Youth Development Insight

By Trish Olson , Extension Center for Family Development This post first appeared in Family Matters , the newsletter of the Extension Center for Family Development . Hot Buttons from Cultures Connecting. Have you ever attended a conference where, when someone asks you afterward “What did you learn?” you drew a blank? Such was not the case with the Children, Youth, and Families at Risk (CYFAR) conference I attended in Washington, D.C. last week.

By Jessica Pierson Russo I’ve been thinking about curiosity and how to spark it. My colleague Anne Stevenson recently asked why the innate skill of asking questions tends to drop off as we move through school and into careers. This prompted me to look a bit more deeply into how we can more intentionally develop curiosity as a skill in our youth programs.

By Jennifer Skuza There is something so rewarding about seeing your name in print as an author. You may think about youth continuously, do the work every day, hone your practice and even conduct applied research but even so, when you publish, you receive validation from peers that shows your work contributes to the field of youth development.