Youth Development Insight

They're thriving in the program, but do they have goals beyond it?

2013-01-09T18:00:00Z

Alexander Cho and other participatory observers of a high-quality after school digital media program discovered that youth who were some of the most engaged and committed to the program also began to shrink from school obligations and abandon plans for attending college.

For these young people, the future was vague and uncertain "due in large part to lack of family financial resources and the absence of an intuitive post-secondary roadmap." In short, they were unable to connect the 21st century skills they were gaining in the program to future possibility, such as higher education or career options.

To me, this dissonance between the learning environment and the future of these youth points to the vital importance of helping young people connect WHAT they are learning to what they can DO with that learning.

]]> In a white paper that my fellow blogger Trudy Dunham cited recently Henry Jenkins et al claim that "a focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends."

Here in the Urban Youth Development Office, we've named this as the critical issue driving our business plan -- the need of youth, particularly those from low-income communities, to learn how to overcome economic, educational, and social barriers in order to connect their skills and interests to possibilities for their futures and build their potential to author their own lives. Our strategic goal is more about welcoming youth into a culture of possibility than engaging them in a youth program on digital media or entrepreneurship.

One of our clubs is focused on media production, and while the youth love and are deeply engaged in the content they are learning, the depth of their experience depends on our staff, volunteers, and mentors, who are constantly helping them reflect on what it is that they're really getting out of the experience. They take the youth to campuses, help them fill out financial aid packets, and guide them on getting into college. They are, in the words of Cho, helping youth "frame and mobilize these skills to their own advantage."

How can we help youth go beyond even deep engagement in content or participation in a program or activity? How do you address that issue? Are there other aspects of youth programming that we all intuitively know, but that somehow are continually missed or undervalued?

-- Jessica Russo, assistant Extension professor and director, Urban 4-H Youth Development Office

You are welcome to comment on this blog post. We encourage civil discourse, including spirited disagreement. We will delete comments that contain profanity, pornography or hate speech--any remarks that attack or demean people because of their sex, race, ethnic group, etc.--as well as spam.

Opening doors with a global mind-set

2012-09-12T17:00:00Z

For young people entering a 21st century workforce, a global mind-set is not only important. It is vital to their healthy, happy development.

What is a global mind-set, and how do we cultivate this in young people who, like adults, gravitate towards the familiar?

Gupta and Govindarajan describe a global mind-set as an awareness and openness to diversity combined with a tendency and ability to integrate new knowledge and experiences across cultures. I like to think of a global mind-set in terms of the doors it opens. A global mind-set allows for healthy encounters with others representing diverse cultures, races, ages, gender, religions, lifestyles, and viewpoints. And a global mind-set allows these encounters to penetrate our experience in a way that encourages us to expand the way we think and act, combining old and new ways of going about the world.

]]> For young people (or anyone, for that matter) to develop a global mind-set, they need the opportunity to wrestle with and challenge their own cultural understanding. Along the path to that understanding, they acquire or hone the ability to empathize, suspend judgment, and either accept or adapt to cultural difference. Empathy, suspension of judgment, and acceptance/adaptability are keys to developing a global mind-set. But developing these abilities in a homogeneous environment is challenging.

In the business world, an international assignment is argued to be best way for people to develop the skills to be an effective global leader. For young people, a culturally immersive experience may be the best way to develop a global mind-set. Providing them the experience of working with others of varying backgrounds is essential to digging deep enough into their own cultural understanding to be able to develop the empathy, suspension of judgment, and acceptance/adaptability requisite to a global mind-set.

In the Urban Youth Development Office (Urban 4-H), we developed a program model and curriculum called WeConnect: An Opening to the World (Skuza, Russo,& Hurtado, 2009) designed to help show youth that they are participants of a global society, inspiring a sense of understanding and confidence in relating and connecting to other people. And using this philosophical base, we provide cross-cultural integration points for the youth in our programs, through experiences such as a leadership retreat, campus visit, showcase event, and service learning groups involving youth from multiple types of clubs across rural, suburban, and urban areas. These inter-cultural experiences are most successful when we:

Employ a process that emphasizes habitual reflection and active listening
Engage youth in authentic conversations about issues they care about
Tackle any emerging conflicts head-on
Focus learning on helping young people understand their thinking about cultural difference
Insist on a youth-centered, community-centered learning environment
Surround the youth with caring, trained adults who can engage them in conversations about their viewpoints
Provide experiences that appropriately challenge youth to practice what they are learning about accepting and adapting to cultural difference with grace

We find that with this deliberate approach, we are helping our young people develop a global mind-set. One barrier that we encounter is resistance from families based on prejudicial outlooks that have been cultivated in the young person's home. We use a group mentoring model in some of our programs in order to provide a variety of adult viewpoints, and Extension's research on the role of race and ethnicity in mentor relationships is a helpful resource.

What are other ways that you find effective in developing a global mind-set? What are some challenges?

-- Jessica Russo, assistant Extension professor and director, Urban 4-H Youth Development Office

Do you dare to be coached?

2012-05-09T17:00:00Z

In my experience, most youth work professionals are constantly scrutinizing their own work. But how willing are we to allow others to do so? Could coaching be a key to developing satisfaction for professionals in our field?

In a recent report, Dana Fusco explores "the tension between a trial-by-fire approach to training [of youth work professionals] versus the overtraining that can lead to the 'anesthesia of the expert' or the loss of the 'heart.'" She concludes that knowledge and knowing are positioned "not as end products but as processes within the learning journey that require ongoing visitation."

]]> I found an interesting complement to Dana's report in an article in the New Yorker, where surgeon Atul Gawande explores the use of coaches in professional fields, after realizing that while many professional athletes use coaches to help them be the best that they can be, doctors don't. As Gawande discovers, coaching as a concept for amateurs is currently very popular (as even a cursory Google search will confirm), but "coaching aimed at improving the performance of people who are already professionals is less usual."

Many youth-serving organizations are already exploring and employing evaluation and coaching methods to improve the quality of their youth programs. The Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) is one tool that Minnesota 4-H Youth Development, the city of St. Paul's Sprockets initiative, and many other entities are using throughout the state to engage front-line youth workers in a coaching process to improve their practice.

In our sister field of formal education, teachers have been exploring the use of coaching for years. Gawande cites the Kansas Coaching Project, directed by Jim Knight at the University of Kansas, which uses instructional coaches to help teachers implement proven teaching methods. Although more research is needed to determine how and to what extent, so far we know that coaching positively impacts teacher satisfaction, practice, and efficiency, as well as student achievement.

Gawande himself experienced the striking benefits of coaching after inviting a former teacher of his to observe him during surgeries: "I know that I'm learning again. I can't say that every surgeon needs a coach to do his or her best work, but I've discovered that I do."

Coaching for youth development professionals could easily be seen as "another freakin' thing we've got to do," as professional development often does for both formal and nonformal educators. And it is not always easy to muster the courage and humility required to invite someone to observe and critique. Humility may not be the most popular value in mainstream dominant American culture, but it may very well be the value that can turn a good effort into the best one.

As you consider this question, think about how much we stress to youth in our programs that they need to receive and process feedback as they learn. Can we realistically and authentically expect them to do that if we are not willing to do it ourselves?

What do you think of this idea? Would you be willing to invite a "coach" to assess your work as a youth development professional?

-- Jessica Russo, assistant Extension professor and director, Urban 4-H Youth Development Office

Can citizenship programs help to solve the bullying problem?

2012-02-24T20:54:11Z

Bullying is in the news again. It may have contributed to yet another school shooting in Chardon, Ohio this week. Bullying is not a product of a modern age, but has been increasingly scrutinized in the past decade. After the Columbine High School massacre U.S. Secret Service officials found that bullying "in terms that approached torment," played a part in two-thirds of the 37 premeditated school shootings they analyzed.

The effects and causes of bullying are complex. According to Limber, individual, familial, societal and community factors play roles, and the impacts can be physical, emotional and psychological for victims, perpetrators, and witnesses.

]]> With such a complex topic, how can the field of youth development make an impact? I believe that an emphasis on citizenship in out-of-school time youth programs can contribute to a solution.

In 2010, National 4-H began to shape a 4-H Citizenship Mission Mandate to ensure that the 4-H Youth Development Program can provide the best opportunities for young people to become engaged and make a difference in their communities.

In Minnesota 4-H, we are working to define what constitutes solid citizenship programming for our youth and adults, not only to help youth acquire personal skills for success, but to help them acquire interpersonal skills that benefit society. This is where the anti-bullying effort comes into play.

Sherrod, Flanagan, and Youniss point out that in the context of youth development, "Citizenship ... has to involve multiple components if we are to understand its development in diverse populations in this country." A definition of global citizenship, offered by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, is "a continuum going from being aware of the interdependent nature of our world, to understanding how local and global issues affect the well-being of people around the world, to committing or taking actions to create a more equitable world." Taking this point of view into account, these components effectively describe what we hope our youth will gain through participation in Minnesota 4-H Citizenship Programs:

The ability to move beyond self-interest to expressing concern for others
A sense of connectedness to a group (including the nation and world)
The ability to respectfully listen to and consider differing experiences and opinions
The ability to compromise
Understanding of the rights and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy and how action or inaction contributes to one's nation state, as well as to the world
Commitment to creating a more equitable world

The teaching of empathy is a common element in violence prevention, and youth programs focused on developing citizenship provide a natural platform for helping young people understand how they connect with others. Foundational research on resiliency has found that the opportunity for meaningful involvement and responsibility can be an important protective factor for youth by helping them connect to society. Perhaps this feeling of connectedness, coupled with the ability to empathize, is the key to combating bullying as a cultural phenomenon. And what better way to do strengthen this ability than by showing young people how they are and can be, now, responsible, positively contributing citizens.

Could an emphasis on citizenship help to create an environment in which young people consider several points of view (victim, perpetrator, witness) in a bullying scenario? What strategies have you used to encourage youth to reflect and act on their values?

-- Jessica Russo, assistant Extension professor and director, Urban Youth Development Office

Create learning environments that bring out the "angel in the marble"

2011-11-28T16:11:11Z

One of the most difficult aspects of working with groups of young people is managing behavior. As adults, when unruliness or its potential ensues, it can be hard not to revert to "adult default," ignoring our desire to incorporate youth voice in order to re-establish a more comfortable level of control.

So how much should effective "behavior management" be about managing behavior, and how much should it be about managing (or really, creating) the environment? To me, the goal of behavior management is not for the adult to control the child -- the goal is for the child to learn a sense of independence and inter-dependence that brings about self-control.

]]> Making a case for the child-centered classroom, Pereira and Smith-Adcock say that "as an individual, the child thrives when encouraged to freely explore and construct personal meaning through making choices for self and experiencing the results of those choices." And in fact, we know from other research that when this need to discover independence is not met, the result is more negative behavior and less motivation.

Interestingly, our English word "educate," from its Latin roots, literally means to draw out of, or lead out of. This implies that education is more about bringing out what is already there than filling in what's missing. I like this -- it removes the emphasis on control of the learner and places it on control of the learning environment. Like Michelangelo, who said, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free," our job in educating young people can be simply to carve away the conditions that prevent young people from making use of and refining the capabilities that they already have. Perhaps this view could help make the "dream" of the ideal learning environment a reality.

Here are some steps I have developed for creating an environment that helps youth learn self-discipline:

Create your vision for a healthy learning environment. Based on a report by Milbrey McLaughlin, the most effective learning environments are youth-centered, knowledge-centered assessment-centered, and community-centered. See a previous blog entry on the ideal learning environment for a summary of these points.

Develop a healthy environment to prevent negative behavior. Create a plan for how you will arrange an inviting physical atmosphere. Discuss with youth the collective needs and expectations of the group. Develop predictable but flexible structures, along with a meaningful, logical sequence of lessons. And above all, plan plenty of opportunities for everyone to get to know each other.

Maintain the healthy environment. Maintaining health is about following through on your commitment to it. How you might consistently acknowledge each young person for who they are and encourage and respond to the good that they show? Involve youth in both maintaining expectations and rules, and assessing how plans and structures meet their needs.

Redirect negative actions to help youth see their "inner angels." Sometimes only a strong intervention can turn harmful actions into a teaching moment. And in fact, not doing so can have worse consequences than the action itself. Consider how you will proactively address negative behavior with individual youth, to help them separate their actions from who they are as a person. Also consider how you might proactively address actions that harm the entire program (such as a crisis, or any way in which the group may have exacerbated a situation).

Do you work to create learning environments that bring out the best in youth? What strategies do you find effective?

-- Jessica Russo, assistant Extension professor and director, Urban Youth Development Office