Week 1 Readings: KLM

Angela C. Stanley

Week 1 Readings: Understanding Youth Development, Some Conceptions of Youth and Youthwork in the US, and Community-Based Youth Work in Uncertain Times

Know

The three articles focusing on youth work and its position today reaffirmed a few beliefs and viewpoints that I have about the youth, society, and education.  The stigma revolving around young individuals in society is very real and the articles helped me reflect on the connotation regarding the term “millennial.”  Many consider anyone born from around 1979 to 1994, as lazy and selfish (Myers & Sadaghiani, 2010).  I, myself, have experienced stigma in my workplace while expressing my opinion on raising children, I was met with the statement “So there is hope for millennials, after all.” 

Additionally, when it comes to working with the youth, I personally have experienced lack of training and infrastructure, low wages, minimal advancement opportunities, limiting hours, and low respect from other members within the child’s support system.  All these factors that were mentioned in the articles resulted in one major issue within the youthwork field: high turn over rate.

Lastly, the articles reaffirmed my belief that a holistic, strength-based approach should be taken regarding youth development across all environments, despite socioeconomic status, in order to yield the most effective, long-term success rates.  When using the deficit approach, rarely do the results continue long term and, in some cases, such as D.A.R.E., the program creates the complete opposite effects that was trying to be achieved (Rosenbaum & Hanson, 1998).  Therefore, just like the belief in health psychology where health does not merely equal the absence of illness, success does not equal the absence of “problem behaviors.”

Learn

The information I learned from these three articles helped me understand the history and different approaches that have been taken throughout youth development history.  For example, although I was familiar with the tactics of the deficit approach and how it emphasized maladaptive behaviors, I was previously unaware that this was intentionally reactive to the public’s fear of the youth.  Unfortunately, because of these programs, often children were forced to face division in which some kids were “good” or “low-risk” while others were deemed “bad” or “high-risk.”  And so, with the deficit approach clearly failing, yet some children still becoming a “good standing citizen of society,” a question was prompted was to how?  How did these children, despite all the adversity they faced, become such a well-functioning adult?  This sparked the beginning of resiliency research.  The research concluded that resiliency has a high correlation with caring relationships, high, clear, and fair expectations, and opportunities for participation and contribution across all environments.

In addition to these approaches, I also learned the significance of discourse between adults and youth.  Going even further than keeping a professional jargon amongst the children you work with, I learned how very specific wording can have negative connotations and therefore possibly bring about somewhat of a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.  For instance, if a youth is considered “at-risk” or “needing to be saved,” this individual may begin to believe that is all that they are and without a youth worker, or a “savior,” they will never amount to anything so why even bother?

Last, I learned many details that I found interesting such as how the Red Scare had a strong effect on more than just political figures and Hollywood actors, but it also actually forced leadership at the time to resign.  This made me reflect on learning about McCarthyism during my undergrad English class and remember books like the Crucible and Catch a Tiger by the Toe.  Also, I was interested to learn that psychologists coined the term “adolescence.”

More

As I reflect on these articles individually, I find that there is a few topics I am interested in learning more about. After reading Understanding Youth Development, I would like to know why we often limit “high risk services,” such as counseling and crisis intervention, to only “high risk youths/communities.”  It would be interesting to see research that takes a more proactive approach versus a reactive one, so that we can see how readily having these resources may prevent the maladaptive behaviors from emerging.  I would also like to see more research on home life and how parent/guardians have an impact on youth development.  Finally, I would like to know more about how we have evolved over time to define and measure success and effectiveness of programs and pedagogies.

After reading Some Conceptions of Youth and Youthwork in the US, I am interested to understand the business model and how exactly multimillion-dollar corporations are allowed to profit from incarcerations and how would the youth work field look like if we as adults allowed the youth to be included in the design of education.  And lastly, after reading Community-Based Youth Work in Uncertain Times, I am interested in seeing more research on affirming identities and embracing diversity in contrast to approaches that attempt to be completely blind of diversity and consider all equal such as color-blindness and gender-blindness.

References

Myers & Sadaghiani (2010).  Millennials in the Workplace: A Communication Perspective on

            Millennials’ Organizational Relationships and Performance.  Journal of Business and

Psychology, 25(2), 225-238, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-010-9172-7

Rosenbaum & Hanson (1998, November 1).  Assessing the Effects of School-Based Drug

 Education: A Six-Year Multilevel Analysis of Project D.A.R.E.  Journal of Crime and

 Delinquency, 35(4), 381-412, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427898035004002