Youth Development Insight

"R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find out what it means to me" and to you

2012-11-07T22:22:42Z

Back in 1966, Aretha Franklin had a big hit song, R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Even if you weren't born back then, you probably know it, and maybe, like me, when you hear it, walk around for the rest of the day singing the chorus, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T: find out what it means to me..." The song became a hallmark for the feminist movement in the 1970's and remains relevant today, especially in youth work.

Young people say that respect is vitally important and is something they don't get much of from adults generally, and specifically from teachers, parents, police, and policy-makers.

]]> I would say that a lack of respect seems to be the underlying cause for virtually every societal problem -- youth violence, teen pregnancy, school dropout, discrimination and prejudice against people of various ethnicities, religions and sexual orientation, gangs, bullying, social and civic disengagement and disconnected, and so on.

So why aren't we talking more about the importance of respect in society?

Going as far back as Thomas Jefferson and the constitution, the respect of individual rights is described as a fundamental virtue of the constitution and a moral imperative for democracy. Yet there is relatively little research about how children and youth become respectful. How does it play out between people of different ages, ethnicities, and roles? When and under what circumstances is reciprocal respect expected or required? How can we increase respect among our fellow human beings? Many seem to agree that it is a learned attitude and behavior shaped initially in the home and reinforced by society and media.

So what can one do to instill or increase intentional respectfulness?

Programs and interventions designed to teach respect all seem to believe that respecting others begins with respecting one's self. While one could imagine a young person with low self-worth speaking and behaving respectfully, it seems a good place to start. The ability to view things from another person's perspective -- often called role-taking ability -- seems a prerequisite. It provides a foundation for recognizing that even though others may not have identical perspectives, experiences and beliefs, they have value. Respectful relationships are built upon courteous communication and teamwork skills, patience and trust, and the humility and understanding that comes from admitting mistakes, apologizing, learning from experience and moving forward.

Ultimately, respect or the lack thereof underlies not only negative youth outcomes, but is at the core of all relationships. This is true not only between people who are thought to be somehow different from another (age, race, socio-economic status, rural/urban, sexual orientation, religion) but also among people who don't have any obvious categorical differences, whether in the work place among co-workers, between family members, neighbors, etc.

How does respect play out in your program, in your organization, in how you vote? How is it that such an important human characteristic garners so little research? What have you found useful in teaching and learning about respect?

-- Rebecca Saito, senior research associate

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Youth, for a change!

2012-06-28T17:00:00Z

Last week I had the great pleasure to speak at and learn from a group of 200 youth, youth workers, administrators, funders, policy makers, police officers and researchers in Milwaukee, at a conference called "Youth/Adult Partnerships: Engaging Youth in Community Transformation," organized by the Center for Urban Initiatives & Research. The conference focused on, and modeled youth engagement as a philosophy and strategy for community change.

If you know me, you know that youth engagement is a cornerstone of my work here at the Youth Work Institute. The conference organizers did an incredible job of taking a leap of faith and having youth speak on panels, perform and lead poster sessions about various community issues they had researched. And you could feel the change-a-comin'--oh yes, you provide the opportunity and young people will lead the way.

]]> By the end of the day, folks, young and old, were ready to get organized, to commit to work together to enable youth to lead the way for Milwaukee.

Conference participants talked about creating a youth-adult partnership project in which teams of youth and adults from the various providers and ethnic communities within Milwaukee come together and do a city-wide community mapping project, both as a vehicle to increase youth engagement opportunities and for the individual people and groups to come together as a force for "Youth, for a change!" A great resource about youth as change agents is "Core Principles for Engaging Young People in Community Change", by Pitmann et al.

Milwaukee has long wanted and have attempted to connect program providers so It was a goose-bumpy kind of experience for me to see this group of fairly disparate individuals coming together spurred on by the notion that perhaps what Milwaukee needed to get organized was to stop waiting for the adults to get it together but rather to flip the paradigm from "youth as participants" to "youth as leaders with resources and skills."

Where have you seen youth break through barriers where adults have failed? What are the supports needed and challenges faced when letting go of some control and partnering fully with younger people? Where in your program, organization, neighborhood, life and community are there opportunities to utilize young people's knowledge, skills and wisdom to ensure a wide range of ladders of engagement?

If you have the opportunity, ask young people with whom you work about their views on what it takes to work well with adults, what challenges they've faced and how they've been addressed.

-- Rebecca Saito, senior research associate

What would you ask young people?

2012-02-15T18:00:00Z

If we created a regular poll of young people in Minnesota, what would we ask? What would they want to be asked?

During the late 1970's and early 80's, Diane Hedin and I and a few others did something called the Minnesota Youth Polls out of the Center for Youth Development and Research which existed at the time at the University of Minnesota. The (sometimes) annual polls collected data from young people around the state about various topics that were relevant to them, such things as:

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their views on school and school discipline

the threat of nuclear war

their future aspirations

politics and public issues

We would analyze the data, choose the best quotes, and write up and print these youth polls and then disseminate them for free.

With today's technology, it would be much easier to do this now. I remember doing by hand, a "content theme analysis" on every open-ended question on every survey from the youth polls, and we had to talk about the number and percentage of responses, versus the respondents when we described the qualitative data from the youth polls. I guess we still might want to do that, especially for the focus group data.

The polls always combined qualitative and quantitative data, which gave them the ability to explain not only the breadth of data from closed-ended questions, but also the depth of understanding that open-ended survey questions and/or focus groups gave us. The reports were always full of quotes and photos and you really came away understanding what young people believed on various topics, and how much they agreed and how they differed. It was a lot of work!

So, if we were to re-instate the youth polls, what should we ask? Where should we begin? If you have access to a group of young people, especially teenagers, would you please ask them what they'd like to be asked and share that with us? Or tell us what you'd be curious to learn about them. We may get the chance to do it, and want to be ready for that opportunity. Thanks man!

-- Rebecca Saito, Senior research associate

Wake up to the expertise of older youth

2011-10-26T17:00:53Z

In preparation for a workshop I did recently on mentoring teenagers, I googled "mentoring older youth" to learn about current research and practice. Virtually all of the links that came up made the assumption that older youth were troubled youth, or high-risk youth, e.g., "juvenile delinquents," pregnant and parenting teens, youth in foster care or with parents in prison. What is that about?!

It's ageism, plain and simple. There is such a pervasive belief that teenagers are not to be trusted, are "screwed up," are something to be avoided or "dealt with" rather than that they are creative, ever-changing, exciting, cool people with strengths and expertise. You see this not only in the research that is conducted but also in the news, movies and TV, conversations with friends, family and neighbors, as well as where we spend our public dollars (youth intervention versus youth development).

]]> Gisela Konopka and other youth development proponents enable us to see experimentation, creative license, struggles with varying values, ideas, and perspectives as necessary for healthy development.

So next time you see a young person doing something that makes you uncomfortable, remember that trying on new identities, unusual hair styles or clothes, bumping up against current values and cultural norms is expected, normal and healthy for young people. It's how we figure out who we are, what we stand for, what matters to us, what we're good at and what we need to get better at. Ask yourself whether the behavior is merely troubling to you, or indicative of a troubled person. If the former, dig deeper into your own value assumptions; if the latter, and you are fortunate enough to have a relationship with this person, state what you see and feel and ask how you might help.

Come on people, fellow researchers, practitioners and policy-makers: Let's invest in the healthy development of young people and let's make room at the decision-making table for people of all ages. Young people have such great insights, connections, knowledge, and expertise. Teenagers can be great researchers, media experts, youth development and engagement experts, marketers of youth programs and opportunities, friends and mentors. For those who work in youth development, there should be no end to the ways in which young people's expertise can be utilized in doing our work. How can you create opportunities for youth leadership?

-- Rebecca Saito, Senior research associate

Ka-ching! Pieces of the youth engagement puzzle fall into place

2011-03-22T01:30:32Z

At our latest public symposium, Priscilla Little talked about research on engaging and retaining older youth participation in youth programs. During that event, there were a couple of times when I could almost physically feel, even hear, pieces of the youth engagement puzzle fall into a place; a kind of "ka-ching" sound.

In a landmark study on engaging older youth, Little and her colleagues at the Harvard Family Research Project identified two program variables that were significantly related to high-retention programs. These important variables were: multiple levels and kinds of leadership opportunities, and staff got to know youth outside the program.

]]> Leadership opportunities
The HFRP study confirmed what Theresa Sullivan found in another soon-to-be-published Minnesota study on youth engagement. (For a preview, watch this 2008 presentation). A common feature of successful youth engagement programs was that their programming grew with their participants. In other words, successful programs provide developmentally linked leadership opportunities with a range of levels of responsibility and authority. Ka-ching. This was balanced by supportive training, coaching, and opportunities to succeed and fail.

Gisela Konopka said that teenagers are explorers by nature; it's a time of trying on new roles and identities. "Leader" is one of the roles adolescents need to try on. They need opportunities to practice and learn effective leadership. All program leaders -- even in those programs that aren't designed as some big fancy youth social change effort -- can look at their own programs to ask whether they provide multiple and different kinds of opportunities for young people to find themselves, work hard and demonstrate their passions, expertise, voice and leadership.

Getting to know youth outside the program
While I was driving Priscilla around during her visit she told me that to her, one of the most important findings of the study was that the most engaging programs had staff who got to know what was going on in the lives of their participants outside of the program. This is so obvious but it is so profound. We now have empirical evidence to confirm that youth workers can make a difference simply through the relationship they have with each young person. The relationship must be authentic, respectful and reciprocal. Ka-ching.

This can be harder than it sounds. I was recently trying to facilitate a discussion with young people who were so occupied with their phones that I got bugged and asked them all to put them away. I realized later that I probably would not have done that if they had been adults. So instead of exhibiting respect and authenticity, I had been authoritative. Ouch.

The rings of engagement, which I developed with Theresa Sullivan, diagrams out the interconnected factors of engagement. I believe that the need for engagement and challenge apply to not only to youth, but to youth workers, and indeed all people. We all need opportunities to find our passions and strengths, multiple levels and kinds of voice and leadership, to care to be challenged and to feel supported. I believe that we especially need this as we navigate the sometimes murky waters of youth-adult partnerships.

How do you engage youth in your program? What is your reaction to these research findings?

--Rebecca Saito, senior research associate