Head or Heart?  Do we have to choose?  It can feel like you do, especially to avoid disappointment.  As in most things, the answer is not an all or nothing proposition.  Success requires commitment and that commitment is achieved through both analysis and emotional connection.  I am currently facilitating focus groups with youth around topics of youth success, engagement and voice.  Their caution is just that.  “Love us enough to help at our pace.  Don’t love us so much that the goal and/or its achievement becomes yours.” (February 2020)

Currently in 4-H Positive Youth Development we seek to lessen an opportunity gap.  As a means to address this, Community Youth Development programming, that includes civic engagement, often speaks about the impact of social capital.  Social Capital stems from the larger theory of Cultural Capital.  Social Capital is a resource that includes several elements of social well being including trusting networks among people, engagement with institutions, and connections to resources. The impacts of social capital on individual youth includes access to resources and privilege, this can develop a bridge or link to enhanced life skills and opportunity (Bourdieu, 1986).  Yet, critical race theorist Tara Yosso emphasizes ‘community cultural wealth’ which includes types of cultural capital to empower youth beyond White narratives.  These include:  aspirational, linguistic, familial, social capital, navigational, and resistance.  (138)  (January 2021)

It’s March.  It’s officially spring.  And, it’s time to plant seeds. . . almost.

When I returned from Guatemala, I told my dad I wanted to learn to garden.  His specific knowledge of best practices was often simplified to a garden built on hills and trenches that you visited daily.  We didn’t speak much about seed selection.  People who work in all aspects of education often speak of planting seeds, and we also focus on that act itself.  

This spring I find myself asking a lot more about the seed selection itself:

Are you not using seeds at all, but in fact seedlings started by someone else, somewhere else?

Which seeds?  How did you select your variety? 

Where did you purchase the seeds?  From whom?  When?  

Is it the first time you’re planting them?   If it’s not the first time, are you planting them in the same place or a different one?  Both?  

Are they annuals?  Perennials?  

(Spring 2022)

Summer. Sunlight.  Spotlight.  What does it mean to shine?  What does it look and feel like when all your senses tell you the light is too bright?  What does this mean for moving our conversation started in the Spring 2023 blog post about how to increase youths’ vocabulary to express what kinds of support they need and want from adults.  

I engage adults often in conversations that attempt to expand their own perceptions of participation.  This relies very much on the paradigm shift Cain suggests in her book, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts.  She asks us to not use ‘participation’ and ‘engagement’ as synonyms. (Summer 2023)

Title:  Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich.  

A summary of the activity is as follows:  Youth are instructed to teach a computer how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Youth write the instructions. Adults follow the instructions EXACTLY. Participants debug the activity and fix the algorithm design.  (Watch the webinar.)

I had become accustomed to asking during my youth focus groups for a myriad of definitions to assumed words like ‘success’, ‘support’,  or ‘dedication’ mean. So, if you’re wondering. . .

Debugging means: “process of finding and resolving defects or problems in a computer program.”

Algorithm design means: “Creating step-by-step instructions on how to complete a task.”

If you paused from this blog to click over and watch the activity, you most likely returned smiling, because it is funny to see someone attempt to put a knife into a jar that still has the lid on and even funnier to see them stick a knife into the jar and then lift the entire jar to spread across a slice of bread.  

But, what really sticks with me?  (Hint: it’s not the extra creamy peanut butter)  (April 2020)

The first day of spring was March 20, and people laughed about needing thick socks and flip flops, hot boots and short sleeves during the same month.  Somehow March, and this month of April, are both spring and winter.  Both.  And.

Both/and.  It’s a phrase I had never heard before beginning my position with the Division of Extension and it’s a phrase that colleagues use often.  During this period of both spring and winter, I’m recognizing the both/and of several aspects of developing Youth-Adult Partnerships.  Y-AP, is another term after all that is a combination, a both/and, which makes its practice something else entirely in its own right. (April 2021)

In January it is customary to set priorities for the new year AND a key aspect of the Juntos program is creating an educational plan. Juntos centers family.  Nia, a program named after a Kwanzaa principle, centers community.  When I stop to consider this strength of our youth-adult partnerships, I reflect on a slide shared during a session facilitated by Dr. GD Gilmore, “Qualities Not Measured by Most Tests”.

Youth voice and multiple types of leadership are essential to our work and can be done in SO MANY WAYS depending on each person’s interests, talents and skills they want to learn more about.  The last few months permitted spaces that COVID had taken away and yet lessons learned during that time return as important as ever before.

June 21 is the start of summer, the longest day of the year.  In a year defined by a dry pattern, sun shines most days.  However, it’s been uncharacteristically cool.  If the sun is shining, why is there no warmth?  I always say that I prefer cold weather to warm, because I can put more layers on, but only take so many layers off.  As I consider the conversation about Introverts and Extroverts I had with a colleague recently, this preference seems to be directly connected to the layers I put on to keep me protected from social, not physical, interaction. (Winter 2023)

We asked 100 people ‘Name something you associate with an island’.

Vacation

Danger

Empty

I can’t confirm that Family Feud never asked this question. However, community programs and outreach do ask themselves. We choose how to define this island without recognizing the task most days.

We envy those setting off on vacation to tropical islands–that perfect getaway where none of the problems that fatigue us can follow us.

We criticize or fear the island resorts-the examples of how societal structures create inequitable resource distribution and resulting tragic effects.

We plan for deserted islands-the places we hope we aren’t stranded, we need our ingenuity to make them habitable, or in the case of a recent youth activity, spaces that have more assets than we assumed at first glance. (Winter 2024)

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”

–Flannery O’Connor

The same is true of a learning activity.  Similar to a story, the author must provide an environment where the participant can practice skills, learn what information to pay attention to and decide how it can be effectively applied in the future.  Also, similar to story, activities must entice us into paying attention and their strategies to do so must remain, as in a great novel, imperceptible to the audience.  In both cases, Lisa Cron said it best, “Simply put, we are looking for a reason to care” (11). (Summer 2024)