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Moresports Personality ProfilesTennyson Wong: From Sidelined to the Frontline
Chinese Canadian
A lot of fruit, especially strawberries.
Bob Marley
Spending time with my girlfriend. Martial arts right now particularly Brazilian Jiujitsu, and Judo.
In parks and recreation. Surfing on the beach, especially in L.A. and Tofino but it's cold here. Married with my own family.
I always looked upon Tennyson as thirsty for knowledge and looking out for information that would take him to his next level and where he believed he could go. He was always eager to accept the challenges he was confronted with or we put in his way. When he first came in he was at a crossroads in his life and needed a bit of a confidence booster. We kept asking the right questions, and we kept guiding him to find the right answers for himself. He was prepared to jump out of his comfort zone. I do remember a discussion we had one-on-one and he decided he wanted to be the very best he could be, and we talked about what that would mean and what it would take to work that out for Tennyson Wong. I think it's absolutely fabulous where he's come to now, and to hear about how he's matured and his development into an outstanding individual with productive community involvment. And that's where he wanted to go. I'm absolutely delighted to hear that he's doing that well and it's time for him and I to have another little chat over 'a cuppa tea' so that we can discuss what's next in line for Tennyson Wong. He knows who he is so okay, let's get out of that comfort zone and see who else he is!
We hired Tennyson for a couple of reasons; one is because his ability to relate to high-risk youth is exceptional. He understands where they come from. He was on the edges. He's caring; he's one of the most caring individuals around. And he has a sports background. He's a lifeguard, and he also has a huge interest in cars so he can relate to a broad spectrum of kids. His level of empathy for these kids is enormous and he knows the challenges for kids who don't really know what they want to do. His MoreSports position is just the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a very meaningful career that makes a difference to a lot of kids. He's committed to making that difference for all of the kids he works with.
I first got to know Tennyson as a youth coach in the MoreSports program about six years ago. I remember him as a friendly and motivated person. Since then he's worked in the Cultural Buddy Program, matching newcomer (immigrant) children and youth with peer hosts from the community. He also works as a lifeguard at Britannia. I hired him to work in NasKarz and he impressed Ray-Cam staff with his work ethic but more importantly with his caring and compassion towards the Ray-Cam youth. At first he cautiously dipped his toe into the Ray-Cam ocean. It didn't take him long to jump in head first and take NasKarz by the horns. I'd been looking for someone reliable and committed who would take charge and found it in Tennyson. He badly wants his youth to succeed and he will help in any way he can. A youth from NasKarz entered the VCC main stream program a few weeks ago. Tennyson has been picking him up and driving him to school every morning. No one asked him to do that. Of course it helps that he loves cars and mechanics, but it is the youth worker in him that comes forward and always goes beyond the call. 
Tennyson
We've all been there. We've all made a promise to a child that for whatever important reason we couldn't follow through on later. And we've all watched in guilty angst while the child melted down with throbbing cries of "but you promised, you promised!" Adult reasoning never bridges those childhood hurts in the moment, and we never know for sure if our attempts to make up for our failure to fulfill our promises is salve enough to heal the wound. What we do know for sure is that when kids are let down too many times by grown ups they put up walls, guards for their hearts and their trust in us dissipates while locked behind emotional concrete. That's what makes people such as Ray-Cam Community Centre's Tennyson (aka Tyson) Wong so essential in kids' lives. He puts on his youth worker overalls and tries to demolish those walls to help renovate a life. He says refurbishing a life is all about showing up and following through. Born as an only child and raised in East Vancouver Tennyson, 32, lived in what he refers to as a "pretty strict" third-generation Chinese household where keeping a routine, a hard day's work, maintaining household chores, and performing at school were family values. His father worked for Canada Post and his mother traveled between Vancouver and her hometown of Devon, England. The family's motto was: "Work and save money." "I wasn't really the academic type," Tennyson says. Tennyson describes his life as one of isolation both at home and at school though he had "a few close friends." Without siblings in the house his pursuits were mostly solitary ones in front a computer or television, and his activities outside of home were limited. "I did some swimming and water polo for a little bit," he says. "When I was in elementary school, I didn't have many sports at school. I was the guy who was sidelined all the time. I never really got into sports. I played basketball a handful of times. In highschool I was introduced to martial arts but besides that there was zero. Zero." Tennyson never graduated from highschool; he was "short a course or two and never went back to finish." Instead, he went to work. "When I was a kid I was like this (school and life) is boring and that carried with me until I was an adult. I think all the jobs I took because of that were boring, the loss of zest," he says wistfully. "I was shy, passive and watching life go by instead of participating." "I thought, 'I'm just going to go out there and work.' You name it, I've done it. I've been a plumber, done sales at all sorts of stuff and not very successfully at that, worked with computers a bit, cashier, also labour jobs." "From highschool to age 25 I did a lot of odd jobs, and I left home just after highschool, the usual type of youth living accommodations of six guys in an apartment," he laughs. "That's where my life began actually, working, living away from home. I met the best bunch of guys. I was really into cars; we'd work on cars together..." Tennyson's voice trails off as he pauses for a moment while his mind's eye replays those early adult days... "That's where I really opened up a lot too. But," he says, "then there comes a point. I wanted to grow up and I saw this thing (at an employment office) about how to get into parks and recreation." "I got into MoreSports when MoreSports first started," he says. I was in an employment program and you could be in the MoreSports leadership program (now YELL) if you had some employment barriers, which I did. They'd introduce you to community leaders and open your eyes to the whole parks and recreation field," he says. "It was a six months course. I started meeting people and met Ron Suzuki; he was the programmer at Strathcona (community centre) and he was on the panel interviewing me and I never knew that he would have an effect on me. With his help he introduced me to all of the community centres (in Vancouver) and the NCCP (National Coaching Certification Program, a training opportunity provided through Ray-Cam's YELL program)." The NCCP training gave Tennyson lifeskills and employment skills. "MoreSports supported you in how to be a leader in sports and recreation. You had to work with kids. We'd do ropes training for leadership at UBC, meet with SFU basketball coaches. I met Allan Churchard who was a big soccer influence; he was coordinator for MoreSports when it was the initial model. He had the job that Dick Woldring has now." "When I grew up I was on my own. Allan was like your father figure in that program. He would show you what discipline was and he'd always follow up with promises. The last day of the MoreSports program he gave me a big hug. I'm not a very emotional person and it felt awesome. It was awesome." "Allan taught me to have faith, to have faith that if this is the path you choose you just have to push through all the crap that comes. There were days that I was like 'Why even bother?' He taught me to have faith in the things that you want to do and that it will work out. He taught me to show up! Showing up is half the battle. Just that people show up is good enough. Good things will happen when you do. You will push through it if you have discipline and you'll get where you're trying to go. Discipline is just doing what you have to do whether you feel like it or not. If you keep it simple, kids understand that and can do that. I understood that." "In highschool I was shy. I let everything pass by. I'm so glad that I found cars when I was younger, that was a passion of mine in my late teens and early 20s." Today Tennyson is a sum of his parts and those earlier experiences, and through his work he lives in his passions. Ray-Cam's MoreSports, YELL, and NasKarz programs serve children and youth through healthy activities such as sports and mechanics. Those programs promote and support improved lifestyles, as well as employment, leadership, and social opportunities. Tennyson works for and coaches MoreSports kids and also works as a youth worker with at-risk inner-city kids for Ray-Cam community centre. He is a lifeguard who is also an aquatics coach for Britannia Community Centre's Turtles non-competitive swim club. NasKarz is a program for kids and youth at-risk of stealing or who have already stolen cars. They work on cars at Vancouver Community College (VCC) and race go-carts to bring them into car culture in a positive way. ICBC and other sponsors and partners support the program. "Whoever would have thought that by working in parks and rec I would ever get to get back into working on cars? That's why I love parks and recreation because I get to work in everything that I love: automotives, aquatics, training fitness and working on my fitness level a lot with cross-training. There's all kinds of sports that I can engage in any time I want. I'm at VCC at least once a week and I get to learn from the best. We have the hot rod club coming down. And I call this my job. Wow!" His father has pretty much the same reaction. "He thinks I'm pretty lucky," Tennyson says. "He did his years of work, a lot of graveyards, a grinding job, and he's like, 'You get to race go-carts and play soccer, and go swim. How's that a job? That's a not a job.'" "I tell my dad if I was doing a grinding 9-to-5 job I'd probably be dead by now, emotionally dead. I feel he's absolutely proud of me. We went through a lot my dad and me and he was disappointed in me. I quit school, didn't go to university. It was at times a little rocky with my mom too but now the relationship with both parents is good." And Tennyson's relationships with the parents of the kids he works and volunteers with are good as well. "I get a lot of appreciation from the parents," he says. "They say just that, 'We really appreciate you.' I don't hear that outside my work so it's kind of neat." But that doesn't mean Tennyson's job is without its challenges since he has other experiences with kids' parents as well. "Sometimes I'm disappointed with parents because of a lack of connection with their kids but I can't control that. I just ask the kid, 'Where is it that we can support you?' When a kid says, 'I don't know,' I say, 'Tell me when you do know.' Because they all know; we all know where we need to be supported." Tennyson knew when he was asked by Allan Churchard as a youth, and answering that key question led him into a career he loves that has given him a life he loves. He puts in a lot of volunteer hours with kids in addition to his paid work and he uses the same voice that Churchard taught him. "Healing, it's a healing process and it helps me give me back all of the stuff I've been able to learn from recreation. It's made me a calmer, wiser person. I've been able to deal with stress and being uncomfortable a lot better than when I was younger. I didn't like myself so much as a kid, even less so as a youth. Now I feel more confident. I don't feel any more like that kid who had nothing to offer and sat on the sidelines." It's that experience and his subsequent success that compels Tennyson to dedicate his life to kids who feel sidelined. "It's kind of ironic," he says, "because I didn't really want to work at Ray-Cam in the beginning. Now I love it. It's the ideal location for what we need to do. It's a hub. We carry an excellent record of working with youth and at-risk youth. We don't turn anybody way, regardless of their race or culture or background and I love that. Ray-Cam is a culture. Everybody is welcoming. We have kids that other centres would write off but not at Ray-Cam or Britannia. We'll support you; we'll show you opportunities." "I work with some of the toughest kids in the city and there are some disappoints, but I have a support team and things just get better all the time, and I have a lot of outlets and good friends around me at Ray-Cam and Britannia." "Just last Friday we had four kids in a stolen car," Tennyson says. "If they were at school that wouldn't have happened, but progress is always there, things always do get better. It's a matter of how you look at it. You have to look at their history the last two years; they've been going school and making something of their lives. We all slip sometimes and we have to look at that incident in the context of the challenges they face everyday and their last two years of success." Tennyson says that building trusting relationships with those kids by following through on his promises helps them to keep showing up and that's the key to helping them build better lives. "The momentum and energy of the group offers a gentle healing that they don't even notice sometimes until their pain subsides. Sometimes on some issues you have to work hard to heal but not all healing is hard work. Sometimes you heal without even trying just by being in the right situation with the right people. Sometimes you're just trying to heal one thing but you end up healing things you weren't even trying to fix. That's why community and acceptance and being inclusive is important. And it's because of those things that kids keep coming back to Ray-Cam programs like MoreSports and NasKarz." Tennyson's youth worker role is to work specifically with at-risk youth, whether in a one-on-one setting or within specific programs. It's his job to help kids and youth develop a plan and to support that plan with recreation and to show them "that there is lots of opportunity for them." How does he do it and what does he bring to it? "By having a caring personality, openness, not prejudging somebody," he says. "It's about the relationship. Allan really showed me a lot of that, and how to recognize certain issues. I feel great. I'm lucky. I really do love working the job I'm working right now. It's a long way from when I felt crappy. I felt honestly that I didn't have any direction. I didn't know how to go forward with anything. Back and forth from school to work. Now I have a goal and a mission. I tell them not to give up on having faith. I teach them to train. It's a growth process. With training you learn to keep pushing and to work. You learn to achieve." And Tennyson isn't finished his own growing yet. "I want to have a long career in recreation, working with at-risk youth, maybe at a more management level but I never want to be out of the frontlines loop. I want kids who feel sidelined to never give up on hope. I tell them 'have faith and a good plan. And work your plan.' I want other youth workers to stick with those kids, let them know you're not going anywhere. Follow through as adults because if you don't that breaks trust." Yes, not following through on our promises breaks trust. And hearts. You have to been there to know that. And you have to have recovered to give that. Tennyson experienced his pain from the sidelines and is helping others to heal their hurts on the frontlines. |
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