I started working with NYFC Youth Advisory Board (YAB) back in the fall of 2012, when they were undergoing a significant transition period. Here they are almost a year later, with another round of elections under their belt (and thankfully with a codified system for breaking ties this time!). YAB has never lacked for Read more…
[For Sabrina] Tisch Office of Career Development (TOCD) provides students in the arts with very specialized services that the Wasserman Center is not equipped to offer. There is, for starters, the fact that creative resumes look very different from the standard resume organized primarily by experience. But the primary challenge of sending Tisch grads out into the world is preparing them for non-linear career trajectories. To this end, TOCD offers two main resources: career counseling and a mentor network. (more…)
[For Rob] All in all, Chris Nodder’s User Experience Fundamentals for Web Design course on Lynda.com was very helpful for getting me to think about how I would like to approach building a web-based product/service (more on that later). But one bit of advice Nodder mentions twice over two hours bothered me Read more…
Today on the Brian Lehrer Show developmental psychologist Jeffrey Arnett stopped by to talk about the phenomenon of emerging adulthood. Arnett is the real deal: His research has fueled the study of emerging adulthood and he also tirelessly advocates for a sympathetic regard for millennials and for the expansion of institutional Read more…
[For Candice] Have you been making your way through the articles in Emerging Adulthood? There is one particular article (I won’t publicly say which, but you can probably pick it out) whose authors seem to set up their experiment just so by identifying what to them are the most salient Read more…
Last week I attended the WPTI training for social workers on workforce development. Its objectives were to connect social workers with each other in order to compare the challenges they faced connecting youth to workforce development programs, and for them to learn directly from the staff of those workforce development programs how they can better prepare their young people in care for success in them. My pen was flying almost the entire time as I tried to keep up with the conversation at my table. More on that later, but first:
Two definitions of “workforce development” from the trainer:
I like how the latter doesn’t overload the individual job seeker with all the responsibility for career success. For populations with very specific needs, it is just as important that employers be aware of those needs, and also for the community to do what it can to support its young people.
And now for the meat and potatoes: What are the challenges that you as a social worker face in trying to connect your young people to the workforce? (more…)
What’s more, as Hannah’s Story intimates, this “parent problem” will not be solved on the level of the individual, but with broad social change. If you haven’t been following the Times’ coverage of Carroll Academy, start here and here. There is a ton more in the archives, but you will Read more…
I’d planned on blogging about what I gleaned from yesterday’s annual New Yorkers for Children Vocational Conference for Youth in Foster Care, but today a couple different folks have asked me about my approach to engaging youth in the classroom, so I thought it would be helpful to write instead about how I came up with my rites of passage activity.
Good teachers come in all stripes, and my particular talent is being able to make complex ideas accessible to young people, and to do so with a modest measure of creativity. In my rites of passage workshop I use an anthropological lens to understand coming of age ceremonies and tribal rites of passage. Now I myself did not study anthropology until I got to college, but I’ve seen that is entirely within reach for high-school aged students to make use of its tools. [Warning: Very long post, so I highlight the takeaway at the very end.] (more…)
I can count on one hand (actually, one finger) how many nights of uninterrupted sleep I’ve enjoyed over the last five or so weeks. It’s been incredibly important for me to figure out how to manage this change, since usually I’m a terrific sleeper who optimally gets at least seven hours of sleep a night. In case it helps anyone else, here are some of the ways that I’ve been coping: (more…)
The highlight of any given week is easily whenever one of my advisors visits me at the Alley. You can imagine my elation when all three arrive together: magic happens! I just finished typing up the minutes to our last Minds On Fire advisory meeting and can’t help marveling at everything Read more…