Youth Ambition Pod Cast

My education identity journey began in my undergrad year at Rhode Island College. I was first enrolled in elementary education. During my duration of the program I began to question my reasoning, my why, and beliefs of being part of the education system. As I had the opportunity to observe school setting and working in the public-school system, my passion for teaching and beliefs were fading away? I began to see there was a pull between admin, teachers, students and families. The system saw the students as statistics and teachers looked like ongoing robots that repeated lessons of a book that did not adapt to every student. I noticed from my colleagues that the sense of curiosity and creativity no longer existed. This frightened me, I am a person who enjoys being creative and feeling curious. I like to fill a space with challenges, where students are the teachers and leaders of their own learning space.

Teaching for me was no longer my path, it was not until I heard about Youth Development. Youth Development (YDEV) created a pathway where I had the ability to fulfill my identity and beliefs. I knew I was heading in the right direction when I created an identity map. I noticed that my identity map met with the YDEV’s anchors: purposeful play, care, identity, advocacy and social justice, and leading with. I knew these were the anchors I wanted to incorporate in my teaching and education.

After graduating with my undergraduate degree in Youth Development, I searched for

jobs that incorporated advocacy, social justice, identity and care in a youth space. The job I currently have creates the space for me to instill this in the education system. I am not a teacher but a counselor and advisor for youth’s future. I create a space where my students can be heard, surpass the false narrative of minorities never make it out of the streets. I lead with my students whether this would in college, high school, jobs and or in their community. I let me students to heard and be loud, show their teachers, principals, friend and families that they are worthy for success.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hXTkJbx3uJBM9RO2Fy_duoNBC_B3OUPltYlYASLxlBM/edit?usp=sharing

This was my first year in Rhode Island Educational Talent Search as counselor. This is my

first time working in the Woonsocket District and none of the less working with high school students. When I got the job, I was hesitant because I have only worked with students in elementary level. I was not ready. As I began to adjust with environment and build connection with students, I began to feel a sense of belonging. I realized that these high school students were “mini adults”. Mini adults that their brains were filled with creative, futuristic ideas that can be contributed into their community. They had so much to say but felt constraint to be who they wanted to be because of teachers and admin. Students would say, “Every day I walk with my head down because I know I am being judge because of the way that I dress, how my hair looks, speaking my native language, how I walk, and my skin color. I am not seen for the things I am capable of doing.” I was in disbelief that these talented young adults felt this way.

 

My students began to open up to me during the middle of the year. I wish I had the opportunity to know this earlier. I believe I could have had the opportunity to create a pathway for them to become more confident in themselves, in which would create a sense of positivity that they are capable of success.

 

My job role is to help students enroll into colleges, universities, trade schools, and apply for their dream jobs. We take the students on different college tours for them to explore of what comes next after high school. I organize college and job fairs to give them endless ideas that there are different opportunities. I work with students and families that are either, undocumented, under represented, and low income. I guide them to become leaders in their communities. Every year the counselors get evaluated by the director of the program. I was told in my evaluation that this year was the first year a councilor has gone about and beyond to help their students become advocate, leaders and prepare them for what’s to come next. I felt a sense of accomplishment but I still felt a void.

 

While my time at Woonsocket High school, I noticed that there is so many opportunities and potential for students to grow. There are different services and programs to help students become successful and grow upon their skills. I believe there is a lack of communication, advertisement and enthusiasm to express on these programs that the school has to offer. Also, there is a lack of knowledge of professionalism and networking. I believe that learning and growing happens when there is networking, professional development and community building to become successful.

 

I created anpodcast Youth Ambition that expresses my beliefs. I invited two special guests to my podcast. The two special guests are both my students that are enrolled in the ETS program. They are both juniors and ready to embarque their last year of high school in the fall. Each of these students have different leadership backgrounds and ideas of what is professionalism.

 

Daishanay is an upcoming senior at Woonsocket High School. She has accomplished most of her goals in which helped her become the leader that she is today. She is class president, certified in teen mental health, 2023 Civic Leader, Narcan trained, won first place in public speaking and awarded Northeast Youth of the Year in the Boys and Girls Club. Daishanay shares her story on how she began her journey. This outstanding youth journey began with writing an important paper on Martin Luther King. This paper was entered in a competition in which she won. Since then new opportunities have opened the door to continue her growth.

 

Dylan is also an upcoming senior. He plays on the varsity boys volleyball team. He is a participant in student council and is certified in teen mental health. Dylan has many skills that can be put to use for his future. I believe since he does not have the write guidance as Daishanay, I can help him build his resources.

 

Each of these students have something to offer. They both are well driven and have ambition to become successful. In the podcast I mentioned, most of our audience are high school students who potentially want to continue their education after high school or join the work field. In order to do that we need to build a professional foundation at the high school level. I followed this statement with a question, how did you start building that foundation?

 

 Dylan responded, “To start off about my high school journey I just want to say that starting off freshman year of high school virtually was very stressful. I was not on track and lost my positive mindset. Moving on to sophomore year back in person I decided that I want to help with the environment in our school.”

 

Daishanay followed with a different story. She spoke how she created her foundation with the writing paper project. From winning awards this gave her to opportunity to grow and network. She build upon this foundation.

 

    They both shared commonalities throughout our conversation. Towards the end of the podcast we discuss on platforms that are introduced in schools for students to help them grow and learn from networking, professional development and community work. I brought up the social media platform of LinkedIn. LinkedIn creates a space to celebrate and share accomplishments. This is a free and space tool for people can interact with each other. One can say that LinkedIn has its similarities to Facebook. The only problem is that Facebook has tuned to more of an informal meet ups and conservation. LinkedIn gives the opportunity to have a professional space to celebrate their wins, network and even find jobs.

     I heard about LinkedIn through my own leadership class. I attended the College Leadership of Rhode Island. Most of the students were from all over the state. These classes helped me become knowledgeable on starting my future business. These opened to pathway to continue with my success.

    Therefore I want to bring upon knowledge of creating our youth to become professional. Help them lead with the resources that they are looking for, build a space where they can network with friends families teachers and the community. Lastly would like to bring upon more speakers and bring workshops. I believe that learning and growing happens from networking, professional development and community work. With all this in mind I hope I can get the opportunity to work with the youth to help them become our future agents in society.

 

This is a link to my podcast I hope you enjoy: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hXTkJbx3uJBM9RO2Fy_duoNBC_B3OUPltYlYASLxlBM/edit?usp=sharing

Connected, But Alone?

Turkle states in the Ted Talk, “We expect more from technology and less from each other”. I agree with this statement, as technology enhances I believe our human society is hiding behind the screens. We have all this technology and depend that it would solve our problems. Which in a way is true. We have Siri and Alexa, we can ask them anything and we don’t need to use any critical thinking. An example Turkle brings up is that we use our phones for comfort, without our phones we tend to feel lonely, twitching and itching without it. I normally tend to leave my phone in my car when go inside to pick up my mobile order of Starbucks but sometimes my order is not ready in leading me to have to wait with my phone. During this time I feel a sense of loneliness because I tend to spend my time on social media instead of socializing. We hide behind our technology whether it is a laptop or a mobile device we rather communicate in texting and with emoji’s instead of verbally talking.

During covid society had to adjust to a new lifestyle of technology. People needed to learn how to utilize their computer or phones to log on to work or schools. We began to utilize a new form of communication through texting and emailing. We became accustomed of this form of communication, that now socializing might be challenging. I see this more with my students they tend to text me more than having an in person conversation. For them this is an easier and quicker way to communicate. Which makes me think does this make this generation lazy and build a challenge on communicating?

I believe that covid did change me personally and professionally. I tend to text more than calling someone and hide behind my phone. Recently I was out to dinner with my friends we had a 10 minute conversation then we began to scroll through our phones. Professionally, I tend to email or text my boss. However, when it is something that is urgent I initially call. I believe covid has changed me socially.

Ted Talk Link:https://youtu.be/t7Xr3AsBEK4

Who Can Stay Here?

Who Can Stay Here?

Documentation and citizenship in children’s literature

GRACE CORNELL GONZALES

 A teacher at a bilingual elementary school in East Oakland, California begins sharing a tragic story that is commonly happening at her school and in different cities.

The story:

“Rumors began to fly early in the school day among students and teachers—ICE agents had been seen parked several blocks away from the school. The campus went into a panic, terrified that the agents would apprehend parents on their way to pick their children up from school. Office staff and parent volunteers called each family at home, instructing them to send only documented friends or relatives to get their children at the end of the day. The administration contacted the press. Soon, Mayor Ron Dellums and members of the Oakland police force were gathered outside, denouncing the fear tactics being used by ICE.”

With all the commotion of outside the school, this brought frantic to the students. They began to cry and worry about their families and themselves. Since this is a common in their community, the teacher gathered children books that dealt with immigration issues and memories that dealt with ICE raid. In her search of children books she noticed that the majority of the books dealt with border crossing instead of addressing the issues of documentation and unequal access to citizenship. The teacher states that most children books don’t tell the actual political side of immigration. Grace, the teacher identifies 3 categories of books about documentation and U.S Immigration.

Book 1:

Creating the Image that U.S. Citizenship Is Equally Available to All

Books that choose to ignore issues of undocumented immigration and unequal access to citizenship, portraying a world in which U.S. citizenship is equally (and often easily) available to all people.

1.     

  A Very Important Day, by Maggie Rugg Herold: This book is about families from different countries celebrating their citizenship, they march to the court house to receive their papers and they happily swear their  They happily swear loyalty to the United States of America and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, waving tiny American flags as they exit the courthouse.      

Problem of this scenario is that provides false information to students and families that initially it’s that easy to become citizen in the United States.

2.       How Many Days to America? A Thanksgiving Story, by Eve Bunting: This book does portray immigration and border crossings being difficult on its journey crossing the border but the book has a happy ending of soldiers greeting and helping them.

Book 2:

Someone Else’s Problem

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá, by Amada Irma Pérez: Is a diary of a girl who immigrates to the United States from Mexico. Her father is a U.S citizen and the family needs to wait a long time near the border while the father secures their green card. The diary portrays the main character fearful and sadness because her family might not get their green card. Eventually the family gets their green card and cross the border legally. But there is an incident on the way into the United States. A police officer arrest a women without papers. This incident is mentioned but not elaborated on, which causes the reader question why some immigrants have documents and others do not.

Book 3:

Tackling the Subject

Hannah Is My Name, by Belle Yang: A family immigrates to San Francisco from Taiwan. They applied for their green cards. During their wait the parents must work illegally. But Hannah’s mother is fired from her job after her boss found out that she did not have papers while her father is constantly looking over his shoulder for immigration agents as he works at a hotel. One day, while Hannah is visiting her father’s work, his job gets a visit from immigration agents and they are forced to leave which causes a change in is work schedule. In the end of the story the family receives their green cards and are allowed to stay.

The author of the points out that families eventually receive their green cards and many families must work illegally.

Here are links to this these amazon books: 

A Very Important Day:https://a.co/d/0sMOqXH

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aquí hasta allá: https://a.co/d/48zAt6Z

Hannah Is My Name: https://a.co/d/8E7I2oE

School in the Cloud

 

I want to start this blog with my history of technology in my education journey. Let’s start beginning middle school era. My teacher’s did not assign us homework through technology, everything was hand written on a white blue line paper. I remember writing 5 pages and my hand crippling. It was not until my freshman year of high school I was introduced to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. During this time I began to build my skills in technology and digital media. Building my skills in technology and utilizing information online awakened a new skill for me, there was more flexibility, creativity and connection with my school work. I enjoyed using creating slides through PowerPoint, adding images, music and color. This made learning interactive, fun and playful.

When I started working in Providence Public schools I noticed students were given Chromebook for their learning. This was interesting to see how the students were engaged, at the elementary level students would play learning games, middle and high school level they would use it for their assignments, testing and would take it home to continue to work. All of this to me was thrilling. But I began to wonder will this affect their ability to writing, becoming critical thinkers and being socially active into our community.

In the Sugata Mitra, A school in the Cloud Ted Talk made me wonder of how I think of about utilizing technology into young people’s learning. Sugata begins telling a story about the history of learning without technology, he states, “schools as we know them are obsolete”. By this he does not mean that that school system is broken it is outdated. Education and learning is changing, as new inventions are being introduced and the youth is being influenced by them. As educators we must adjust to the new changes.

Sugata brings up encouragement is key. Where teachers use encouragement for students to learn. There was a method he tried, called “the grandmother method”. He had a 22 year old accountant that knew nothing about science, to use encouragement words, phrases, and questions while they are playing. This method was fostered in Britain where the Granny Cloud was created. This opportunity opened a door, “look at learning as the product of educational self-organization. If you allow the educational process to self-organize then learning emerges. It’s not about making learning happen it’s about letting it happen.” (Sugata Mitra) This created the idea called Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE).

Link to the Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud

Last semester, I went to observe a 5^th grade bilingual classroom. The class population was fairly small but a large population were students who emigrated from Portugal. There interaction with the Chromebook and internet was freshly learned. The day I went to observe the teacher has the students do independent work. She simply put a question on the board, “How are stars formed and where do they come from?” Her instructions were to answer the question. They opened their Chromebook and began to work. Some worked in groups and taught each other how to search information on the web and some worked independently. She would often walk around and compliment and encourage the students work.

As I observed I would see their creativity and their eagerness to find the answer and form a project out of it. The technology and online resource opened a pathway where students can become confident in learning. As an educator online production is important, this is what helps them become future workers in the community.