Youth Development Insight

By Nicole Pokorney Last week I was reminded of the importance of just sitting down and talking with another person for the sake of honest, open discussion and networking.  I sit on a national committee with staff from all over the country, from Hawaii to Vermont. We come together once a year face to face and while we have two full days of business to tend to, we also take intentional time to go out to dinner and talk without an agenda. It's not an option - it's essential. Dinner time is as important as the business. It is an opportunity to finish some business items, but the atmosphere provides a time to get to know each other, dialog about system-wide topics, and create a bond that helps us to work stronger and more efficiently.  Plus there is laughter and joking! Collegiality is vital in the youth work profession. It's easy to isolate ourselves and forget the benefits of networking with other youth development professionals. Building relationships for a support syst

By Brian McNeill Meetings can be important and useful, or they can be a waste of time. How many of us have sat in a meeting and thought, "Is this meeting ever going to start?" or worse, "Is this meeting ever going to end?" The typical American professional attends more than 60 meetings per month, and about half of that time is wasted. Seventy-three percent of professionals do unrelated work during meetings – perhaps because they are not truly needed in them. (MCI white paper Meetings in America: A study of trends, costs and attitudes toward business travel, teleconferencing, and their impact on productivity (Greenwich, CT: INFOCOMM, 1998.) There are a lot of elements that go into building an effective meeting. When working with youth programs, it’s important to train young people to run meetings effectively . But when adults model bad meeting behavior, it trickles down to the young people in the room. If we are to model effective, productive and good meeti

By Margo Bowerman I've been a youth development professional for 17 years now. And it is not just because I get paid to do this work that I proudly claim the title of a professional. How do you define "professional?" There are all sorts of professionals in society: youth development professionals, professional football players, professional politicians, and professional ecologists, among countless others.

By Sara Langworthy I've been a singer as long as I can remember. As a kid, I used to sing solos at church but was too scared to speak to strangers who complimented me on my voice. Ahh introversion! But as I grew, my love for music grew with me. From middle school on, I was pretty solidly a "choir kid." There's something deeply soul-filling and rich about joining my voice with others that's hard to describe. Simply put: singing together connects me with others in a way that nothing else can. And as it turns out, the data bear out this belief.

By Rebecca Meyer Lots of recent events have me wondering how to encourage and foster empathy. Empathy is when one person is able to understand how another person is feeling. This sense of understanding is not something we are born with, it is a skill that we learn. The ability to empathize is critical because it allows us to understand other people. It's an opportunity to show caring and compassion; one of the 5 C's of positive youth development . And, it's an essential skill for creating an inclusive world. We as youth workers have an important role play. We can facilitate strategies to develop and nurture empathy in young people. Embedded in hands-on experiential learning processes, the following strategies can help support development of empathy in youth:

By Jessica Pierson Russo We want so many things for our young people—confidence, a sense of hope, a successful future. But perhaps the greatest gift we can give them is a love for learning. A love for learning drives us to continually strive for understanding and can nurture a sense of hope and confidence as we arm ourselves with new knowledge that in turn can ensure a more successful future. A love of learning probably won’t solve all problems. But it can have a deep impact on youth. What is that impact? And how do we instill such a sense of satisfaction in learning that young people crave more?

By Jennifer Skuza Minnesota has the nation's largest Somali American community, with census numbers placing the population at about 57,000, followed by Columbus (Ohio), San Diego, Seattle and Atlanta. Kenya hosts the largest number of Somali migrants (both refugees and nonrefugees) of any other country, according to UN estimates .

By Judy Myers, Extension Educator — Children, Youth & Family Consortium ,  Extension Center for Family Development This post first appeared in  Family Matters , the newsletter of the University of Minnesota Extension Center for Family Development. Imagine that you are an adolescent who feels unsafe everywhere you turn — at home, at school, and in your community. This is the situation for many transgender youth who are at higher risks for homelessness, abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and suicide than other gender nonconforming young people. What are the physical and mental health risks that transgender youth confront and how “big” of an issue is this?

By Kathryn Sharpe As the demographic makeup of the U.S. undergoes a sea change of diversification, 4-H and other national historical legacy youth development organizations face a critical question: What will it take to stay relevant in the 21st Century? This year, as part of the Northstar Youth Worker Fellowship , I undertook a research project to explore this question. My conclusion? We must work to create equity in our programs. Many legacy organizations were created to reach out to the marginalized young people of a century ago, such as isolated rural children of immigrant families or low-income youth living in urban tenements. Over time, they have come to serve primarily the majority population. This may be because they were founded with the goal of assimilation, welcoming youth of the dominant culture and excluding those who didn't fit the mold. Now, as the youth population diversifies, merely seeking to engage more diverse participants and staff is not enough. We mus

By Betsy Olson Informal social support networks with non-related adults are important resources for young people working through the good times and the difficulties of life. Positive connections to adult volunteers, staff and mentors result in positive outcomes for youth. But how can we measure this? I have suggestions for how to measure strong connections between youth and the caring adults in their lives, based on the benefits of  positive youth-adult connections: 1. They include informal interactions Similar to our expectations for friends we expect adults that care about youth to be interested in them beyond the formal connection they have through the youth program. So for example if a girl is connected to an adult because that adult is her soccer coach, that coach must be interested in the details of her life beyond soccer. The coach must be interested in the girl on a personal level, her life, family, or school work. Checking in on a young person’s day engaging in inf

By Mark Haugen We've got a plan. It's a good plan. A tremendous plan! I don't mean to brag, but it is one of the finest. The need for this is clear. It's important for our organization, to me personally, and people say the change is needed. Their insights make the plan even better!  So why isn't my plan working out? Is it my fault? Am I failing as a leader because I'm afraid? Nope. That can’t be it. I'm not afraid to make a mistake or do things differently. The plan is based on great ideas, worked out with the group. Our conversations have shaped the idea into something beautiful. I’m not afraid of the challenge, yet it feels like I’m failing. Why isn't my plan working? I’m frustrated, so I reflect on the core of leading change: The Problem: Can I name the change? Do other people see and agree that it is a problem? The Vision: Do we have a shared vision of how it could be addressed? Is it realistic? Shared Hope: Do people share a sense of hope

By Joshua Rice In Minnesota 4-H we've recently been doing a lot of thinking about recruiting first-generation participants -- those whose parents were never involved in 4-H. One question that tends to float to the top of the discussion is how to attract and engage minority populations. This led me to ponder, what are some innovative strategies that could attract first-generation minority youth into 4-H?

By Kyra Paitrick This summer the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota has taken a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which when built would convey thousands of gallons of crude oil across the Dakotas, Iowa and Illinois, across sovereign Indian nations. Standing Rock is a sovereign nation and argues that they should have been consulted prior to any approval of the pipeline. According to the National Congress of American Indians , “Self-government is essential if tribal communities are to continue to protect their unique cultures and identities. Tribes have the inherent power to govern all matters involving their members, as well as a range of issues in Indian Country.” The current issues with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the Dakota Access Pipeline are a good example of how the tribe can exercise their sovereign rights and why these rights are so important to the tribes. To further their effort, a group of youth from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe embarked on a 2,0

By Samantha Grant I will admit that I’m a data nerd. Even so, I might skim through an evaluation journal and read only the articles that are relevant to my work. But recently, I got the summer 2016 issue of New Directions for Evaluation and read it from cover to cover. I was completely sucked in. I have never before read an entire issue.

By Joanna Tzenis   The benefits youth reap in youth programs are well understood. High-quality programs provide enriching experiences that broaden their perspectives, improve their socialization, enhance their skills and support healthy identity development -- especially during adolescence. The specific benefit to Somali American youth is less well understood, because they are less likely than their peers to participate in organized youth programs. I would argue that it's important to engage them in youth programs, particularly here in Minnesota, home to the largest Somali population in the U.S.

By Joshua Kukowski  I recently attended a 21st Century Community Learning Center summer conference in which the keynote speaker spoke about how context means everything in youth work, and yet we frequently overlook it when working with young people. The speaker's own context was amazing, inspiring, and tough to hear, yet compelling. It affirmed my own conviction that a young person's context is powerful, and that out-of-school-time programs have the power to tilt young people in the right direction.

By Mina Blyly-Strauss, Research assistant - Children, Youth & Family Consortium, Extension Center for Family Development This post first appeared in Family Matters, the newsletter of the Extension Center for Family Development. Image: Mina Blyly-Strauss I came to my CYFC graduate assistant position as an educational professional whose early work was with Native American teenagers. This is a demographic group often noted for some of the largest educational and health disparities in the state of Minnesota. More recently, I have focused on early childhood as a critical time to interrupt cycles of recurring disparities and to start healthy developmental trajectories.

By Brian McNeill When I'm out working with community organizations, I hear this complaint from many local leaders: "There are no young people stepping forward to replace me on this committee!" They seem frustrated that they can't leave a community committee because there's no one to replace them. This made me wonder, is there really a leadership gap, and if so, why? Here’s what young people said in a recent survey by the National 4-H Council : Most young people (81%) think leaders today are more concerned with their own agendas than with achieving the goals of their organizations. Seventy-six percent say leaders are focused on different priorities than what matters most to them. Half of youth rate government and political leaders as having weak leadership (51%), among the highest relative to other groups of leaders examined in the survey. Overall, weak leadership is related to not accomplishing what is promised (59%); not working collaboratively (56%); and

By Anne Stevenson Do we pay enough attention to youth voice ? During the busy summer months and as we wrap up our program year, youth voice is easy to neglect. I'd like to give voice in this blog to a young person - my daughter, Kati - as she reflects on the completion of high school, her involvement in youth programs, and the role of caring non-parental adults   in her success. She's a recent graduate of Fridley High School and the Minnesota 4-H program. She will soon be attending the University of Missouri and majoring in journalism. I think we all need a 'Thank You' speech The end of any major life commitment creates a moment to look back at past months or years and ask, "What have I done that has made me a better person than I was yesterday?  Even more importantly, what influenced how and why I did those things?" I'm a recent high school graduate and I’m asking these questions. I've had a successful career as a student and leader in m

By Nancy Hegland During this past year, I have watched my three kids being coached by adults in a variety of settings. Whether it was sports, music or showing livestock, these coaches invested their knowledge in my children’s growth and development. This summer, I’m paying more attention to my children’s coaching than most mothers do because I’ve recently taken a course called Coaching for Excellence .

By Sara Langworthy Newtown. San Bernardino. Charleston. And now Orlando. In the wake of intense tragedies, these places have stopped being just cities. Their names have become grief-laden synonyms for terror and loss. So, how should we talk to youth about terrorism and mass shootings? Speak honestly and encourage questions Experts in psychological responses to trauma recommend talking honestly with children and youth about these events, while avoiding sharing gruesome details. Opening the door for conversation can help youth understand it’s okay to talk about their reactions to these experiences. Encourage them to ask questions and answer as honestly and appropriately as you can. Given the age of non-stop connection to social media and technology, it’s important to monitor the dosage of exposure to these outlets in the wake of traumatic events. However, understand that youth may reach out to their social networks to help process their feelings. Use this as an opportunity

By Jennifer Skuza "Imagine being forced to flee your country in order to escape to safety. If you were lucky you had time to pack a bag. If not, you simply dropped everything and ran. Life as a refugee can be difficult to imagine. But, for nearly 20 million people around the world, it is a terrifying reality."  ( United Nations Refugee Agency ). World Refugee Day just happened on June 20, 2016. I have have had opportunities to work with refugee communities throughout my career. Over the past few years I have been working with Karen communities in Minnesota . Many people aren't familiar with the Karen or how people come to be refugees. Here is some background.

By Margo Bowerman I had the good fortune to grow up in an environment with a wide variety of things to do and plenty of free time. I loved competitive team sports, and as a student I played competitively through college and beyond. Today, though, many young people's time is monopolized by sports and for some, even the very young, it's only a single sport - even though the research says that's not good for them.

By Rebecca Meyer  Thinking of science as fun may bring youth to an activity, but they'll like it even more when they get to know more about the scientific process, challenges, and even the failures. Effective science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education demands balancing fun, interest-building activities and attention to the authentic aptitudes and dispositions that prepare youth for professional careers. All too often we emphasize the fun-factor and minimize the notion that "science is hard." My colleague, Margo Bowerman, blogged about this recently: "I’m no good at science!"

By Jessica Pierson Russo We need to talk to young people about race more - not less. A recent study suggests that minority and white children avoid talking about race. They learn this "color blind" approach from adults, and avoiding the issue only widens the divide. Studies show that talking to young people about race is important to their development. Understanding one's own racial and ethnic identity is important to developing a positive social identity .

By Karen Beranek Recently families have been questioning the value of youth activities, as seen on the parent blogs and social media sites starting with "Why I don't pay for" and ending with: gymnastics, volleyball, band, basketball. Blogger Shad Martin has a good example with " Why I Don't Pay for Dance Anymore! " Martin lists many good reasons why parents should involve their children in these learning experiences. But in my opinion, he has missed an important one - program quality.

By Amber Shanahan Graduation is a joyous and proud occasion filled with anticipation of what's to come. But emotionally, it's a mixed bag -- anxiety, apprehension, grief, fear or sadness may live alongside relief, joy and delight. One graduate's next steps and outlook can look quite different from another's and so can their attitudes about their future. Some may be thrilled to say goodbye to the comforts of home to explore parts unknown, but others may feel apprehensive about their new found freedom, and a few may have no plan in place at all -- causing feelings of unease, pressure and confusion. No matter the emotion, we as youth workers and caring adults can both acknowledge the spectrum of feelings and help youth prepare to step into the big wide world. The experiential learning model  is a tried and true way to guide discussion by focusing on what has been done, what skills have been gained and how these skills can be applied to future endeavors. Experience

By Betsy Olson CC BY-SA 2.0, Katy Warner Continuous improvement seems to be the new normal. Each year, funders, stakeholders and youth participants expect our programs to grow and strengthen, not to mention our own high expectations as youth workers. One tool in our tool box to help our programs continue to build and improve is interactive evaluation or feedback mechanisms.

By Anne Stevenson Imagine an after-school program in which second graders learn about chemical change by making pancakes. Or a club in which kids in fourth through sixth grades build a  Rube Goldberg machine for a county competition. Or a group of teens re-engineering an underwater robot. How do you, as the adult guiding the learning experience, facilitate inquiry to best engage them and challenge deeper thinking? Adults  may feel successful in creating a “space” where questions are encouraged, yet they feel challenged with how to further facilitate group learning, guide youth but not give them all the answers, and help deepen the learning experience with content or higher level thinking skills. These are strategies that will work in any learning setting, even if you don’t work specifically with STEM programming. Inquiry-based learning is as an approach that includes exploring the natural or material world through questioning, discoveries, and testing the questions in the se

By Joshua Rice My colleague Molly Frendo and I visited Bangladesh last month to consult on how to improve agricultural training in that country. Our hosts in the  Department of Youth Development asked us to identify youth empowerment needs in the agriculture sector and outline the resources and interventions needed to close gaps and steps for implementation. Program development is an aspect of my job that I am passionate about. I enjoy identifying a need or missing element within a community and then constructing programs to address them. I follow a four-step process: identify, develop, facilitate and evaluate.

By Cathy Jordan Fueled by Richard Louv’s popular book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder , and supported by the organization Children & Nature Network, (which Louv and several others co-founded in 2006) a worldwide movement has been gaining traction to reconnect children to the natural environment. More and more research is being published suggesting that nature play and nature-based learning provide children with benefits across the age range and across diverse developmental areas including: physical health, mental health, learning, motor development, cognitive development, and social-emotional learning. However, there is a lot more we need to know, particularly about the questions of what works, for whom, how, and under what circumstances. Answering these questions will inform the practice of educators, educational administrators, youth workers, youth program developers, policy makers, planners, and designers, among others. I have t

A major political strategy to address educational disparities has been to raise the aspirations of young people with a low socioeconomic status (SES). Case in point: This entertaining video features a rapping FLOTUS encouraging youth to "go to college". I don't dispute the core message -- that going to college is a way to discover one's intrinsic value and professional opportunities, and yes, young people should go to college. But two key assumptions implicit in this video (and in many U.S. initiatives to address educational inequities) are just plain wrong.

By Kate Walker While we often talk about "bridging research and practice," too often that bridge is a one-way street aimed at getting practitioners to recognize and use the research being conducted. But if we want more research-based practice, we need to engage in more practice-based research. We need more  research aimed at understanding effective practice from the practitioners' perspective , as they experience and enact it. We need research that is wholly committed to generating useful information that can inform and improve daily practice.

By Margo Bowerman This is one of the saddest statements I hear from young people. I can almost guarantee it’s not true. When I talk to them, they’ve done things in science that I didn’t do until much later, and they can explain it better than I!  So why don’t they see themselves as science learners?

By Samantha Grant It’s well into February so chances are that your 2016 New Year’s resolutions are a thing of the past. 52% of respondents in a study by Richard Wiseman  were confident in their ability to succeed when setting their resolutions, but 88% failed. That’s not a great statistic! As an evaluator, I work with teams to set goals for their youth programs at the beginning of each program year.

By Joshua Kukowski At the school my daughter will attend in a few years, recess is only 20 minutes long. I have fond school memories of conquering multiple snow hills during recess, and of wishing that I had more time for it. According to the National PTA, my school boy desire was a healthy one -- 20 minutes is not enough. Today I am an educator working with multiple youth programs. Recently, while on a mentoring site visit with a partner organization, I witnessed two contrasting events:

By Kathryn Sharpe Photo: Maricruz Lozano On Wed. Jan. 20, just two days after we commemorated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy, hundreds of middle school and high school students in the Twin Cities took part in a walkout  called, “Mi Familia No/Not My Family”. They were protesting recent raids and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeting Central American migrants, many of them families with children who came to the U.S. fleeing violence in their home countries. The remarkable aspect of this protest was that it was initiated and planned entirely by high school students, and they mobilized youth from every background and experience, both those directly impacted by this issue and allies.

By Nancy Hegland “You don’t climb mountains without a team, you don’t climb mountains without being fit, you don’t climb mountains without being prepared and you don’t climb mountains without balancing the risks and rewards. And you never climb a mountain on accident – it has to be intentional”.  Mark Udall, former U.S. Senator from Colorado, now working with Outward Bound . Turning the calendar to 2016 causes me to reflect on the past year and make efforts to do some things better and with more intentionality.

By Brian McNeill Mentoring from a caring adult can make a huge difference to a young person’s development as a future leader. The lucky ones among us can point to a time when a piano teacher, someone in church, neighbor or teacher took the trouble to give us guidance and pass along some leadership skills. These “relational role models” are critical to developing leadership skills, particularly during adolescence. I benefited from the mentorship of a variety of adults as a young person, and I’m now on the Minnesota 4-H citizenship and leadership team. Our county ambassador program engages youth in leadership in their local areas. Our team includes 4-H county program coordinator and an adult volunteer, and we hope to engage more leadership mentors to work with the ambassadors. This is not just a nice thing to do. Studies show that humans learn from good role models. The National Resource Center for Youth Development  encourages youth to be involved in programs fostering positiv

By Amber Shanahan For more than 30 years, Youth Teaching Youth has been a prime example of a cross-age teaching program. In cross-age teaching, teens are not just assisting an adult teacher or informally sharing experience s,but facilitating an entire learning experience by teaching curriculum and fully managing a group of younger peers. Cross-age teaching can also enhance social and emotional learning for both teacher and learner . Youth workers often ask those of us on the 4-H YTY team how they might start a cross-age teaching program of their own. Chances are, your program is already infusing some components, but there are 10 essential elements you need to define in order to do this well. 1. Dedicated Adults Who Support Teens Strong and consistent support from a dedicated adult staff member or volunteer ensures that teens are fully engaged while teaching (doing), reflecting, and applying and provides safety and continuity. 2. Active Teen Recruitment The 4-H YTY progr