Youth Development Insight

By Savannah Aanerud What makes a leader a great one? My colleague Anna Rose and I recently had the privilege of leading 34 youth and 4 chaperones on the trip of a lifetime to Washington D.C. for the National 4-H Citizenship Washington Focus (CWF) Conference . CWF’s mission is that, "Youth will learn about leadership through the lens of American Democracy." We toured Smithsonian museums, national monuments, and Arlington Cemetery to explore what it means to be an agent of change. While touring the National Portrait Gallery , we explored democracy through the people who have helped shape our country, from poets to presidents and from activists to visionaries. What is a portrait?  One of my favorite definitions comes from the National Gallery of Ireland : "A portrait is an artwork that tells a person’s story. The artwork can be made of any material, from painting on canvas to a piece of performance art!" We saw portraits of impactful individuals such as Benjamin Frankl...

By Karen Beranek In the past year, each and every professional development session I've attended has had one thing in common: the topic of civil discourse! Everyone’s talking about the need for it, the lack of resources around it, and opportunities surrounding it. My colleague Jessica Russo started the conversation on this blog with her recent post, Youth programs can rescue democracy . It has elicited numerous heartfelt comments. I'd like to continue that conversation. Teaching young people how to talk with those who have a different background or view than they have is sometimes as simple as providing a safe place for them to do so. Here are some strategies. Group agreements From the Center for Adolescent Studies, this technique develops expectations for functioning with a set of group norms. Active listening From the U.S. State Department. It's a method in which the listener seeks to understand, suspend judgment and give full attention. Text Talk Revive Ci...

By Jessica Pierson Russo When I hear points of view that differ radically from my own, my appreciation of the speaker’s honesty usually outweighs my intolerance of their views. The balance tips when those views collide with the ones I hold most dear. The temptation then is to want to silence those views; but I know that censorship is not the answer. I think our young people deserve a democracy in which people will hear each other out. The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech. Psychologists contend that self-expression is important to a person’s mental health . Similarly, quality youth development practice says that youth need to feel safe and to have spaces in which to discuss conflicting values and form their own.  A censored environment limits democracy and it limits youth development. But what happens when self-expression makes others feel personally attacked? How can we encourage youth to express potentially controversial views without alienat...

By Trudy Dunham My colleague Jennifer Skuza's new profile photo. Did you add a rainbow to your Facebook profile photo last week?   Did you think twice before making your decision? Was it a risky choice for you? Did you think of it as a meaningful action? Following the  Supreme Court decision on June 26  that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, more than a million Facebook users changed their profile images in celebration. We don’t know how many viewed that action as risky . Likely fewer than those who changed their profiles in March 2013 to the red "equals" sign, the logo of the Human Rights Campaign, which was an early demonstration of widespread support for same-sex marriage. Using social media as a forum for one’s civic activism has been denigrated as clickactivism and slacker-activism -- an easy, no-cost, low-effort, almost meaningless action. One click and you’re done. I agree it is easier – especially for those with busy lives, or who live in co...

By Trudy Dunham Have social media changed how the youth you know engage in civic activities? Are charities and civic organizations too out-of-touch with today's youth to engage them in their communities? Recent research suggests that digital citizenship (regular and effective use of the Internet) is associated with civic engagement and participation in democracy. Further, innovative use of social media has become a key factor in engaging youth (as well as adults) in working and supporting the causes they believe in. We've recently seen evidence of this in news accounts about its use in super storm Sandy and political campaigns. The Internet and its social media tools have already, or soon will change the traditional civic and social organizations in our society. Social media have been shown to powerfully grab our attention. They can dramatically expose us to problems and issues, encourage us to care about them, to want to fix the problem and better our world. For man...

We know that youth programs have public value. But does the greater community know? Recipients of public funds must defend their use of public resources by demonstrating the value to the community, not just the value gained by the individuals who participate. Can you articulate what that is? Have you been doing so? My Extension colleague Laura Kalambokidis works with educators in youth development and other fields across the nation on how to demonstrate the public value of their programs . Laura did a survey of educators that shows that of those who do not infuse a public value approach in their work, the primary reason is that they do not have enough time. To me, this suggests we view this approach as something "extra" to tack onto our plan of work. I would argue that demonstrating public value helps us to prioritize our work and involves changing how we talk about what we do and how we measure the impact of our work. Youth programs have societal impact. Here are a co...

By Deborah Moore From Occupy Wall Street to government and campus protests, to overthrowing leaders -- there is definitely something happening with youth today. I remember sitting in a class last winter watching a live link to the protests in Egypt and feeling like the world had shifted. So much has happened in such a short time, and youth are playing an important role in it. What does that have to do with youth programs? Perhaps everything. This statement by Shannon Service in YES! magazine sums it up for me "After three decades of dormancy, youth activism is again flowering. But today's flower children are a hardy new variety. They're economically, ecologically, and electronically sophisticated. They're also globally organized, dead serious about democracy, and determined to have more fun than their opponents." So my question to all of us is this: What are youth programs going to do to respond? I think the answer may lie in engaging youth in ways we ...

By Trudy Dunham Social media have profoundly changed how we experience our connections with each other. But the connections are more than just social -- they help us to create and contribute to our world. They enable us to participate as citizens in today's participatory culture. In a webinar this week put on by our center and PEAR , Karen Brennan drew on her research with Scratch , a computer programming language developed at MIT for use in education, to talk about the socialization-creation continuum. At the midpoint of this continuum is that space where we are most engaged and productive, doing more together than we could have achieved alone. Several years ago Henry Jenkins and his team at the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT described that midpoint as a participatory culture, as one with "relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one's creations, and some type of informal mentorship w...