True Beginnings (are after the beginning) I looked forward to working on a Saturday. True, I was generally cautious with my hours, but the hour and a half was designed to be an intersection of existing programming and opportunity for two state initiatives built around youth leadership and youth-adult partnership. The planned hour and a […]
Virtual Learning Community Update You haven’t heard from the Virtual Learning Community since our summer calendar, but Positive Youth Development in virtual spaces has continued to develop and grow. Since summer, we’ve had opportunities to transition formerly face to face events, collaborate to create new activities, build up support, and launch the website! To continue building out […]
What Matters When It Comes to Mattering In January many youth and adults write goals. At the basis of those goals is an important element of youth development work, mattering. We write goals to matter to ourselves. We write goals to matter to others in our lives. We write goals because we believe meeting these […]
It’s Okay to Celebrate Within the organization, Division of Extension, 4-H and Community Youth Development share one house, the Institute of Positive Youth Development. When we, as staff, ‘walk out the door” of that house we seek to serve youth and the adults that serve youth. Sometimes those adults are youth workers and sometimes they […]
See Me For the natural world in many ways, fall means preparing to slow down, and in some cases, hibernate. When it comes to our challenging context, COVID-19 and community work, the sense I am getting in my meetings with organizations around Rock County is that the opposite is true. Somehow this fall is filling […]
Parents as Partners in Youth-Adult Partnership Parents and caregivers are young people’s first teachers. School districts and community based education programs have embraced the idea of Family Engagement in their curriculum selections and facilitation for the very reason that we in Positive Youth Development understand that Youth-Adult Partnership works. Both guide and support meaningful interactions […]
When the Goal is Hope “It’s never been this bad.” “That’s not the program. Enrollment will be down. No one will stay.” “Everyone’s tired. They can’t create something brand new.” “We don’t have the resources. We can’t connect.” These are words I hear these days. But, I don’t hear them from youth. I hear them […]
Dropping Weight: Redefining Our Goals for Ourselves “Were you an athlete in high school?” someone training at my gym asked me. “No. I played volleyball, but I don’t know.” I let my voice trail off into the floor where I was positioned to finish the current exercise. Though I had played an organized sport, I […]
(Active) Listening Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate in conversations with youth ages 9-12 grade. The themes of the conversations were based on current events and connected to the underlying content of racial equity and social justice. College aged youth lead these conversations. What were the adults assigned to do? To listen. […]
What’s Next? Is my cactus dying? What a question? But, I’m serious. When I turn my computer on to work in the morning, I worry. Is my cactus dying? I can see the plant where I left it in March, atop a bookshelf in the center of my office. The question matters on more than […]
Distance versus Space In the middle of April, My dad walked into the kitchen while I was pouring my coffee. “Everybody’s ordering their seeds now. All backed up. Never heard of that before. Glad we got ours already.” I nodded. Everyone gardening, I considered. What does that mean? What will that mean? What will we […]
Debugging In March, I watched a Brown Bag Webinar developed by University of Minnesota Extension and NDSU Extension Centers for Youth Development. It was entitled, Coding without Computers. I was attracted to the title initially for two reasons. First, “Coding”: whenever possible, I push myself to embrace STEM, because it is not a content area […]
