On Being Good

Personally I had a really hard time reading Katie Johnston-Goodstars' text. It felt super dense. I had a really hard time getting into the the text when every other sentence had a reference attached to it which just made it difficult to flow through and was very distracting to me. And I thought some of the language was inaccessible taking away from the points they were making. I've never been one that loves super academic likes texts such as these. I think about me in my younger years of youth work trying to read this text and it not resonating with me because of these things. I do appreciate that these past two weeks we've been given a variety of readings (Johnston-Goodstars' feeling a lot like Fusco's) as I know others might really prefer this type of reading.

I much prefer the way Carla Shalaby writes. In a way that tells a story that is also informative and allows the reader to reflect and ask questions. And while this was in the context of a classroom I could immediately connect it to youth work in other contexts. 

I think about how Marcus could have shined in an afterschool program that foster and facilitated space for him to shine, how so much of our work is fighting against the traditional adult to youth power dynamic, how one of the main pillars is leading with youth. The way Marcus was already rebelling in a way against authority already makes me think about him as a leader and a change maker. That he was sensitive to other classmates feelings and needs would be seen as an asset in an afterschool program. Marcus would be my right hand guy, me working with him to develop his leadership skills, asking him what he and other youth need, him letting me know he needed, what other youth needed. 

I try not to hate on teachers. I've never been a teacher so I don't know what that's like. I did spend the beginning of my undergraduate time as an education major and quickly learned it was not the way I wanted to work with youth and luckily was studying at RIC where I discovered the YDEV undergrad program. I think about how if I was at another school without YDEV what I would have done. Would I have stuck it out and gotten a teaching degree and been sucked into the very demanding, politics of working in a school? Where someone is telling me what and how to teach. Where I can't foster strong relationships with my students because of the pressure to perform. 

I don't think Emily is a bad teacher from this text. There were some good practices being done in her classroom. I think Emily could have taken better approaches to Marcus and I think Shalaby outlines some of the approaches really well. And what we see in Shalabys Letter to Teachers where she outlines the "regular way" vs the "loving way" feels very YDEV to me. It is how we (in OST) practice working with our youth.