This is one of the many gems from sociologist Corey Keyes‘s keynote at the 6th Conference on Emerging Adulthood. He was explaining the concept of flourishers: those individuals who report that “every day” or “almost every day” they experience happiness, but less so for emotional reasons (feeling happy) than from psychological Read more…
[For Candice and Nahjee] I wish you ladies could have joined me for Lisette’s talk, “Multi-contextualism and the Consumption of Higher Education,” because I know both of you would have really enjoyed it. Giving you a digest below. We can dig into all this more deeply when we see each other next, because I would love to hear your reactions.
Lisette made a very credible case for the dishearteningly low college graduation rates of the latino student population being a result of certain cultural pressures rather than a lack of academic preparedness. In other words, it’s not that latino students aren’t capable of hacking college-level courses; it’s the fact that within the latino community young people take on very adult roles within their families, and this sense of obligation—and very real responsibility—often gets in the way of attending to the competing demands of college life. If we understand young latinos’ desire for parental closeness and their role in contributing to the family income, then all of a sudden the phenomenon of high-achieving latino students dropping out of selective colleges in order to attend the community college close to home makes sense.
What enables Lisette to arrive at these insights is by considering the problem of college persistence through the lens of multi-contextualism. (more…)
Credit: Lindsay Adamski
The second retreat workshop, “Bank Robbery,” came wholesale from MacGregor’s book. It’s an activity designed to lay bare the communication styles of a group by requiring it to solve a crime. Everyone got two or three unique clues, which they had to share orally, without writing anything down or moving around. YAB, in other words, had to talk this one through. And they had 25 minutes to do so.
I had no idea if they were going to be able to figure out the mystery in time, though I informed them that the process would be illuminating either way. YAB spent the first ten minutes trying to arrive at a reasonable method for sharing their clues. They tried going around in a circle, then they attempted to jump around the group by linking seemingly related clues, and then they argued about whose clues were the most important. Lindsay, Amy, and I kept eyeing each other. I don’t think any of us were optimistic about YAB coming to a solution.
But then something happened about halfway through the process. (more…)
The neurotic lesson planner in me always arrives to classes or workshops with a surplus of material because as a young teacher one of my biggest nightmares was to run out of things to do and—heaven forfend—have to wing it in the classroom. I went into the YAB retreat hoping to get through three team building activities. All of them were brand new, so I was a little nervous about inaugurating them and seeing how they would come together in practice. In the end we had to cut the 15-minute communication skills activity I’d planned and run a bit into the post-workshop hour. But Amy, Lindsay, and I were all expecting this retreat to be as much a learning experience for us as it would be for YAB, and we ended up being extremely pleased with the results of the team building activities.
We kicked the weekend off with “What Do You Bring to the Table,” a workshop idea I adapted from Mariam MacGregor’s Teambuilding with Teens. I designed this activity as a way for everyone to focus on their fellow YAB members’ strengths and also to learn why they are valued by their peers. Here is how we went about it: (more…)
Two friends now have mentioned they thought of me while reading Jill Lepore’s latest New Yorker piece. The news brings a wistful smile to my face because in my past life I wanted to grow up to be Jill Lepore. She is the rare scholar who builds bridges effortlessly between history Read more…
Sexuality educator Deborah Roffman was kind enough to share with me specific advice for working with youth in foster care. She noted that professionals who work with this population must meet the five core needs of children and adolescents, and do our best to see that foster parents and birth parents Read more…
This is from Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, a book that had been languishing on my reading list for months, but which I finally picked up last week for my semi-secret project(!). What I love most about it is how the authors flesh out a very Read more…
My identity programming has somehow found itself at the bottom of the priority list this past month, but I wanted to share an idea that started rolling around my head a few weeks ago for dissecting gender identity in a workshop setting . Drawing from anthropology (again), I plan on asking 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…)
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…)