters, it’s not a school.

While there is a classroom, most of the learning takes place in a converted warehouse, with the “curriculum” delivered on the gym floor through fitness classes and martial arts training.

One program has the kids growing produce and delivering it to the community.

Teens Take Control founder Brenden Wilkins (right) with education co-ordinator Darren Clark (left). Credit: Courtney Kruk

The young people who go there are aged 12 to 17. Many have learning difficulties that manifest in disruptive behaviour in the classroom.

But Teens Take Control offers them an alternative to dropping out of school altogether.

“I don’t operate the way the education system wants,” explains founder Brenden Wilkins. “They want [programs to take a] conservative approach, but you can’t take a conservative approach with these kids.”

As a teacher, Wilkins’ approach is unconventional.

“We swear at them if they get lazy, we tell them to get their arses up ... I can be really hard on them,” he says.

“But then, as soon as something’s not going well with them and I find out, straight away I’m on their side. We’re there to fix it up.”

Wilkins founded Teens Take Control when a Caloundra primary school approached him to run martial arts classes for kids.

The gym includes a dedicated mixed martial arts space where kids can train. Credit: Courtney Kruk

“I asked, ‘Why is this group of kids so special?’ And they explained that they were disengaging from school and struggling with their learning.

“And I was like, f---, that sounds like me.”

Wilkins grew up in Mount Druitt in Western Sydney. While his father was well respected in the community, he remembers not being good at school and getting into trouble.

Sport kept him focused for a time, but when he started working, he strayed down the wrong path. “Because I wasn’t very smart, I followed the easiest path possible … In our area that was drugs and crime.”

While running a gym, Wilkins became involved with bikies. It took having kids – he has four daughters now – to push him in a different direction.

“My mates were getting knocked and going to jail,” he recalls. “There was a kidnapping, and one of my cousins got stabbed because they thought it was me.

“I decided I couldn’t have my kids around this.”

He moved to the Sunshine Coast, where he opened another gym. After training the first group of school kids, Wilkins formalised the program as Teens Take Control.

Wilkins believes his program boosts kids’ resilience and confidence.Credit: Teens Take Control

Now, 35 kids are enrolled, most from Nambour State College.

The strength, fitness and martial arts training is designed to build their resilience and confidence, and help them develop a consistent routine. Alongside this is a personal development program.

“The majority of these kids come from low socioeconomic families or single-parent families. There’s drug and alcohol abuse. They’ve never had good, stable role models,” Wilkins says.

“[With us] they’re learning how to be a better person … what it takes to be a good human, or man, in this day and age, how to have a good work ethic and respect your parents or women in the community.”

For teenagers 15 and up, there is a program to develop employment skills – an initiative that has earned Teens Take Control state government grants in the past.

But Wilkins says uncertainty around funding has put a cloud over the program’s future.

“We’ve only been funded once and that was for 18 months,” he says. “The rest we’ve pretty much had to figure out ourselves.”

He hopes the LNP government’s focus on early intervention – for which it promised $100 million during last year’s election campaign – will open up new opportunities to access funding.

A spokesperson for Youth Justice Minister Laura Gerber said the government’s gold standard early intervention and intensive rehabilitation programs would “halt the pipeline of young people veering off the rails”.

The tender process for nine early intervention “regional reset” programs has begun, while state schools have been given new funding to stamp out bad behaviour in the classroom.

If Wilkins has his way, one day the warehouse on Norval Court in Maroochydore won’t be a gym, it will be a youth centre.

“I’ve been saying that for 10 years,” he says. “[Councils] build playgrounds for kids, but there’s nothing for teenagers. No PCYC or free community centres for them to access.

“Kids get bored. And when they’re bored, they get up to stupid stuff, and that starts a cycle – especially if they’re not going to school.”

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