How we see + study young people - YDEV 501 #4

 

"Do the best you can until you know better. Than once you know better, do better." - Maya Angelou

    I think the overarching theme of these pieces is relatively similar. We cannot continue to educate in a way that was framed with hatred, ignorance, and hierarchal philosophy. We are failing our children by continuing to operate in ways we know are outdated and frankly not working. This is most apparent when looking at marginalized groups of students and thus should be where we begin. The first reading "Sean: On Being Willful" really hit me in a tough way. I'd be willing to bet anyone who has or does work in a school setting knows a "Sean".....or five. I had several students faces pop into my mind when reading about his insistent questioning, inability to find concentration, and failures within peer relationships. This chapter outlined the school and teacher's inability to find a solution that worked for Sean within their conventional ways of educating. It didn't seem like there was shame put on the teachers - they were doing what they were taught and know - however, it is the responsibility of those educators to find a supportive solution for Sean. I've admittedly used similar strategies in group management and classroom settings in the past and for the majority of children they can be effective - but at what cost and who are you excluding? I think that this chapter is a great segway into the second reading which proposed some more solutions on how to approach children like Sean, who perhaps are not "molding" to the conventional teaching structure. 

    In the reading "A Letter to Teachers: On Teaching Love and Learning Freedom" it began to offer an alternative to previously normalized ways of discipline. Building on the idea that you "can't fight fire with fire", this reading suggests that we meet "disobedience" or "rebellion" with love rather than resistance. Thinking about the social, political, and financial construct of the community around the children is a big piece of this philosophy. Understanding that schools are not isolated entities - but part of a larger world for the students. Many of the methods and understandings spoke of in this reading related back to my trainings in Montessori Education. Maria Montessori began her style of education with marginalized children - either those with disabilities or low-income towns. She found a new approach to education which celebrated the differences between students and honored the child as a whole being in a way that was very radical for the time. Using natural materials and child-led curriculum she was able to educate children who would otherwise be cast to the side and further isolated from society. In a similar way, this article reminds us of the dangers of punishment/reward and isolation punishment. It draws comparisons to the prison system in which freedom is stripped and replaced with blind compliance. She states “if you are preparing young people for freedom, then community is a better place for discipline than solitary confinement” (p.174). Returning to the first reading about Sean and his repeated segregation from the group, it is apparent how this approach can cause further harm and isolation for the child.

    Pulling together both of these anecdotal readings, the last reading was a more academic approach speaking to the intersection of race and dis/abilities in school settings based on CRT. Speaking to how these and other factors that may set a child apart, or not, from the "norm" influence the kind of education given. This article calls for the education system, similarly to the other readings, to look at each student as "whole" instead of labeling them in these ways that have been previously used to isolate and mistreat marginalized populations. It states that educators should "desire to reject forces, practices, and institutions that attempt to construct dis/ability based on differences from normative cultural standards" (p.18). In this way I think it summarizes the philosophy of all the readings this week. If we are to challenge the practices and ideologies of the past, we must educate from a more informed place. We have to understand the damage that our current way of creating curriculum causes, especially to those groups of students who don't fit in to the "norms" established by our society. We know better, so we should do better.

    After reading the first two articles I admittedly was left with the question - how much can teachers be expected to do? I agree, 100% with the ideas and philosophy's presented and examined here, but what about when the school environment is not enough? The writer in the first story observed the differences in Sean's environment at home. In his case he has a supportive, attentive, relatively safe and happy household (although still lacking from children in a two parent home). However, that is not always the case for children who are struggling in school. Sometimes the weight of the terrible side of the world, the unhealthy/fear-based reactions, traumatic feelings, and unsafe environment outside of the school building may be louder than our love. I struggle with knowing that sometimes even our very best, loving, and supportive classroom may not be enough to educate a child in a generalized setting. What then? I perhaps partially answered my own question looking back at the quote I started this post with - all we can do is our best.

    

Defining 'Youth' - YDEV 501 - Blog Post #3

3 Assumptions of Adolescence

"A pivotal and problematic life stage" (Denaturalizing Adolescence, p.146)

1. Hormonally Driven

2. Needing of direction/control 

3. Age Dualism 

1. Over and over we see the narrative that adolescents are "out of control". Insinuating that they are driven by something other than themselves. One of the things blamed for this lack of control is hormonal changes in the physical body during this time. Personally, as a female I felt this assertion when I was younger. It felt as though everyone was "Warning" me about my "time of the month" when I was this age and speaking to me as though this was something that "happened to me" without any of my control or personal autonomy. I was told about the mood swings I would have, I was asked when being "emotional" if it was "my time", etc. The article Denaturing Adolescence states that adolescents are seen as "controlled by hormones, and therefore, dangerously out of control. Thinking about the consequences of this kind of thinking is extremely wide reaching and scary. Teaching children "coming of age" that this means they have no control over their emotions and actions is not only fundamentally wrong, but damaging in so many ways. Will we continue to tell young boys that they can't control their feelings or urges? Will we continue to tell young women that they are defined by their bodily functions? Thinking about settler colonialism and the need to control the narrative of young adults clearly shows where this way of thinking comes from. The idea that adolescents needed to be controlled, to me, is purely political conditioning. At that time, they believed if they controlled the narrative that young people are propelled by things within their body that are out of their control made them easier to manipulate. This is a theme I find throughout most of these assumption of adolescence. 

2. The second narrative I found in the readings is that adolescents are needing control and direction. That they are searching for something and are unlikely to find it without structure and curated curriculum. This seemed to be the assumption particularly for native or non-white adolescents. The article Denaturing Adolescents correlates this idea back to Race Development and comparing adolescents to "colonized natives". It states the ideology that these groups need to "strip their identity off and paste it back on" (p.149). When I was in my adolescents I remember struggling with my identity in society. Trying to fit into the mold that I thought everyone else wanted me to fit, but that I still felt I didn't. Adults in my life told me what I needed to do, feel, and say. Then we criticize adolescents for pushing away from this mold. It "erases the ability of those in the sate to describe or know themselves and places the priviledge and responsibility on adult experts to explain adolescents" (p.149). I remember feeling so misunderstood, like none of the adults "got me". To me, this speaks to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we are told at this state in our lives that we cannot find our own direction or that we have to fit a certain mold, of course there will be resistance. 

3. The third assumption I gathered from these readings is that adolescents are both children and adults. When it is beneficial for adults and society to view them as children, they will. When it is beneficial to see them as adults, they will. This is especially true for adolescents of native or non-white decent. They are expected to carry themselves as adults, while being told that they have no idea about the world or that they will be abused/targeted if they act otherwise. To me again, this speaks to a dynamic that keeps adolescents (and especially those who are not white) in a position of manipulation. The curriculum and societal expectations of those in this stage of life are designed to make you feel as though you have no control. In this way, the adults in power are able to manipulate you into behaving how they see fit. If we actually designed programming to empower those in this state to think independently, see themselves as whole as is, and create a world better than what they grew up in, it would threaten those who are currently in power. In this way, it is clear that programming for this age was developed to create compliance, and nothing more. 

Roots of Youth Development - YDEV 501

     First of all, this was a very interesting read to me for several reasons. A large one being that I am about 40% Cherokee. I was adopted from Arkansas when I was a little over one years old and my birth father was almost 100% Cherokee. It was a closed adoption, however this was the one piece of information that my birth parents wanted to pass on. It is also a large reason why they decided my adoptive parents were the right family for them (and me) since my father's side of the family is connected heavily to the Mi'kmaq Nation up near the Canadian border. Growing up all I knew of my identity before my adoptive family was that I was born in Arkansas and that I was part Native American. When I was a teenager and would visit my relatives up North, many of whom would leave their homes on the reservation to come and meet us, I asked my Nana what they refer to themselves as and she said they preferred to be referenced as "First Nation" rather than "Native American". Not knowing if this is the same term other people of similar decent would prefer, I generally use this term. These gatherings and anytime I would see my Nana (great grandmother) and my great Aunts is how I learned about this culture. I rarely tell people this part of my heritage because I am white. I identify as white and appearance wise I do have that privilege. Both of my adoptive parents were white and I grew up in a community that was very diverse, however I never knew much about this part of my culture beyond my relatives stories. I remember sobbing one day to my father because my cousins were teasing me and saying I wasn't a member of the Cherokee Nation - my father corrected them and always instilled a sense of pride in me about my background. 

    That being said, the article titled "Decolonizing Youth Development: Re-imagining youthwork for indigenous youth futures" was extremely interesting and saddening to me. What I knew of this topic and how this structuring of youth work came to be was simple and based on my own observations. I specifically remember a teacher telling a group of us in elementary school that we couldn't play "Cowboys and Indians" anymore because it wasn't politically correct. While I didn't understand then, I did remember this when I was older and began to understand race and privilege (or lack of) in this country. I learned in school and through my great Aunt about some of the ways they would assimilate First Nation children into "normal society" and always knew it was a part of this history. However, reading in this article the extent to which this was carried out was sickening to me. Learning how the ideas of Race Development shaped both First Nation education and that of the "regular population" was sobering. The way that these ideals were carried through in so many different ways both in formal education and in outside groups such as The Boy Scouts was shocking and at the same time explained so many things about the framework of many youth development programs. All I could think about when reading was how heavy the contradictions were and how deeply indoctrinated in hate and ignorance you would have to be to believe them. However, the article says that these ideas of assimilation and Race Development "legitimized and nationalized" programs that were structuring themselves in this way which shows how wide reaching this was. 

    As I read, I thought about how deeply ingrained these ideologies still are in youth development programs. We have come a long way from the blatant hate and racism of the past except....have we really come that far? How sad it is that we've developed our children in this way and with these philosophies for decades and yet we are more sick, depressed, and angrier than ever. One quote in this article that gave me pause was "these primitive people are but grown children, living in closer touch with nature (Armitage, 2007, p.52)". When I read this line I realized how simple and absolutely amazing that sounds and how similar it was to the way I tend to live my life. While many of my relatives share painstaking stories of traditions gone, stories burned, and people lost, I can't help but think how wrong we were. I believe we will (and some already have) realize the fault in our judgment and the error in our ways. Dismissing the energy flow of the natural world is something that developed white cultures have continuously been so keen to do. How's that working out? In my mind, it never has and never will. I'll end with one of my favorite quotes: “If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it.” - David Sobel

YDEV 501 - Blog Post #1

    When the pandemic took off in 2020 I was working in Massachusetts as an Intensive Care Coordinator. In this role I worked with families who had children with severe mental health concerns impacting every area of their lives. I worked as a point person to pull together doctors, teachers, therapists, family, and other supports in order to create a holistic approach to treatment. It was an extremely rewarding job that was also emotionally and physically draining (as most jobs in youth development fields are). These families welcomed me into their homes and I worked with them there or wherever needed sometimes 2-3 times a week. When I made the decision to move to Rhode Island for my relationship, it was right in the thick of the pandemic - May/June of 2020. Working those last couple months with my families (most of whom were extremely low income), knowing I was leaving, and not knowing what would happen next in the world was one of the tougher times in my life. Hearing mothers crying on the phone to me that they can’t find a food pantry that delivers or they don’t know how to get their child’s medication because they don’t have a car and and/or are deathly afraid of their family becoming sick were just daily conversations. 

It was a strange dichotomy for me as I was living through my own first world-wide pandemic and fighting with my own anxieties and mental health. However, when I went to work not only would it put things into perspective for me and remind me of so many of the privileges I held, but also there was no room for my own thoughts and feelings. Others took priority and that both helped me through and also allowed me to be numb to what I was feeling (which is not always recommended). Strangely enough as all the adults in their world were struggling to make sense of anything, I noticed that the kids I was working with were mostly…..happy. Those lucky enough to live in families without abuse/neglect, and even some who unfortunately weren’t as lucky, always found a way to muster up a smile and silly story or laugh when I’d stop by. One family brought all their mattresses down together in the family room and “camped out” for weeks. The child said he’d never done anything more fun. Looking back now, those few months were such a whirlwind of the best and worst that the universe and humanity could offer. It was chaotic and scary, isolating and convergent, so many things at once. To me, it was an amazing lesson in resiliency that was taught to me by the youth I surrounded myself with. 

Now, I am in a vastly different position in child care. I am helping to shape little ones and am grateful for that everyday. I try never to take it for granted. We are still certainly feeling the effects of the pandemic in the school with ever changing regulations and un-regulations, relentless anxiety and cleaning routines, class closures or zoom conferencing (yes, with 2 year olds) and more. Again, I think my experience early on in the pandemic both scared me and inspired me. I think that it’s a great reminder of the weight that children can carry, but never should have to. It helps me appreciate the time in my classroom with my kiddos and give parents some extra grace and patience with their anxieties and new routines. While there were certainly moments in the pandemic that were devastating, hard, and confusing, I am trying to reframe this as I try to do most things, into a lesson. Children are adaptive, resilient, empathetic, and so many other things they rarely get credit for. I learn my most important lessons from them, almost always.