How We Stereotype Youth and How To Combat It

In the article called Framing Youth by Dr. Lesley Bogad one stereotype I found in the article is as follows, "All of these headlines suggest that all youth — undifferentiated by gender, race, class and the like — are in crisis in spite of the very white, and very male demographics of the recent school shooter" This stereotype shows that some of the stereotypes involving youth do not matter even if the research points more towards one demographic, the world points more towards youth as a whole. Sometimes teens are seen as one group of people even though they have many different subs sections of teens.  

In the article Redefining the Notion of Youth by Shirley R Steinberg it talks about one story in particular in the beginning that contains one stereotype not about youth, but about people who work with youth. In this story one youth's father did not want his son to be a specific character or in the play in general because of the nature of the child's character. In the end of the conversation the father asks Steinberg, "What is wrong with you... No one likes teenagers. Only someone with something wrong inside wants to be around them that much." I think that that is a stereotype that people make about youth workers, that something is wrong with us for wanting to work with children all the time because children can be difficult at times, and working with children is a gift that you need to have to be able to handle the job. Bu those of us who work with kids cannot image not working with them at all. 

Adults Think Black Girls Are Older Than They Are started off with a story about a young African American girl that was arrested for using a student Metro Pass because the police though she was too old to be using one, she was 15 years old. In relation to this teens gender, and race people think she is older than she is and take action on it.


A memory I have from experiencing prejudice as a child had to be when I was in the sixth grade. We were learning about 9/11 and my class had just made the connection I was Arab American and connected it to the fact that the war on terror was started by radical people who so happened to be from the same geographic location as my family was from. I was called a "Muslim terrorist" for the rest of the school year, and had to leave the school I was at due to the fact the administration staff did not step in to help with the bullying. It was horrifying really. I was also told many times by adults in public places to not speak my natural language in public because it was considered "offensive". I started speaking Arabic in public again when I was in the tenth grade and I just smile and wave to people giving me weird looks. Basically my message to my younger self would be, do not worry about what others tell you, you cannot change where you were born and your natural language.

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KLM Chart 

ABOUT

COMMUNITY NETWORK FOR YOUTH DEVELOPMENT
CNYD YOUTH DEVELOPMENT GUIDE 

2001

What I Already Know

What I Learnt About YDEV History and Practice

What I Want To Learn More About

I know that when you use approaches like the deficit approach, you are missing a whole side of YDEV. When you just focus on fixing numbers, you can come off as not as genuine.






I learned that YDEV came out of a period of America trying to fix young humans issues and they called that the deficit approach. According to the article the deficit approach is, “...narrowly focused programs designed to target and “fix” spe-
cific problem behaviors, such as teen pregnancy or drug abuse.
Program success was defined as the reduction of these behav-
iors in the target population of young people.” (1)
One question that I have about the deficit approach is that do they consider that all youth do not participate in those types of behavior and how did they support them to become better humans?
I did know about Resiliency Research and how that affects our current attitudes towards youth work. This is one of the methods I use when I help plan a new campaign for work.




One thing that I did not know formally is the three aspects of Resiliency Research which are, “caring relationships; high, clear and fair expectations; and opportunities for participation and contribution.” I knew that those were important, but I did not realize that they were the three main aspects of it however.
What local programs switched from a deficit based model to a resiliency based model if any? Did most programs adapt, or just shut down after this research was found.
“Youth development theory and practice can serve as a bridge between
school and community-based efforts.” (14)
I knew this before because at work we do this all the time. We have so many friends that come into our school programs because of birthday parties, or vice versa.







I would love to know more about federal and state programs for after school funding that could help us in the future! Sounds Super interesting.

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"Who Makes Bail" 

Young People Exploring Social Justice Concepts and Explaining Them Through Art


http://welcometocup.org/Projects/UrbanInvestigations

When I first looked at the syllabus my eyes were taken captive by a young man standing behind a transparency with a tracing of Dr. Martin Luther King. To me this photo really resinated with me because when I was in high school we had to do a similar project where we had to create an image where we had to "shadow" someone that we one day hoped to emulate. What I see in this piece of artwork is a student that is in a classroom like setting holding up a transparency over his face of MLK, like he emulates MLK, and one day wants to be like him. It appears to have been traced then photographed in such a way that it shows his face through the sheet. I think that without even reading the caption of this youth organization, I was already interested in what they do. The project was put in place by an organization called The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and was lead by Caits Meissner and 
http://welcometocup.org/Store?product_id=196

  • Fielding Hong the students that worked on it were, Michael Afriye, Ty Greene, Samantha Rosa, and Andrew Silverio. This project was a survey they took in a school in the Bronx based on the fact according to CUP, that only 1 out of 10 people in New York could afford the bail that the judge posted for them.   They then created a booklet of their findings mixed with art as well. I was actually surprised after I followed the picture to the website and saw their project, for any person still in high school this seems extremely difficult to do. Not only is it so excellently done, but it also was research intensive and showed a great deal of hard work, stamina, and research. I found it interesting that you can buy their work to support other projects put on by CUP. The link to purchase the product is right under the picture. 


Here is another example of CUP's awesome work with groups of children in New York! 
Add cahttp://welcometocup.org/Store?product_id=209ption