I found I had difficulties with the readings this week. I’m not sure of the root cause; maybe my fatigue has limited my ability to concentrate. Theorizing Young Lives brought up some important points; however, the language used to present the theories and the lack of examples or practical application prevented me from connecting deeply with the underlying messages. I can say the author managed to describe the complicatedness, non-linearity of youth development. She introduced new terms, such as the concentric systems, that allowed for a better understanding of the different complex levels that make up youth experience. The authors main focus, however, was to outline the importance and interconnectedness of biographies, society and time in young lives.
Biography is described as the being. This is a composition of everyday interactions and experiences that make a person who they are. Time, then is seen as a becoming; a movement into the future and changing of space that a person goes through in their lives. Finally, society – society is seen as, in this context, the overwhelming sense of belonging people strives for (particularly in youth interactions). The author explains that our biographies, our present, can interact in complex and sometimes difficult ways with who we want to be and where we want to belong. The author also mentions how the complexities associated with youth identity are often overlooked and standardized in the education system. It is also important to consider how the fast and ever-expanding globalization of youth experience and technology play a role in these three major aspects of youth identity, aspiration and social practices. I remained somewhat confused as to how understanding these three aspects that define youth experience will be applied practically in a classroom. We have completed many discussions on youth identity, personal identity and understanding the complexities of youth experience, so my questions from this reading will relate to the same topic. How do I, as a teacher, foster youth development and encourage community engagement, while considering the complexity of youth individuality in an environment often guided by standardization? It seems that this paper can be used as a mediator between the differing roles of teachers presented in the other two texts we read this week. Theorizing Young Lives seems to portray a message that teachers should work alongside students, while being cautious to not fall into the trap of the continuously regulating ways of shaping youth identities. The video Why High Schoolers Should Be In Charge instead focuses directly on student run programs and responsibility in order to provide youth a sense of stewardship. The presenter in this Ted Talk gave two examples of how he was able to show a sense of agency and responsibility of his own education as a high school student. In these examples, he said that through students creating their own programs and sources of education, they were able to build a sense of self-agency, passion and responsibility that they had not been able to form before. By showing kids they can do something, they would then feel a deep obligation to do something. He continued to say that “high schoolers should be in charge because one day they will be”. Personal responsibility should be learnt at a young age so, one day, young people can be prepared to be responsible for things they are required to be responsible for. While watching this video, I had an overwhelming sense of happiness. I felt so inspired by the work this young person was able to accomplish, and felt everything that came out of his mouth was absolute truth. However, when given a moment to think about what he was saying, particularly in comparison to other ideas presented in the readings, I found myself re-questioning the effectiveness of this approach. I agree that students should be responsible for their learning. I think that students can only truly learn if they are passionate about what they are learning in some way. If they feel responsible for their own education, they are going to get more out of their learning experience. I also think this philosophy can apply to community-based and implicit learning, as well as curriculum-based and explicit learning in a classroom. Nonetheless, I found the video to very much undermine the role of teachers in this process of learning. The way the presenter was speaking was as if the only roles of teachers were to get allow students to use land for gardening or provide a room where students can work. The role of a teacher, conversely, goes much beyond that. I know that my own ability to grow, learn, and feel responsibility for my own education and community came from the support and skill of many caring teachers. I also agree that standardized teaching methods can be, in certain situations, a detriment to a student’s achievement of success. But, teachers can also be an amazing partner in student learning, working with them to reach their full potential, teaching them in ways that they could not have experienced outside of the important teacher-student relationship. Teachers do not just hinder student responsibility; they can indeed foster and support the development of self-agency in students. I think it is critical to examine the impact of teacher’s influence on their student, but we must also work toward making this impact positive and supportive of student stewardship. This relates back to the final paper read this week, chapters 5-8 of Westheimer’s What Kind of Citizen. In these chapters, the author talks specifically about student involvement and how different teacher styles and focuses affect the way students interact as global and community citizens. I found the distinction between participatory citizens and justice-oriented citizens to be quite insightful. In comparing two different schools activism projects with different emphases, it is clear that the type of community engagement can really affect the skills youth are able to receive as developing members of their community. It is also clear that teachers involved in these programs are a major influence on student achievement, involvement and their ability to understand social issues. From this reading, it is clear that the author finds the role of teachers to be extremely important in the development of youth identities and character; however, on the other end of the spectrum of the Ted Talk, there was little talk about the complexities of students as individuals and how their personal experiences, along with complex social pressures and changes, play into how they act as citizens. It seemed that the author was able to categorize students based on their community project experiences and classroom learning without fully considering the individual. My concern is that viewing action as either only participatory or only justice-oriented can be detrimental. Of course, differences between students can, in some ways, be attributed to how they are taught about social activism, and this categorization of student activity is a product of standardized ideologies of civic engagement. Nonetheless, we must work toward understanding the complexities of student identity and position in society and how this plays a role in their experience as learnings. We must also be aware that when working with students to develop their own sense of citizenship, they must feel responsible for the change their society needs. Students must be able to learn from their teachers, but also must be taught in a way that allows them to develop their own passions so they are able to express personal achievement and agency. We must consider learning strategies that allows children to feel a responsibility to participate in helping in their communities, while working toward understanding why social inequality exists and how we can work toward ending these issues.
2 Comments
Daniel Shamess
10/4/2015 11:58:14 am
I 100% agree with what you said in this post. I found the work by Tilleczek to be hard to comprehend and thus difficult to relate to the other works. Likewise, I found the TEDTalk and Westheimer's chapters to be contradictory in their messages which may be purposeful in encouraging one to compromise the two ideologies, but I finished my reflecting with a big feeling of 'ugh.'
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10/5/2015 04:13:11 am
Great discussion and you raise a lot of good questions/concerns. Theory and practice are intertwined and getting underneath these ideas is a great first step in exploring where you are situated and how this might play out in your own teaching and learning experience.
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