Temperature check on capstone project

 BLOG POST #4:   How does it make you feel when you see this wide range of capstone projects? Check in with your stress, excitement, motivation, and emotions as you begin to imagine your own work.

 

It gives me hope and ideas about how my capstone may run! I am concerned about what and how my capstone will be focused on.  Listening to the formats folks used, specifically Essence Harrison's, I can take the lead on topics lacking in my organization. As I write this, I want to focus on the leadership council I run with 20 students. Last year, I chose 8 topics for the students to learn and teach. This year, I am diving deep into lesson planning on privilege, intersectionality, power, etc. I am excited to see if this idea works and how to implement it in my project. I want to take the lead on something my organization needs to cover headstrong. We touch upon the topics. The council runs from October to May. There is an overview given to me, but we will redirect to fit my leadership guidelines for young folks of color!

Seeing the examples of other folks, I am less stressed. 

How are we with our youth? BLOG POST #4

 BLOG POST #4- Put the key theories/ resonances/ teachings from these texts in conversation. Choose one takeaway from each piece--what jumped out at you, made you feel/ think/ wonder? How do these learnings speak to each other, line up, crisscross, or complicate? 

What does it cost to take a second and be patient with a student? That question arose when I read the letter to the teachers. I may not be as patient as I would like, and I resonated with reactive responses to things that happen with students. My focus would be making sure people are safe in any and every way, especially for kids. The question in the letter was: How will we try to heal one another, address human needs, and alleviate harm to human beings we see in the world? Another piece that felt fair to read as someone else is the expert. To learn freedom is to teach openness to our students and offer that to the world. 

One takeaway from Sean’s letter was that Democracy requires dispute; the school could have valued his questions, but who knows where those questions may have been taken. Sean, the love letter, and Discrit are complicated crossovers and line up. Sean is the first-hand example of a white ⅞-year-old boy, and Discrit discusses ableism and racism in the conversation. 

In the Distrit piece, the two takeaways were the discussion of the intersectionality of race and ableism, which I highlighted throughout reading each article. I make notes in the index to explain how my understanding is. The chapter on racism and ableism is normalizing interconnected and collusive processes. In other words, racism and ableism often work in unspoken ways, yet racism validates and reinforces ableism, and ableism validates and reinforces racism. I felt the connection between all three pieces then and there. Black folks are 13 times more likely to be removed from spaces than their white counterpart, while both have behavioral and emotional issues. You can understand in the conversation with the letter of love and the piece on Sean that students like Sean are “dealt” with more patience. If Sean was black or brown, he may have responded differently.  District article reminded me of the students I interact with, and you are reminded that there are barriers.

The three readings felt interconnected to me - they were focused on the reactions and the actions of children and educators. We deal with different circumstances and different levels of supported parents/people. The blame should not be immediately placed on the child or the parent. There may be neurological, traumatic, or medical explanations as to why a young person is acting a certain way; medication is not always the answer, but being humble can be the answer. 

Rachel's Pizza of SJYD spaces

BLOG POST #3:   Write up this article in one of two ways:  1) Create a reverse outline of this article. How does the author set up their article chunk by chunk? Or 2) Use the Research Pizza menu to explain how this author approaches their content.

2) Use the Research Pizza menu to explain how this author approaches their content.

I chose to use the research pizza to explain how the author approaches their content because this method is easiest to understand and do! Rachel Clemons focused on methodology, results, discussion, implications, and conclusions to understand social justice youth development spaces. The crust or type of research done for this research article was Qualitative: sampling phases were community selection, site selection, and participant selection. I question if quantitative sampling was done here to make the crust a mixed methods data collected source. Throughout the paper, there is a discussion of percentages and data as an example pulled from Rhode Island Education Data Reporting. The qualitative data was collected by narrowing the city with a varied demographic to youth organizations that engaged in social justice activism to meet with youth workers through open-ended interviews, questionnaires, observation of youth workers in engagements, and research of organization websites. 

Ideology - Sauce

The ideology structure of the research Rachel completes is through a critical theory.  She has conversations with the participants, allowing the lead to be taken from them instead of her guiding categories. The studies were more personal. Those in power ( youth workers) make the truth. Their active work is the research itself. 

Sample tools - Toppings

Rachel used surveys and questionnaires, observations (individual interviews) of youth workers, and artifact analysis as websites to prove her research. 

Through the means of the pizza, Rachel Clemons outlined her research to gain perspective on the critical consciousness and social action praxis in SJYD spaces.

Ideology theory

BLOG POST #2: Take some time to make sure you have a general sense of these different research ideologies.  Where do you feel most aligned in these research ideologies? Then, reflect on how these frameworks might shape your approach to one of the questions you pondered in your blog last week. (“If I were to take a post-positivist approach, I might answer my question this way….  If I took a Constructivist approach, I might answer my question that way.”)

I align with constructivist ideologies. My question from last week was, "What If I could speak to a group of 5 NGOs?" This question is a research approach to understanding non-governmental organizations and how they may be functioning.

If I took a Constructivist approach, I would answer my question by learning what I already know about the NGOs and learning from shadowing and interviewing members of the organization. My prior knowledge, personal experience, and research in the context of NGOs. Constructivists believe researchers need to understand the social context and culture in which the data are produced to reflect the data's meaning to the study. In reality, folks who attend experience NGOs, women, men, babies, and elders may experience the space positively and negatively. There is a gray area in my own experience. If I am coming into the office 

Post-positivism believes the truth is out there; there is only one truth. My question is that quantitative data, where there is a strict experience of data, attendance, and applications. The question itself is not a postpositivist approach. 

If I took a Constructivist approach, I would need a more intense question to be asked, I would need to reframe.

Youth development's process

K- I found the article "Community-Based Youth Work In Uncertain Times" to be affirming. With my background in Youth     

Development and nonprofit studies I learned many underlying truths about nonprofit organizations. The deficit-based language

approach to an asset-based approach has become a way of my everyday language. I am a high school advisor for a nonprofit

organization similar to an Educational Excellence program in its later years after the leadership changes. Our program

has been the face of supporting first-generation, low-income students. Some changes have been made to the

application/acceptance policy over the 34 years. This article speaks to the organization I work with and fellow

organizations I know are actively in our community. The need for programs to support the community with afterschool

and outside school spaces during the summer and school vacation has been in high demand for decades. The article affirms the

mission drift that occurs as donors and funders become more predominant, like the 21st CCLC. I worked as a part-time employee

there during my YDEV undergrad. 

L- I found the “Decolonizing Youth Development” article challenging to grasp and understand. I learned about youth organization

s like Boys Scouts or YMCA and faith-based organizations. Boys were taught to be close to nature through tribal-like activities,

eventually crafting pan-Indian activities to mimic the tribal culture. These are White frontier boys who were given a time and

place to act barbaricly and allowed idiot nonsense in the name of character building? These Christian Ministries believed that

the themes of medieval knighthood would create ideal young men….Hall’s theory positioned Indigenous youth as inherently

different from white peers - cementing settler colonialism and continuing to HARM indigenous communities and their

youth. There was a meticulous way the youth organizations erased indigenous life. 

 

M- I wonder in what ways our activities can revitalize the understanding and connection to indigenous philosophies.

Teacher research questions Blog Post #1 YDEV 560

Coming from my background, I wonder how children in other countries might be learning differently.

1. Has it really changed things for our students? How can we make civics education interesting enough to teach and learn?

2. What are the effects of civics education in Providence, and how is the implementation of curriculum?

3. how students in 9th-12th grade are prepping for the world in India or Asia?

4. What are ways that benefit students' lives in schools?

5. What things can help in their lives post-school?

6. What efforts of tech high schools support the jobs market?

7. Why do we not change our times and 5-day school/work week?

8. When will more emphasis be put on removing guns from people?

9. Can police officers learn to protect the people they serve?

10+11 How do we make scholarships easier and more accessible for low-income students, even for graduates?

12. Where can the master YDEV degree take me?

13+ 14. What is the biggest NGO in the world, and are they really supporting those people?

15. What lessons can we learn from outside countries to better teach curriculum In our country?

16. What ways will our government better the education system and let go off PPSD?

17. Will undocumented immigrants ever find peace in being in the country?

18. Will the Better Fafsa help out undocumented students?

Okay 19. Will the need more snap benefits reach to college students in a more successful way?

20. What ways can we stop cell phones from actively being used in classrooms?

5 what if

What If I was able to talk to speak to a group of 5 NGO?

what if undocumented immigrants had access to immigration process?

What if we change our work week to 4 days, what outcome will have?

What if lessons were tried out in each country in specific areas of the country?

What if

Lessons Learned in a Pandemic

    A month before the pandemic closed down the world, I had decided to move into my aunt's house to give her some company and to give myself some freedom from the responsibilities and small home I live in with my family. My aunt had recently lost her husband, and she was retired. She kept asking me, and I finally caved in. I wasn't sure what living with my vegetarian, ocd, all-natural product aunt would be like. It was a huge lesson!     

   During the pandemic, I finished my classes and graduated in January 2021. One factor that has altered the way I have been since being locked down is the work I have done on myself. I decided to work on myself, be more active, eat healthily, have more meaningful conversations, and, most importantly, understand that life is most important. Living with family is extremely different than visiting and stopping in. I lived with my aunt for 5 months, I learned how hard it had been for her since my uncle had passed and how my older cousin had been dealing with her father's loss. How similar this household and I were. My mom had passed away years before my uncle, and the loneliness that takes over doesn't show up in a family visit but shows up in honest conversation with your loved ones. Stuck in a house of 3 ladies, we dived deep into our grief, sorrow, and healing.

    I have since then moved back into my house, and I have kept my relationship close to my aunt, I visit or call her every week, and we spend time doing things she loves, reading, walking, listening to music, and going to the temple. She wants a company in her life and I support her in that way. Bring her laughter as much as I can, and have an honest conversation about my life. Life is precious, it is unruly. We need to take care of ourselves and those who impact our lives to really appreciate what we have. Do not take things for granted. I allowed years to go by where I took things for granted, and now I appreciate the grounded, authentic, meaningful things life has to offer. Be present, be grounded, be well.