Youth-Adult Partnership Spotlight-October

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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 that build capacity and value self-determination with an emphasis on relationships.  Both frameworks operate with a lens of connecting young people’s intersecting spheres as referenced in Brofenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory.  Moreover, Family Engagement and Youth-Adult Partnership provide interactions that create and strengthen skills and attitudes through which, as applied by Etienne Wenger in education, ‘communities of practice’ become foundations of success.  For example, common vocabulary, or practices like those needed to navigate high school or post high school next steps. 

In preschool years, much attention is paid to establishing the relationship of parents as learning partners in which parents both learn skills and reflect on their attitudes as they guide their children to do the same.  A key example of this are the parent asides now commonly practiced in library storytimes.  My library uses five key words to keep adults in their community of practice: read, write, sing, play, talk.  However, these practices are as necessary through childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, as youth not only practice navigating their choices, but also their rationale behind those choices.  Through small group and partner reflection as well as structured interactive practice sessions, Juntos does the same as those library storytimes guiding parent learning and parents as guides in learning for next steps after high school.  For specific examples about how Juntos navigates this partnership, read more here https://juntos.dasa.ncsu.edu/parents/  

University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension Positive Youth Development Institute is excited to offer the Juntos Program to Wisconsin families. Juntos, which means “together” in Spanish, seeks to engage Latino middle and high school students and their families in a series of workshops focused on education.  This curriculum is a family engagement program or an implementation of parents as partners in Youth-Adult Partnership.  It exemplifies the benefits for youth when caring adults provide focus and structure to particular interactions in a way that is responsive to youths’ individuality and sense of agency.

Objectives:

  1. Increase family engagement that leads to students’ educational success
  2. Increase the sense of belonging among Latino students and families in their school and communities
  3. Increase Latino student success by improving student attendance and grades, and achieving high school graduation
  4. Increase the percentage of Latino students attending higher education

The mission of the Juntos program is to help Latino students achieve high school graduation and attend higher education.  I was enthusiastic about this curriculum because of its emphasis on family engagement and relationship building, which in actuality is facilitated around dimensions of Youth-Adult Partnership: 1) Youth are involved in meaningful decision-making, 2) Adults intentionally support relationships with youth to help them develop, 3) Youth and adults work together as partners, 4) Youth are engaged in communities.  For more information about Youth-Adult Partnership you can refer to the Community Youth Development Resources tab.

Resources

For the resources this month, I would like to take the opportunity to shift focus, slightly.  Generally, the recommended resources are about the practice of Youth-Adult Partnership.  However, for this month, they center on identity, a foundational piece for each dimension of Youth-Adult Partnership.  In honor of Latinx Heritage Month (September 15-October 15), the following resources explore aspects of Latinx identity.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension Positive Youth Development Institute is excited to offer the Juntos Program to Wisconsin families. Juntos, which means “together” in Spanish, seeks to engage Latino middle and high school students and their families in a series of workshops focused on education. Part of this coming together for the Division of Extension is uniting programming across its Institutes’ content areas designed for Latinx audiences.  You can find up to date information about Juntos and all Institute Latinx programming at https://www.facebook.com/JuntosWisconsin

As stated on their website, the creation of a Latino Task Force is to help advance Extension’s mission “to teach, learn, lead and serve” the Latino residents of the state intentionally and effectively.  You can explore a variety of their resources here https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/latinotaskforce/resources/ .  These resources include a needs assessment.  

Associate Professor Armando Ibarra is a lead member of the Latino Task Force.  For adults looking to increase their understanding of Latinx identity, his nonfiction work, “The Latino Question: Politics, Laboring Classes and the Next Left” illustrates how Latinx communities across the country and Wisconsin continue to redefine ethnicity.  https://chicla.wisc.edu/2019/07/29/armando-ibarras-latino-question-wins-2019-best-book-in-latino-politics/

For adults working towards their own understanding while working with youth, several previously referenced websites provide well researched and diverse resources.  These include: 

 

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