Youth Work is... Identity!

While reading "Locating Yourself for Your Students", one thing that really stuck out to me was when it said: "Particularly when White educators name their identities in conversations with students and disclose how they view their knowledge in relation to the curriculum they teach, students feel freer to discuss how they view not only the educator, but also themselves and the world". I think this is very important to think about because identity definitely isn't talked about enough in schools. If you don't talk about identities, it can cause things like more racism to occur in schools. Sharing your identity with people could be as simple as just having a conversation with them as long as you are comfortable to do so. Sometimes it just takes someone saying it out loud for it to become a topic of conversation. I believe that it's important to ensure students that it is okay to share their identities and to assure them that you should be proud of who you are. I think that your identities are affirmed by saying that to people and feeling confident about those identities and who you are as a person. There are some identities that you can't change, for example, your race. Therefore, it is important to own those identities and show others that they can talk about their identities too and that they can ultimately be proud of the person that they are.

While watching the Ted Talk, Jamila Lyiscott talks about her experience with identities in a school setting. One thing that she talked about that I really liked was the five A's.

The 5 A's:

1. 
   Awareness
   
2. Agency & Access
3. Actualization
4. Achievement
5. Alteration & Action

All of these are very important and each play their own roles when it comes to identity. I didn't know that there was such thing when it came to talking about identity. I also really liked how Jamila talked about colleges and how some are still structured the way they were during the time of slavery and how those colleges need to do more than bring diversity to their campus to make a real change. She explains that they need to re-design the colleges to make it so that people of all identities feel welcome and safe on campus. Overall, I think that identity is definitely something that needs to be addressed in schools way more than it is now in order to educate our students about the importance of being able to openly talk about their identities.

Event #1:Beyond the Hashtag

 Let me just start off by saying that I absolutely loved this virtual event! This event was all about the Black Lives Matter Movement and what they stand for. The guest speaker, Patrisse Cullors, spoke about her involvement in the BLM movement and what it means to her while answering questions from college students. She explained that this movement is run by mostly black women fighting for racial justice and how it is an accountability movement. Cullors has always known that her passion was to uproot white supremacy and create a world where all of us can live and thrive. She is doing this amazing work by being a

part of this powerful movement. This movement started as just a hashtag to end police violence against black people, but now, it means so much more than that. People misunderstand that this is an actual organization, not just people protesting in the streets. There are team of strategists and experts working every day to make sure their goals are being achieved. People also think that the BLM movement is just violence but that's not the case at all. Cullors says, "it's important to know that misinformation and disinformation have been used to destroy movements". This is very important because there's always going to be people that are against your movement and are trying to discredit you and what you stand for by doing things like making accusations and trying to sabotage you. Something that Cullors said that I really liked was, "Acknowledgement is the key to change". She explained that without acknowledging that something is wrong, in the end, nothing will change. She also talked

about the importance of this election and how elections in general are important and can help a movement achieve their goals. The BLM movement and other movements in general, get what they want by holding elected officials accountable. Ultimately if these elected officials aren't complying with what the movement wants done, then they will simply just vote them out because as Cullors explained, "We take our power to the ballot box"!

This event reminded me a lot about the Tatum reading, "Talking about Race, Learning about Racism". Racism is something that we need to acknowledge and ultimately do something about. Black folks shouldn't have to live in a world where they are scared for their lives or fearful of being discriminated against for no reason other than their skin color. I think that Tatum feels the same way as Cullors when it comes to the acknowledgement of systemic racism and how getting people to acknowledge it can actually make an enormous difference in the way they our society views people of different races.

*Visit this link for more information about #BlackLivesMatter!*

https://linktr.ee/Patrisse.cullors20

 

My take away from the mini lecture:

One thing that really resonated with me was the sheer impact that youth-adult partnerships have on not only the youth but the adults as well. The words that Victoria emphasized were "mutually transformative" and I think that the idea that these partnerships can be mutually transformative is very important. Not only can these partnerships heal youth, but they can heal adults as well. I really liked learning more about these partnerships and helped me to better understand the reading!

While reading this chapter of At Our Best, written by Gretchen Brion-Meisels, Jessica Tseming Fei, and Deepa Sriya Vasudevan, I came across this quote that I really liked. The quote is:

"Young people today are inheriting and extending these legacies of youth leadership, building upon the foundations of their predecessors as they work toward equity, inclusion, and justice in a changing world" (p.2)

I really like this quote because it shows just how much youth learn from people that have been doing this kind of work to make a difference in this changing world. Youth use the foundations that have been given to them and they build upon those foundations to work towards the end goal of equity, inclusion, and justice. This really resonates with me because I believe that it is important to build on what you are given and to make it the best that it could be. In this case, youth are trying to work toward this goal, but without the help of people prior to them, it just wouldn't be possible.

While reading the other chapter written by Pegah Rahmanian, I found this other quote that I really like. The quote is:

"It is not our youth that are inadequate, rather it is structural imbalances of power that limit their opportunities" (p.142)

I really like this quote because this is honestly how I feel but never knew how to put it to words. This perfectly expresses how I feel when it comes to youth and how they are seen in society. The thought that people think youth are just lacking something really bothers me because that's not the case at all. It is 100% true that structural imbalances limit their opportunities and something needs to be done about this. People need to give youth more credit for the work that they do and provide them with different opportunities to help them succeed.