Caitlyn Blankenship's YDEV MA

How do we see young people? The connections I see in all three readings are that of empathy and love. Both Carla Shalaby's readings stress the importance of behavior being a community challenge, rather than an individual problem and are designed to think about spaces where youth can understand each other. The dis/ability critical race studies: theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability, I think, help to support Shalaby's focus on treating youth as whole people and challenging the cultural norms we place on them. My take away from Sean: On Being Willful (Carla Shalaby) is one I often complain about around the school day, Carla said it best when she wrote, "The school day is highly structured and intensive, leaving children little time for play...", "an increasingly sterile place, and too often a place in which children are expected to pay attention, not get attention." I have found that as adults, we often demand and expect more from youth than w...

 Defining Youth When I watched the video " But I'm just a Kid": The Adultification of Black Girls [5-min video] (Noir Art), my heart and soul broke. I often hear the disparities between black and white youth in reference to the achievement or opportunity gap and while its something that needs to be fixed it has never hurt my core the way health disparities do. I cried when I heard the statistic of 1 in 4 black girls will be sexually assaulted before the age of 18; having a niece who is bi-racial means that these statistics can apply to her and it disgusts me. I understand the stereotype that sexualizes black girls and women but I have not honestly reflected on what that looks like until seeing this video. I have witnessed this on multiple occasions from teachers concerned for the black girls wearing bikinis at the beach because of their defined bodies, to the creepy white men that hit on my niece's mother. I feel even my niece's family and myself have been guilt...

  A Moment in the Pandemic It had been about a month into "shelter in place," I was delivering afterschool supply kits to Cranston homes so that youth had hands-on activities to do while being cooped up in the house. I was exhausted and worn down, unlike most people I had not stopped working. I advocated for funds, got partners involved in making the kits, planed flexible activities that could be done daily or whenever and had paper and virtual engagement options. I was, and still am so grateful to all my partners, some contributed grant funds they needed to spend down but couldn't because there were no programs happening, some helped me design activities, type up directions and make video tutorials, and many helped me by delivering 10-15 kits each week for over 8 weeks. We started off with about 75 youth, which quickly became 150, which quickly become 300. Thankfully I had community volunteers as well but even with everyone's help, the limits with COVID-19 still put ...

Colonialism in Youth Programs I always knew that programs like YMCAs were unequitable and embedded with systemic racism, however, I never understood exactly why or how. I felt shocked and disgusted as I read through the "Decolonizing youth development" and learned more of the specific examples of how youth development programs were birthed and have held onto colonialism practices and beliefs. Reading both resources made me think more about my own practices through afterschool and summer programs. I understand that words and phrases like "at risk" harm our youth's identities and I find that while I never say words or phrases likes this towards or in front of our youth, I do conform and may use them during meetings with administration, staff and funders. I would like to practice more strategically using words and phrases to create more of a "family" within my after school and summer programs in order to help  youth's vision of their own future and re...