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Adam Fletcher
Bow Wow's Internalized Adultism
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I don't like to speak to pop culture too often, but every now and then I turn on CNN.com in the morning for background noise. In the following video from CNN.com rapper Bow Wow, age 21, is promoting young people voting and the significance of these elections to young people today. My beef is that he refers to 18-25 year olds as "kids" and "these young kids." I'll write more about internalized adultism later, but in the meantime, here's Bow Wow: Embedded video from CNN Video
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| September 29, 2008 | 9:09 AM |
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Working Together Willing
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"Our ultimate aim is not desegregation from a legal aspect. We seek the kind of integration where men come together willingly, not because there is a law." Dr. King spoke this idea in June 1958 in the midst of the early Civil Rights Movement and not long after the court-ordered desegregation of Little Rock's public schools. I think the powerful idea behind this quote is one of self-ownership, demanding every person to want integration because that is what they want, not because someone said they had to do it. Today, fifty years after King spoke these words at a convention in Omaha, they ring true. Unfortunately, it often seems like we live in an America that seems largely without the moral compass that guided King and his army of nonviolence. Luckily, today I was reminded that is just not true. I spent several hours this morning with about 30 high schools students and adults from schools across Washington State talking about a different type of discrimination than what King was addressing. However, I believe the lessons were the same. The participants at the Puget Sound ESD Student Diversity Summit were talking about racism, discrimination and the realities of changing schools. It was that last note where I was invited to chime in: How students and adults can work together to change schools. I led several groups through a process of recalling, sharing, reflecting, and critically examining their educational experiences. We then collectively brainstormed the barriers to student/adult partnerships in schools, and identified many places throughout the learning experience where they'd be useful, if not critical, to every student's success. After that participants called out what they thought were the most important ways students and adults could work together - tomorrow - to create safer, healthier, more effective learning opportunities for all students and adults in schools. What did they name, you ask? Respect. Communication. Trust. Hopefulness. Connectedness. These words get at the core of meaningful student involvement: Rather than relying on a few token activities or a sweeping strucultural change in schools to signify and represent student voice, these students saw the core of meaningfulness as a culture. They saw that the values and traits people have in schools today is what needs to change. And for me, that's the point of Dr. King's speech that day in June in Omaha. Let's move past hoping somebody will change something, and get to the core of what we can change in ourselves and in the immediate world around us. Waiting for the system to *poof* change isn't the right path. We must take personal responsibility for creating and sustaining the new learning environments we want to succeed in. We must start having the hard conversations it takes to actually go there. Only then are we truly living the dream.
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| September 28, 2008 | 8:09 AM |
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Learning from Skateboarders
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I talked with a group of students carrying skateboards at a middle school the other day. I was visiting the school for work, and afterward, heading out to the parking lot I ran into this group. "Hey, where do you guys skate around here?" There were two girls with four boys. "We go down to a park. Its like four blocks." "How long have you been skating?" "Like four years." "Five years!" This group wasn't more than 13.  What is it about skateboarding that makes people do it all their lives? Here on the wild streets of Olympia there are more than a hand full of 30-somethings rolling around, not in hardcore skater gear, but in hipster clothes and all this 30-something clothing. These are folks who've been riding for more than 15 years. And this says nothing of the people who make money from the sport. What are the lessons we can learn from skateboarding, basketball, baseball, or any of the other activities we learn as children and youth that carry that interest into our adult lives? What does Little League baseball and junior soccer have that draws parents in to support their childrens' activities? There is an idea in there about the value of the activity, about the team or collegiality or community within that activity? I think that youth voice, youth involvement, youth activism activities can and should learn something from these pinnacles of suburban hype. What is it?
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| September 25, 2008 | 9:09 AM |
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Spreading the Word
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One of the things that amazes me is the spreading awareness of my work. Despite my lackadaisical efforts at promoting myself, friends from across the U.S. and around the world continuously let me know they saw my writing, they heard my ideas or they ran into someone running a curriculum or program I wrote. At the risk of appearing, here are some of the citations I've collected: - Bryant, J. and Daniels, S. (2007) "Power, Voice, and Empowerment: Classroom Committees in a Middle Level Language Arts Curriculum," ''Voices from the Middle. 16(1), September.
- Dalton, L., Churchman, R. and Tasco, A. (2008) "Getting Students Involved in Creating a Healthy School," ASCD: Health School Communities Whole Child Initiative.
- Reed, B. (2008) "Research Brief: Student Engagement Gains Ground". Northwest Regional Education Laboratory.
- Rudd, T., Colligan, F. and Nalk, R. (2008) Learner voice: A handbook from Futurelab. Futurelab and ESSA.
- Raynolds, N. (2008) "Learning to Change the World" in Le Panoptique. May.
- Delgado, M. and Staples, L. (2008) Youth-Led Community Organizing: Theory and Action. Oxford University Press. p 59, 66, 202.
- (2007) Student voice: A historical perspective and new directions. Paper No. 10. Victoria State Government. Department of Education Office of Learning and Teaching.
- Mahoney, K. And Zahorsky, R. (2007) "Parties falling short on tapping youths," USA Today. December 28, 2007.
- Manefield, J., Collins, R. and Moore, J. (2007) Student Voice A historical perspective and new directions. (pdf) Victoria State Government Department of Education.
- * "Toward the Pedagogically Engaged School: Listening to Student Voice as a Positive Response to Disengagement and 'Dropping Out'?" in In D. Thiessen & A. Cook-Sather (Eds.) (2007) International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School. Springer.
- "Stressed-Out Students-SOS: Youth Perspectives on Changing School Climates", in In D. Thiessen & A. Cook-Sather (Eds.) (2007) International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School. Springer.
- Commission on the Whole Child. (2007) The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
- Joselowsky, F. (2007) "Youth Engagement, High School Reform, and Improved Learning Outcomes: Building Systemic Approaches for Youth Engagement", ''NASSP Bulletin. 91''(3). pp. 257-276.
- Yost, W. (2007) "Student school board reps are being heard" in Sacramento Bee. January 25, 2007.
- Blanchard, A.P. and Harms, B. (2006) Transforming The High School Experience: The Practitioner's Guide to Small Learning Communities. Trafford Publishing. p 36.
- Babiak, P. (2006) "Manufactured Cynicism: A Review Interview of Against the New Authoritarianism" in SubTerrain Magazine 5: 44, pp. 43-45.
- (2006) 36th Edition North Carolina Youth Legislative Assembly Final Report. North Carolina State Youth Council and State of North Carolina Youth Advocacy and Involvement Office.
- (2006) School Connectedness and Meaningful Student Participation. US Department of Education.
- Greiner, G. (2006) "Everybody Wins!" ''Wondertime Magazine.'' Spring.
- Bohan, S. and Manekin, M. (2006) "Youth community activists size up a toxic threat,"] InsideBayArea.Com. 11/16/2006.
- (2006) "Hand in hand or toe to toe? Mall-teen dynamic evolves," in St. Louis Post-Dispatch. November 20, 2006.
- Holcomb, E. (2006) Students Are Stakeholders, Too!: Including Every Voice in Authentic High School Reform. Corwin Press. p 34.
- Jenkins, E.W. and Pell, R.G. (2006) "The Relevance of Science Education Project (ROSE) in England: a summary of findings." Centre for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education, University of Leeds.
- (2005). School Improvement Process Guide. Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
- Neal, G. (2005) "Student reflections on the effectiveness of ICT as a learning resource," Paper prepared for presentation at the AARE Annual Conference.
- Wheeler, B. (2005) "Getting youth on board," National School Board Association.
- Flutter, J. and Rudduck, J. (2005) "Student voice and the architecture of change: Mapping the territory," Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. p 2.
- Giroux, H. and Searls Giroux, S. (2004) Take Back Higher Education: Race, Youth, and the Crisis of Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Era. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. "
- James, G. (2004) "The Teen Ticket" in Edutopia Magazine. Spring.
- (2004) School Culture: An Introduction. (2004) Gates Foundation Small Schools Project.
- (2004) Abstracts handbook. Education and Social Action Conference. p. 104.
What particularly excites me is that this kind of usage is resultant from 5 years work in which I traveled nationwide and internationally to promote the message of youth voice and meaningful student involvement. The publications that have cited me have included my writing focused on cooperative games and volunteerism, too, which I have really liked writing. The question for me is how I can assist others in promoting their messages, too. The Freechild Project listserve has been a fair tool for spreading international messages about youth voice; is there another avenue that can be as useful?
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| September 23, 2008 | 10:09 AM |
| September 22, 2008 | 1:09 AM |
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The Role of Intensity in Youth Activism
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Empowering young people to create social change happens best in intensely personal, intensely local, intensely focused opportunities that engage children and youth in deliberate, meaningful action and learning. None of these things can happen independently of each other.  One of the best examples illustrating this is a recent entry on the Highlander Center blog that details what happened at their " Seeds of Fire Youth Leadership Camp" this July. This is how it fit the bill: - Intensely personal: There were 20 youth and 6 adult allies
- Intensely local: Youth represented the immediate region around Highlander
- Intensely focused: Participants studied Dr. King's nonviolence program, learned about social justice movements worldwide, and focused in on issues from their region
I first uncovered this formula in 2005 when I began researching youth action programs for the Washington Youth Voice Handbook. In that study I sought to uncover the threads that bind together all the different types of youth engagement activities that happen in this state. I have only seen that pattern repeat itself since then, as studies from the Movement Strategy Center (pdf), Barry Checkoway and Shawn Ginwright, among others, continue to show. The role of intensity goes beyond the frequent and adultist attribution of the emotional state of young people. In this sense intensity makes an appropriate approximation of the depth and value given to the words its attributed to: The personalization, location, and focus of youth activism must be intense in order to demonstrate to participants the value of their energy, to foster the direct outcomes required in order to sustain interest, and to identify that depth and value. All those reasons make the role of intensity in youth activism über-valuable. Take a moment to acknowledge the role of intensity in your own life. Where do you feel intense? When do you feel intense? Why do you feel intense? When we begin to uncover the value of intensity in our own lives, our own work and our own motivations we can begin to understand the power of youth activism in our communities.
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| September 21, 2008 | 5:09 AM |
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The Government's Responsibility To Young People
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 A few days ago I made an unusual sidestep and argued that national and community service programs should supplant government funding with local sources of funding, and scale back accordingly. This is unusual for several reasons, the primary among them being that I believe it is the paramount duty of a democratic government to ensure its citizenry has their basic human rights respected, including having food, water and shelter, educational opportunities, and the right to participation, among many other rights. This is particularly true about young people, as they are more than our metaphorical future: instead, children and youth are our immediate present, and their presence should be more than an afterthought. In this light it may seem irresponsible or reckless to advocate for the abandonment of government funding for AmeriCorps programs. Imagine if this proposition were taken to its most extreme: every child in a private school, every patient responsible for paying for their own health care, and every prisoner tried by a jury of their creditors. The outsourcing and abdication of many democratic responsibilities in the U.S. doesn't bother some people; I am not one of those people. Instead, I believe it is vital for policy-makers, government officials, law enforcement, teachers and other individuals to acknowledge their obligation, their huge responsibility of ensuring the mechanisms of democracy function, and to do that well. Equally as much, it is the duty of every single citizen - and in my own case, every single resident - to enact our roles as democrats committed to fighting the tyranny of oppression, alienation, and anitpathy that comes from , irresponsible and wreckless government leadership. This should happen in our local, state and national political systems; however, it should not stop there. Instead, we have to activate and engage in our schools, with our justice system, throughout the healthcare debate, and across the marketplace. And in national and community service programs. In the last post I expressed the later part of that sentiment, which stems from the several years I have borne out the fruits of the labors of countless government agents, either while I have worked in government, as an independent contractor, through government grant-funded activities, or in one of the mechanisms originally destined to ensure government imperatives are carried through, schools and nonprofit organizations. For as much as I've been in the past, I am becoming more and more concerned about the way the federal government fluctuates in its economic support for essential services necessary for the democratic functioning of our nation. This includes the funding of AmeriCorps. Without making a deliberate and consistent commitment towards the sustainable funding of the program, Congress and the President are deflating the potential value and the public's perception of the value of the program. Luckily, AmeriCorps programs and their advocates maintain a vigilant struggle to fight that perception. In the meantime, we need a frank conversation about the inadequacies and apparent inabilities of the government to stay focused on the most pressing national needs. As the country settles into a long slog of recession, if not a depression, we must ask these hard questions - and ask hard questions, demand answers, and create solutions.
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| September 20, 2008 | 3:09 AM |
| September 19, 2008 | 1:09 AM |
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Its National Service Season!
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Every few years it becomes political expeditious for legislators to show interest in community  and national service. This happens on the local, state and national levels, with bevies of new program proposals, heaps of new money suggested, and tons of interest swelled forth from the bowels of the media. This month marks the start of another such season with the introduction of the Kennedy/Hatch "Serve America Act," (pdf) supported by both presidential candidates. I spent three years in AmeriCorps. During that time I started a tutoring and mentoring program for Kurdish and Iraqi refugee kids in Lincoln, Nebraska; ran a ropes challenge course for low-income kids in and around Tacoma, Washington, and; served as an AmeriCorps Leader with a youth corps in north New Mexico. Exhilarating and exhausting work, all of it, that continues to inform my practice and inspire my imagination today. Oh, and I have contracted with AmeriCorps programs for a variety of reasons since, as well, providing training, developing evaluations and consulting on program development in communities across the US, as well as contracting directly with the Corporation for National Service and its successors to do the same. With that requisite prerequisite out of the way, I feel compelled to provide an alternative to the either/or uplifting and bashing that happens in the mainstream dialog about this work. My concern stems from the cyclical nature of the interest shown in national service that has emerged since the inception of AmeriCorps in 1994, and prior to that as well. The dilemma inherent in that wavering has direct impact on the individuals and organizations affected by the program: without a constant stream of sustainability weaved into it, our communities are being told their needs are secondary to those of politicians, particularly in the initially partisan responses that always seem to be the first out of the shoot when new proposals come forth. The consequential outcome are hagared and weary programs that feel at once compelled and unable to respond to the whims of the elected few. They are continuously forced to provide success stories, elaborate on program outcomes and generate new successes on menial budgets that actually serve to undo the good work being done by Members everday. In turn this undermines the faith of the communities they serve, actually furthering the poverty mentality and collective depression apparent in many of the communities where AmeriCorps is at work. I would like to propose a radical alternative to this apparent spasticity: Those organizations that are currently in alignment with AmeriCorps and who rely on the program to provide the vital dollars needed to leverage change in their communities should work together to create a funding network. Perhaps it would have the leverage of the United Way, only with the singular focus of funding community service. Maybe it could become completely volunteer-driven, moving away from the missionary ideology that sacrifices the power of self-driven transformation for the sake of well-meaning white people. I'm not sure. But any way it goes, get off the federal and state government teat and take responsibility for funding ourselves. This may be too radical, and too far out for many. But let's at least begin to consider the possibility of moving beyond the expectation that the government has the leadership capacity and/or the political will to actually create sustainable programming over the long run. There are many cynical analyses that could be thrown in here (including the air force bake sale suggestion, as well as the " Peace Corps as national defense" angle) but I will avoid those. Instead, let's move forward. What does that look like for you?
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| September 18, 2008 | 8:09 AM |
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Meaningful student involvement in Coordinated School Health
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Talk about the meeting of jargon... the Coordinated School Health model, or CSH, was created by Drs. Diane Allensworth and Lloyd Kolbe of the Centers for Disease Control in 1987. Their model focuses on the systematic entwinement of eight components in order to promote more effective school health, and increase its impact on student success. Those components are: - Health education, including all curricular and promotion messages distributed in schools addressing health topics, particualarly focused on prevention;
- Health services, including any nursing or first aid, as well as many intervention efforts;
- Nutrition, including all school-delivered and competitive foods;
- Mental health, including counseling, phsycologists, and social services;
- Environmental health, focusing on the phsycial plant and the social makeup;
- Physical education, including classroom and other activities that infuse physical activity with curriculum-driven learning;
- Staff wellness, particularly in regard to the employee-type concerns addressing adults working in schools, and;
- Community and family involvement.
Since the model was rolled out there have been dozens of incarnations of federal programs designed to foster this deliberative organizational development model in local K-12 schools, districts, and state agencies across the U.S. Almost every state has received money from the federal government to lead activities, to varying effects. My interest in this model stems from my work in New York state between 2006-08 when I worked with the statewide Student Support Services Center there to integrate meaningful student involvement throughout the implementation of this model in dozens of schools across the state. It was an exilerating time, and the lessons I learned then are only beginning to sink in. Stay tuned as I continue to explore this infusion throughout my work, particularly with regard to its efficacy in academic achievement and other learning outcomes.
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| September 15, 2008 | 9:09 AM |
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