 |
Adam Fletcher
Discomfort: My Past + My Present
|
I believe my own past, just as everyone's, is a necessary part of the story we're co-creating about re-envisioning the roles of youth throughout society. No matter how unpleasant, uncomfortable, or ugly it is, all of our actions, histories and outcomes affect all of our lives, from the beginning to the end, from better or worse. The people we've known, the places we've been and the things we've done make us who we are and what we're becoming, whether or not we're aware of it. Dr. King wrote, "The self cannot be self without other selves." This is why.
I grew up in a family of marginality: we went from being really poor to temporarily comfortable; from being homeless in a car to living in a house throughout my teens where family friends flocked to for its steadiness and comfort. That neighborhood was a predominately African American community in the Midwest. This is also where I began my first paid work with youth. After moving away when I was 20 years old, I took a series of jobs that have allowed me to continuously work in low-income neighborhoods, and with communities of color for the next 10 years. The work was a privilege.
While I was living in Nebraska in the mid-1990s I created a tutoring and mentoring program for young people who were Kurdish and Iraqi refugees. Moving to Washington state shortly after, I worked as a ropes challenge course director for a high adventure program that brought low-income youth to the mountains. After that I worked for the Corporation for National Service with a service learning program in northern New Mexico. Between those jobs I also worked in a court-mandated drug treatment center and for an independent living skills program, both of which were packed with low-income youth and young people of color.
When I returned to Washington in 2000 I took a job promoting youth involvement in communities across the state. In my initial scan to learn what was going on I discovered that many of the long-standing youth involvement programs served middle class white youth. These programs were focused on activities that were highly controlled by adults, taking the form of youth councils, youth forums and youth newspapers. They focused on service learning, and generally impacted a very small segment of their local communities.
I didn't like what I was seeing. None of the youth were my youth, the kids of color and poor teens who I'd worked with for a dozen years by then. They were absent from these sanctioned activities, and what was being said seemed to always fit conveniently into the agendas of the adults who were listening. I felt this kind of convenient youth voice was an affront to my experience, as I was used to young people tagging, protesting, and using other forms of civil disobedience in order to be heard.
Under the auspices of the state education agency I began scouring Washington's communities for examples of inconvenient youth voice. I found them. I found high school students who walked out of schools to protest poor food; youth and adults who worked together to bring out youth voice on reservations; kids who were teaching parents about economics; and youth who were systematically leading social justice campaigns throughout their city. These impassioned acts of power routinely scared the whits out of adults, to say the least. But there was a reason they weren't happening in the state's middle class, predominately white communities.
There is a complacency that sets upon the comfort the middle class assumes. I only know of this comfort because I have been privileged enough to experience it; this is one way my experience drives my analyses and action. My challenge today is to honor this discomfort, and knowing how it has informed my present, to encourage the people who I encounter to experience that discomfort, too, no matter what their background. All of our actions inform all of our present; how is your past keeping you uncomfortable, and how is that discomfort informing your actions right now?
|
|
| December 29, 2009 | 10:12 AM |
|
|
|
*Interdependent* Living Skills
|
Independent living skills, or ILS, programs are run by nonprofits and government agencies for the purpose of "disadvantaged" youth what they need to know in order to be "successful" adults. Working with foster, homeless, and formally incarcerated youth, these programs focused on teaching young people about finances, the education system, maintaining a household, and other topics adults think are invaluable to youth. I taught in an ILS program for a YWCA in the Midwest for a year and a half back in the 90s.
After I started Freechild in 2001 I was invited to speak to a conference of ILS program managers here in Washington. Still green behind the ears with meeting the needs of my audience, I began my speech with a story about a homeless teenager I worked with in my program. This guy was determined to live well on his own, and had nothing less than the highest hopes for himself. But over the course of 6 months he'd lost 3 apartments and 4 jobs, and didn't understand why he kept failing. I'd been talking with him the whole time - he had an ILS counselor who was his mainline, but I was "special" because I was the only male teaching in the program - so after the last time he got fired he came to me again. This time was different.
Rather than ask him what went wrong, I asked him what was right. Rather than concentrating on what was falling apart, we looked at what was sticking together. "Well, right now I'm living with some cool friends, and we're all taking turns washing dishes and we're keeping a list to make sure the bills are paid and yeah, that's cool." When I asked about the jobs he explained that the best part of all of them was getting to help other people, whether he was at a fast food restaurant or pushing the broom for a community center. This reminded me of something Dr. King had written more than 30 years before I was talking with him:
We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women.... When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Then at the table we drink coffee which is provided for us by a South American, or tea by a Chinese, or cocoa by a West African. Before we leave for our jobs, we are beholden to more than half the world. - Strength to Love (1963)
I began to understand that this program, and by extension, myself, was teaching this young man mythology: that by living on our own and striving for independence we can somehow find success in the world around us. This was driving my guy crazy, and I think he was just in his reactions! Coming from the background of a homeless teen who struggled in a family of addicts and a neighborhood of depression, the only way he was finding "success" was by relying on others - and now some of those others were trying to convince him that he only needed to rely on himself!
We brainstormed more and talked about what it meant to help others and be of use to the world around us. This particular conversation helped me screw my head on tighter, that's for sure. Three months later he'd been working for the same food bank the entire time, and was still living with that last house where everyone shared the work. I moved onto another job shortly after, but still regard this guy as one of my greatest lessons. In George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion , he wrote, "Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth." That's what was reinforced in my mind from this episode - that this web that binds is stronger than anything else.
This leads me to call for a concentrated program of interdependent living skills. Rather than teach disenfranchised people about the mythology of a world where they live, struggle, succeed and overcome "all on their own," let's help all people understand that we are woven together and that there is nothing wrong with depending on others. This program would foster communication, reinforce community, encourage conflict resolution, harbor hope, and encourage teamwork throughout the day, from home to work to play to struggle. And rather than being taught to youth by adults, it would be taught collectively to anyone who'd participate - no matter what the age or circumstance! Anti-segregationist, it would rally together people who were interested in a common quest for action in their own lives despite or because of their commitment to working together with their differences.
There is a higher goal to all learning, and to all of life. Learning interdependent living skills and reinforcing Dr. King's understanding from so long ago can take us there.
|
|
| December 28, 2009 | 9:12 AM |
|
|
|
Quotes on Community
|
These quotes help me concentrate and focus on my goals. Find on The Freechild Project website here. "I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live." - George Bernard Shaw  “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come to because your liberation is bound up in mine, we can work together.” - Lilla Watson "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead "No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." - John Donne "Remember upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all." - Alexander the Great "If we want a beloved community, we must stand for justice, have recognition for difference without attaching difference to privilege." - bell hooks "In union there is strength." - Aesop "The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." - James Baldwin "Unity, to be real, must stand the severest strain without breaking." - Mahatma Gandhi "I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it's humiliating. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other and learns from the other. I have a lot to learn from other people." - Eduardo Galeano "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." - Booker T. Washington "Cooperation is the thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there." - Virginia Burden "Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable." - Kenyan Proverb "One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry "Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth." - George Bernard Shaw "Washing ones hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." - Paulo Freire "We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something." - Sandra Day O'Connor "Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another. Committed bonds cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met." - bell hooks "Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success." - Henry Ford "We all participate in weaving the social fabric; we should therefore all participate in patching the fabric when it develops holes." - Anne C. Weisberg  "Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth." - Mohammed Ali "A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's." - Richard Whately "We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men." - Herman Melville "Each of us is a being in himself and a being in society, each of us needs to understand himself and understand others, take care of others and be taken care of himself." - Haniel Long "Many hands make light work." - John Heywood
|
|
| December 26, 2009 | 10:12 AM |
|
|
|
7 Rules for Adult Allies
|
The other day I was asked what guides my philosophy regarding being an adult ally to youth. Following are seven rules that I use to guide my practice.
- If you don't experience discomfort everytime you're listening to Youth Voice, you aren't listening right.
- If you can't stay engaged enough to simply sit and listen to young people talk, you aren't being an adult ally.
- If you can't speak your truth to young people you aren't in a youth/adult partnership.
- If you can't expect and accept not having closure when young people share their voices you aren't being an adult ally.
- Listening to Youth Voice means listening for understanding, rather than to support your own conclusions.
- If you're an adult ally to young people you'll engage, support, and challenge them, and not try to fix them. They aren't broken.
- If you aren't taking risks you aren't being an adult ally.
These are seven simple guidelines that I think of right now. You can see my colleague Sven Bonnichsen's Guidelines for Adult Allies here under Part IV, and I have collected other resources for adult allies on Freechild's website.
|
|
| December 23, 2009 | 9:12 AM |
Video: History of Youth Voice in the US
|
This video offers an introduction to the history of Youth Voice in the United States from 1664 to 1865. It explores early oppression of children and youth as well as early reliance on youth as the future. I've written quite a bit on this blog about this history, including posts called:
Watch the following for the beginning of this story...
|
|
| December 19, 2009 | 2:12 AM |
Video: The Sidewalk Story
|
I first explained the Sidewalk Story on this blog a year ago, and today I'm sharing a new video with me telling the story from my series on "Re-envisioning the Roles of Young People throughout Society." Its an analogy for engagement and design - enjoy!
|
|
| December 18, 2009 | 11:12 AM |
Video: Re-envisioning the Roles of Youth
|
This video blog entry is an introduction to re-envisioning the roles of young people throughout society. In this post I explore how, where, why and when these roles need to change, as well providing a comprehensive vision for the change that's coming...
|
|
| December 18, 2009 | 2:12 AM |
| December 17, 2009 | 11:12 AM |
Every Youth A Leader
|
There's a myth about youth leaders. Somewhere inside our society there's a belief that youth leadership is a born skill, and that youth leaders always have to be the same people doing the same things. This is witnessed by the recurrance of popular youth leadership programs and their homogenized populations. Middle class white kids make up much of these ranks, and well I don't want them to be without opportunities, I do want more young people to be more engaged throughout society. What does it take to realize the vision of "every youth a leader"? That's what I'm working to find - how about you? -- This is Adam Fletcher's blog originally posted at http://www.YoungerWorld.org. For more see http://www.bicyclingfish.com
|
|
| December 17, 2009 | 10:12 AM |
|
|
|
My First Job in Youth Work
|
We all start somewhere. 20 years ago I had my start working professionally with youth. A small nonprofit in my neighborhood in North Omaha, Nebraska, hired me to work with an acting program called "You're The Star." This program, based on Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, was focused on teaching children and youth about their own power and ability. I was an assistant to Omaha's premier African American directors, and we took the program to several low-income neighborhoods around North Omaha.
I wasn't successful in junior high school. Yeah, actually, I really didn't like school. The only thing that hooked me in those years was in the eighth grade when the school's art teacher invited me to be in the school's mime show. I'd never been on a stage before then, and loved the experience. For a semester I worked diligently to learn my staging, and when I performed I loved it. Well, the director of You're The Star knew my mom, and he invited me specifically to help him. "I don't know how to teach," I said to him. He told me to just follow him, do what he did and eventually I'd get it. Well, I got it, and for the next three summers I worked with the program.
More importantly, I found a career track that attracted me, and after that I worked in dozens of different youth-focused jobs in nonprofits and a few schools across the U.S. Not knowing there was such a thing as a youth development degree or an actual field of youth work, I knew that I had to work. Along the way I worked in a warehouse, painting houses and roofing, and waiting tables, but more importantly I learned the struggle of action-driven youth work, focused on outcomes and real impact. But this was my first job in youth work, and the start of my career.
|
|
| December 17, 2009 | 2:12 AM |
|
Latest Posts
Monthly Archive
Change Language
Tags Archive
action activities adam adultallies adultism commonaction democraticschools educação engagement ephebiphobia freechild identity mudança pedophobia projects reflection research schoolimprovement schools soundout studentvoice theory voice youth youthempowerment youthpolicy youthrights youthvoice youthwork
100604 views
|
|
