Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Hey!
RIC YDEV students who will be in NPST 403 spring 2014
You are invited!

Please RSVP the Youth Development Mini-Conference sponsored by RIASPA and PASA.

When:  Wednesday, January 15, 2014 8:30-12:30
Where:  RIC Student Union Ballroom

This is a great professional development and networking opportunity!
Hope to see you there!

Corinne and Lesley

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Mindfulness

Don't forget your clear bottles on Friday!

Vanessa Wiener from resilient kids will discuss ways to be and teach youth to be mindful.  Here's a quote from her:
We ask kids to ‘pay attention’ all day, but we don’t ever teach them how.” 



Here's a preview of our jar activity:

Friday, November 15, 2013

Registration CONCERNS!

Please take this short survey if you are still having trouble getting the courses you need for the spring 2014 semester!!

Thanks!

FIll this out before our meeting next week!!

Please print this google doc and fill it out before you come see us next week.



Thursday, November 14, 2013

Saturday, November 9, 2013

This is what democracy looks like...

Check out this short video of 12 year old Madison Kimrey using her voice to speak out for political change... Did I mention, TWELVE years old?


Thursday, October 31, 2013

Teens Trick or Treating

 

Here's an interesting article about six-foot trick or treaters.  I really empathize with the author and his son/son's friends.  I see a lot of half-costumed teens every year at my own house trick or treating after all the little goblins have gone to bed.   Symbolically, this article makes me think of many situations outside of Halloween and makes me ask many questions: how do the structures we all create (Halloween rituals, social rituals, school institutions, etc.) create dichotomous places that assume two social groups -- small children and adults?  In the article, the half-costumed boys go out trick or treating -- taking up the role of smaller children (which is great! We all have our inner 8 year olds!).  The other Halloween option is for teens to be trickers, throwing eggs and making chaos.  I wonder what it would mean to make Halloween rituals (or other rituals and institutions) less dichotomous.  How can we (all of us, including teens) create some additional roles and spaces where teens can be together, have fun, interact with others in meaningful yet distinctive ways, and contribute to the festivities in some way.

 

 



Sunday, October 27, 2013

Here are your 1 minute elevator speeches about Youth Development!
Lesley has some close up shots.  Think about whether you all want to edit these videos or if they can stand as is.  These are awesome speeches!!

What is Youth Development?


 

What is Youth Development at RIC?


What Makes a Good Youth Worker?


Friday, October 25, 2013

Hi everyone!
Here is a Sample Professionalism Portfolio Entry.  I've done it here in our blog, but you will complete this task in your YD Portfolio.  Don't know where your portfolio is?  If you have made one already, Google "google sites." Your portfolio should pop up.  If you have not yet made one, go to the text section of the syllabus and follow the link that says "portfolio.

Make sure to have both local and national activities/organizations!

*****************************************************************

Corinne McKamey's Professional Activity List

Practice Setting:  Youth Experiential (outdoor) education

Professional Activity                                                       Where I found it

National
Association for Experiential Education                       I have presented/attended this conference
Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education    The web
Outward Bound                                                             I have taken one of their educator courses

Local
Rhode Island Environmental Education Association   A friend told me about it.
Audubon Society of Rhode Island                                I have taken a course here.
Save the Bay                                                                   I know an educator there.






Friday, October 18, 2013


For next week, make a context map (see post below) and also take notes on the following 4 identities in your reading. Write about how you make sense of these identities -- your own observations, associations or connections with these identity types. 
  • Achieved 
  • Moratorium
  • Foreclosed
  • Diffuse



Corinne's Weekly Context Map
What contexts and relationships do you encounter on a weekly basis?  Map or list these contexts on your blog.  


Thursday, October 17, 2013



Hey all, tomorrow morning, we would like to perfect and film the elevator talks from last week. Just wanted you to know in advance in case you wanted to wear something other than pajamas tomorrow morning! :)

Friday, October 11, 2013

The power of us!


We tried out our first group advising day this afternoon.  28 youth development majors (or soon-to-be majors!) came to HBS 205 for a few hours to meet each other, to find out some information about advising and courses, and most importantly, to talk with one another and with Lesley and I about courses, schedules and career goals.  The session started with an icebreaker so that newcomers would feel welcome in the group, and then students from FNED 352 presented one minute "elevator speeches"about youth development as a global field of study and profession, youth development @ RIC, and what qualities make a stellar youth development worker.  (See photo below of one of the groups presenting their elevator speech!).  Students worked on their plans of study individually and sometimes collectively, and there were some helpful shout outs in the room (e.g. Hey your taking xxx? Want to borrow my old textbook?).  From my perspective as an advisor, the energy and information traded around the room was so much more than what could ever come out of a one-on-one advising meeting in a faculty office.  I don't think this kind of collective group advising can replace one-on-one office hours for students who need extra help with tricky situations or who need some personalized counseling, but I think the group advising format provides something different from one-on-one advising -- capacity building?  a collective sense of community?  opportunities for friendship and mentorship across yd major cohorts?  other things?  

Today's group advising session also gave me really cool glimmers of your (students!) future as you graduate and continue to develop this kind of information and mentoring network with each other (and hopefully with RIC YDEV!) as youth workers and leaders in Rhode Island and beyond.

For those of you who were there at the advising session -- what do you think about your experience today?

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Art of Water, R. Shreefter

In graduate school I joined a writing group to help me get through my dissertation.  (We still meet now, 13 years later!).  The first year we met, some of us got university credit for an "independent study" with our faculty advisor.  Unlike my peers, I chose to not get credit.  This puzzled my advisor:  why not get credit for something I was already doing?  Even though I respected my faculty advisor and learned a lot from being a part of the group, I didn't want to get a grade on what I saw as my own learning and transformation as a new researcher and writer.  It was important to me that the writing group space was somehow different from an academic space where transcripts and grade expectations symbolically placed me in a school institution at the bottom of a hierarchy of instructors, faculty, and administrators.  I took many classes from my advisor for credit and I learned a lot from those classes.  Somehow the writing group for me was different.  I wanted to keep the power of assessing myself and my own progress and transformation within me and within the learning community that we created.  I didn't want the institution stamping its seal of approval on the kind of learning that was happening for me in the writing group.  As a group we worked on an idea called, "thinking with" where we would read each other's writing and ask questions of the author -- not telling them what to do really, but to repeat back what we heard and to make associations with the text that moved all of our understanding and learning forward together.  It was and is a powerful experience.

Our guest instructors from Youth in Action seem to embody a way of working together that is more democratic and emotionally supportive than what I think of when I imagine traditional school settings.  When I read about some of the things that YIA has accomplished and the kind of community learning environment that it maintains, I think of my experiences within my writing group.  

Even though these two organizations -- YIA and my writing group -- are very different models of working together and comprise very different kinds of people, there is a spark of voice and balancing learning/working/growing together in and as a community.  I'm looking forward to learning more about YIA and how they see (and are) themselves working collaboratively together and with others like RIC.  

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Friday, September 6, 2013

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Welcome to FNED 352: Seminar in Youth Development!  

Sometime before September 13, you will set up your own blog to use for all of your written assignments, and to keep track of your thoughts about any of the issues we cover. You can also maintain this blog after this class is over for personal or professional purposes. 

[Note: if you already have a blog you used for FNED 346 or any other purpose, you are welcome to continue to use that blog for this course, as well.]
  

A blog is your very own, personal online journal. It is public, in that I and your classmates can read it and comment on it, but it is your space and you can control most everything about it. (If you want to make it private so that *only* members of this class can read it, we can show you how to do so).  



In the context of this course, your blog has two purposes:  

1) Your blog will provide a space for you to keep all of your writing assignments over the course of our semester together. You will not hand in any written assignments; rather you will post them on your blog. In this sense, your blog is merely your assignment notebook that you will use as you read and prepare for class each week. You will also be posting any additional thoughts you have: responses to class discussion, after thoughts, things you forgot to say in class, relevant experiences you have, etc. But importantly, your blog is a public space and as you post (and comment on others'), you will gain a much richer understanding of everything we read and discuss in class. I want you to think of it as interactive and intertextual in that way. In this sense, your blog is much more than just a Microsoft Word document that happens to be online. It is a hypertextual space that allows you to link to images, webpages, video and other online tools and toys.

 2) Creating your own blog will also introduce you to the blogisphere if you don't know this place already. Why blog?  We am trying to encourage you to practice having public discussions about the content we are learning in this class. Further, we think you will enjoy it, and hope that you will discover creative educational uses for this online medium. You will see how easy it is to use blogger.com, and perhaps it will inspire you to be a blogger in other areas of your life.  

To start your own blog, you will go to: www.blogger.com
  
If you do not already have a Google account, you will need to create one.  If you do have a Google account, sign in in the box at the right.  This will allow you to create your own blog on a site called blogger.com.   





Click the button that says NEW BLOG (you will see this even if you have blogged before) and follow the instructions to get started.   

Don't forget your Username and Password!!  You will need them to login everytime. Please write them down on the top of your syllabus so you don't forget!  

As you fill in the info, you will be asked to give your blog a TITLE. This title will appear at the top of your blog. (Ours is called "RIC Youth Development")  

Then, you need to choose an address: http://_______.blogspot.com. This will be the web address associated with your site. You can call it anything you like. Be clever or simple (or both) -- it is up to you. Write it down so you don't forget it! (You can also find it later on in your Dashboard where all of your future blogs will be listed.)  

You will also need to choose a design template for your blog. Look through the options listed and see what appeals to you. You can change this later so don't worry too much about it initially... Once you have the account set up, you can start posting

A “posting” is an entry on your blog. (For clarification, you have one blog, but many postings). Give the post a title and then compose as you would any journal entry. When you are finished, hit the button at the bottom that says Publish. It will not appear on your blog until you publish it. You can always go back and edit old posts and create new ones.


Your first post should be a short, professional introduction to you: who are you, how long have you been at RIC, why did you choose YDev as your major, what kinds of experience have you already had working with youth...
  

When you are done creating your site and posting your first entry, please come back to this blog and post a comment at the end of this first posting (scroll down) that includes your blog address so that we can post it in the link list to the right. 
 

Some Tips and Helpful Hints:
  • Once you are in your blog, look at the top right corner of the screen. If you click on the word DESIGN, you will be able to make design changes, create new posts, edit old posts, etc. (You can only do this if you are logged in to your blog.)
  • Once you are in the DESIGN screen, you can do all kinds of things to make your blog a bit more interesting. Change your fonts and colors, edit a post, change your settings. See the tabs at the top of the screen for all kinds of options.
  • Poke around online and make a list of websites related to education, media literacy, social justice or anything else relevant and post them on your blog. You can add all kinds of things by ADDING A GADGET from your LAYOUT screen.
  • Just do the best you can with this. If you get stuck, don't fret... we are happy to help you anytime as you work on getting this started. And remember: you can't break it. It is just a blog. Everything can be changed if need be!
Good luck!!  

Dr. Bogad and Dr. McKamey