My Ecosystem

First My Words

1) Adversary-important-I feel like this is important because we see and adversary as a rival and not always in a positive way when having an adversary can actually be quite healthy.

2) Collaboratively-important-we need to work with not against

3) Relationship-important-we need a foundation to build our house on

4) Identity-important-not only for us but for our youth as well

5) Social-important-humans are social beings and also learn through social interactions Just a waring I love Vygotsky

6) Educators-important-I just feel there is a huge difference between being a "teacher" and being an "educator"

7) Conscientious-important-we should really all be aware and thinking about every possibility

8) Pathologized-no idea, think this like is the right definition....

9) Multiauthorized-important/don't really understand the concept yet. I think it means your life experiences shaped by multiple people which alter/create your perceptions,thoughts, and schema.

10) Coauthoring-important/don't really understand the concept yet. I think it means sharing life experiences which alter/create your perceptions,thoughts, and schema.

Ten People

Mom: caring/antagonistic

Dad: Caring/antagonistic

Grandmother (on moms side): caring

Sister: antagonistic

Jake: indifferent

Zach: indifferent

Higgins:Caring/indifferent

Aaron: Caring/indifferent

Mr. DiMayo: Caring

Ms. Gosling: Caring

Who I Am Writing About?

My Mom. Is honestly just such a pill. She always had the best intentions but never went about acting on those intentions in the right way. She use to be hard on me when I was in school, argue with me, and honestly just be downright mean sometimes. But, she was usually there when I needed something or she would just tell me to ask grandma. In doing so though I learned a lot. I learned to become more independent, responsible, vocal about my opinions and thought, and how to at least try to stand up for myself. Even if she was a raging bitch to me sometimes she made me into the critical thinker am today.

A competition between runners, horses, vehicles, boats, etc., to see which is the fastest in covering a set course.

Race has become an increasingly difficult topic of conversation here in the United States. Over the past year we have seen various "movements" to create awareness and change for some of these social issues where Hobson does a great job painting the picture of reality through her stories and discussion. She graciously discusses her experiences of struggle, hope, and realism from childhood where at the age of 7 she is challenged with questions of race and power through the realistic views of her mother and empowering words of telling her she could be what ever she wanted to be. But, the sad truth is she could be whatever she wanted to be but the system we created may not have even given her a chance to become what she imagined as a child.

I really like that Hobson challenges people to talk and discuss race, evaluate their environments, and engage in conversations with people who are nothing like you. It makes us feel human which people often forget since our culture has been so desensitized to the value of human life and she makes it a point to connect every story back to simple basic humanistic things such as wearing body lotion to help people realize that we are human but then she talks about color blind and color brave.

I know I make this argument all the time and I really hope I am doing so in a way the is conductive to our learning environment on here but the idea of being color blind and being color brave to me is all dependent on your environment. Environment is such an important thing that I feel people always forget about. As much as I love her idea of color brave and challenging others to have the conversation, challenge themselves, and be open minded it all relates back to the environment and sometimes color blind may be a better option and this is where I absolutely love Morgan Freeman. He challenges race and social change by simply not talking about it which works for him. He believes that if race is not talked about there would be no issues. I would know him as Morgan Freeman, an American actor and he would know me as Dennis Poirier, a college student, not Morgan Freeman the Black actor and Dennis Poirier, the white college student.

To address the blog topic I think visibility is dependent on environment. Being a white male living in Rhode Island no I have not felt invisible. But on a trip to the South I very much felt invisible because my skin color was not the social norm or the color of power. But, I was NEVER disrespected or disrespectful towards the people of the community which made me feel welcome and where for me and most of my interactions race was simply not an issue.

I always have lots to say on topics like this and could write a paper so I am going to leave the rest of my thoughts for class. Thanks all.

Tiny Leaders

Life growing up for me certainly was not easy. My parents got divorced when I was very young, my mom became a single mother, I only saw my dad on the weekends, and my sister was a know it all brat. Unfortunately for me I had to live in the shadow of my sister who got the straight A's and always made the honor roll while I got B's and C's and was perfectly okay with that, but my mom wasn't. She really controlled most of my life until sometime around 7th grade where I was so upset that my mom was controlling me that my mom, the school principal and I sat down one day after school to discuss what was going on because I was doing poorly in school. We came to an agreement that my mom would no longer heckle me about homework, grades, and give me more free time. In return my mom would receive a phone call on her phone when report card came out so that way she could see it and know when they came out and I would obey any consequences of bad grades without contest. In the end, I started doing better in school, I became more independent, and my mom started to trust me a lot more.

We truly do live in a world where adults control our world on both macro and micro scales as you can see from my story. My mom being the adult and person in a position of power controlled most of life until I, being the youth advocated for change. Unfortunately though that change did not come without the help of a caring, trusting, and understanding adult who didn't just brush me off and thought  I was a failure. 

The article about YIA just really reminded me about that story and how important it is to listen to youth, ENGAGE youth, and work along side them; not control them. Even here at RIC the youth (the college students) hold a certain amount of power when it comes teacher evaluations, student organizations and the events they hold such as suicide awareness, and even changes to the physical campus.

Someone please ask me about this its actually really fuuny

Youth in action does a good job working along side with you to be those leaders and take on those powerful roles that mostly adults control. Unfortunately it is a two way street though meaning youth within the community have to be willing to engage and the adults have to be willing to give up their power and mostly just be a proctor or ignition that starts the engine. YIA takes something that is difficult to do and does it effectively. I am very conflicted with some of the ideas that the article does present but I guess that just means there is topic of discussion for Thursday.

Seven "Characteristics" of "Youth Work"

"Youth work" or a "youth worker" is a term that has gone undefined and still to many of us seems something ambiguous in our early stages of our career. Some of us may not even know what youth work or a youth worker really is until you have that one moment where it defines you as a person. Until recently youth work was seen as your local camp counselor, DCYF, and the local agencies within the community in which "youth" attend. Youth Development has taken this concept and has built its foundations on what Thompson, Westwood, and Wood describe as the seven characteristics of "youth work" which entail educational,social, and welfare practice, social justice, youth involvement through choice, youth empowerment, and holistically. Many of us in the field we realize the importance of these basic and fundamental concepts and strive for excellence in all of the areas. Being a good youth worker (to me) based upon these characteristics described means we are willing to teach effectively through social involvement while empowering youth to strive for excellence while we effectively provide or engage our youth in the best welfare or social justice matters that surround their eco-systems both macro and micro. While these concepts are crucial in our engagement with youth it is important to understand that these are not the only concepts or fundamentals that youth work is based upon and that the understanding of youth work and engagement is still growing and we as youth works learn from our experiences within these concepts everyday by engaging with the youth of our future. There have been times as a youth worker that I have struggled with these concepts and the ideas that come along with them in how to engage youth. For example youth work does involve in group work to help engage youth in social involvement but sometimes it involves bending these concepts to help our ability to engage youth and skill build individually before engaging in deeper group work among our youth.

My summer students at Mystic

Thanks all hope you enjoy.