Promising Practices

Promising Practices

On Saturday, November 3rd I attended the Promising Practices Conference at RIC for the first time.  At first, I wasn't looking forward to attending this conference, but when the day was over I actually really enjoyed myself and learned a lot throughout the day.
The first part of the conference; after the opening remarks; was the Keynote Address given by Dr. Dana Fusco.  Some of the things that I learned from Dana Fusco's Keynote Address was mostly about youth development.  Which is what most of the conference had to do with in the first place.  Since I am going to become a teacher this is a very important topic for me to learn about.  The first thing that I learned about was simply what is youth development? Youth development is a combination of maturation and learning both biological and behavioral.  Thriving is very important in youth development.  Child and youth programs can provide a healthy ecology for thriving, and so can classrooms.  There were 8 characteristics that she taught us about that students, and teachers should follow.  The first was Physical and Psychological safety.  You as a teacher have to make sure that the students are safe, and that they feel safe.  Second, make sure there is the appropriate structure.  Third, Support for Efficacy and Mattering.  What that means is that you have to make sure that each student matters.  You have to make them matter! Fourth, make sure there is opportunities for skill building.  Fifth, you have to grow supportive relationships.  Sixth, give the students opportunities to belong.  Seventh, include positive social norms.  Lastly, the integration of family, school, and community efforts.  That is the most important characteristic in youth development because you have to make sure that everyone is involved not just the students and the teachers.  The parents and the community are a big part of youth development as well.  That was my favorite part of Dr. Dana Fusco's Keynote Address because I really learned a lot about youth development in a different way.
One of the next things that I learned in Dr. Fusco's address that I thought was very important was about how school sometimes isn't enough.  This part of the address taught us how after school programs and activities really help children.  Some of the reasons why it helps is because it helps the children build relationships with other students or teachers.  It also helps because it involves a lot of hands on activities, and children have more fun while learning doing hands on activities in my opinion.  Another thing you could do is culminate events that celebrate the student's accomplishments.  I think this ties in again with making the students matter from one of the eight characteristics that we learned about.  I think that because the more we have kids to have wonderful ideas it helps them feel good about themselves.  According to Dr. Fusco, that is very important, and I agree with her making children feel good about themselves is very important in youth development. Before this address I have never heard about the Urban Youth Collaborative.  The Urban Youth Collaborative is a student-led coalition that unites low-income students of color across New York.  I thought it was very interesting to hear about that as well.  Overall, I learned a lot about Youth Development from Dr. Dana Fusco's Keynote Address, and I thought she presented it very well.  There is this website that I found that helped me explain the meaning of youth development.  Here is a video that I thought was very interesting about the Urban Youth Collaborative, and how they hold a silent rally to protest the lack of student voice.

After the keynote address was over we were sent off to the two workshops that we signed up for.  The first workshop that I attended was called "If You're Safe and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."  This workshop was taught by Dr. Gerri August who is also an FNED professor here at RIC.  I would know because I actually signed up for her FNED class a while back, but I ended up dropping out of it.  Anyways, the first thing that we learned about was Safe Spaces.  We had to discuss in our groups what we thought the definition of a Safe Space was.  As a class we came up with that a Safe Space is a judgement free zone, and a place where you can be yourself.  I was in a group with Genesis, Kaela, and Vanessa, and we told Dr. August about how we learned about SCWAAMP, and we thought it tied in with the idea of Safe Spaces.  The actual definition of safe space is that safe spaces provide physical, social, and psychological freedom for all youth.  Youth need more than physical security they also need a sense of belonging, a settled confidence that their contributions are valued.  I think this compares with Dr. Dana Fusco's keynote address about youth development because all youth need to feel like they belong, and I also agree with that.  Any student that acknowledges themselves as a member of LGBT should always feel like they belong, and they should have a safe place where they can go, and not feel like they are being judged.  For those of you that don't know or don't remember LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gays, Bisexuals, and Transgenders. This connects to what we did in class first because of SCWAAMP, and second when we watched the video It's Elementary.  I think that connects because it is the first video that shows how students are taught about Gay's and Lesbian's.  It teaches them about the stereotypes, and learn interesting things about the LGBT community.  It teaches them to not bully, and help create safe spaces for them as well.  It was a great video, and it definitely connects to what we learned during this workshop. We also learned about climate control, and no its not what you think.  There was an "equation" that she gave us that I thought was very interesting.  The equation was Designed Measures+Dynamic Responses= A respectful and Inclusive Climate.  We learned that designed measures are: policies, physical environment, and professional development.  We also learned that dynamic responses are: interventions, invitations, and inclusive language.  There was a quote that Dr. August gave us that said, "Policies offer structure within which a human rights violation can be remedied."  What this is trying to say is that they are NEVER NEUTRAL!

The last thing that we learned about was the enumerated anti-bullying laws.  We learned about the no promo homo laws and laws that prohibit enumeration.  There are many states that have the no promo homo laws.  If you are wondering what the no promo homo laws are I found an article off GLSEN that explains it very well, and it helped me understand it as well.  Overall, I really enjoyed the workshop about safe spaces, and I really learned a lot.  It was a little bit boring, but overall I really enjoyed attending this workshop. I found this toolkit that teaches you about creating safe spaces with a lot of click-ables, you should check it out.

The second workshop that I attended was called, "Preventing Transgender Bullying Before Children are 6, 7, or 8 by using Transgender Friendly Picture Books."  The woman who taught this workshop was Elizabeth Rowell.  She had to be the most energetic, adorable woman I have ever met.  She made this workshop so interesting, and with her energy and enthusiasm she kept our attention throughout the whole time, and plus it was a very interesting topic.  You could tell she was very enthusiastic about this topic especially through the way that she presented it.  In this workshop we learned about how children are physically bullied because they do not play with toys that are meant for their gender.  Also, transgender boys are more frequently bullied.  For example, a 4 year old boy was pushed off of playground equipment because he was playing with a barbie doll.  Another thing that I learned was that gender nonconforming students are more likely to be called names, be made fun of, be ignored, be excluded, and are bullied at least once during school.  In LGBT the "T" is usually left out, and the T stands for transgendered.  You can stop the bullying by working with young children through anti-bullying activities because transgender bullying starts when they are that young. We need to stick up for those students who are being bullied!  Most transgender adults knew prior to six years old that they were in the wrong body.  Dr. Rowell used the story of  Call me Kade to describe that experience. Call me Kade is about a girl named Kade Collins who is a female to male transgendered person. This video shows the story of Kade, and it is really very interesting you should watch it.

You probably are thinking why should we think about young children and the transgender experience? We should think about it because it is part of them!  It is part of their families, their school experience, and our society.  1% of the population is transgendered.  Each gender variant child is different. Books can be very important for a transgendered child.  Books can be like mirrors because they are powerful.  A well selected book can be powerful for helping young children understand themselves and others.  Some of the books she told us about had a specific transgender audience.  The books that she told us about that were focused for transgender girls were: 10,000 Dresses and Be Who You Are.  Some books that focused on Transgender Boys were: Backwards Day and When Kathy is Keith. Also, here are a few other books that were brought up during the workshop: Jesse's Dream Skirt, My Princess Boy, and All I Want to be is Me.  Those are just some of the books that she mentioned there are many more.  If you are interested in reading them there are a lot at the RIC library.  Now, you are probably wondering using these pictures what can you do with these picture books.  She told us many things you could do while using these books, you could have discussions, role playing, and get them hooked on helping others.  Which also is anti-bias which means recognize and accept their differences.  What I learned from this conference I can connect to the article we read called, "Cinderella Ate My Daughter" by Peggy Orenstein.  I connect it to that article because it talked about how if children were allowed to choose what toys they could play with they would choose toys that were meant for the opposite sex.  There is nothing wrong about that kids should be able to play with whatever they want, and they shouldn't feel any different because of that.  There was also the story in the article of a bias father who refused to buy his son a tutu, but he got his daughter a set of hot wheels.  There should be no bias between you're children.  If your son wants a tutu let him have a tutu.  Like I said earlier kids know prior to the age of six that they are in the wrong body.  I thought that connected because a part of the workshop we learned about anti-bias.  Here is an article that I found about a transgendered child that I thought was very interesting that ties in with this workshop.  Overall, I really enjoyed this workshop because I learned a lot about transgendered children, and how to teach students about it in a fun way using picture books.  The professor that gave this presentation really did a great job which made it even more enjoyable.  It was definitely my favorite workshop of the day.  

The last part of the conference was our lunch and "unconference."  During the "unconference" Dr. Bogad's ALLIED group gave a presentation.  They talked about what Cultural Competency was, and how to be a culturally competent youth worker.  There are ten characteristics that they talked about that showed how to be a culturally competent youth worker.  The first thing was to know yourself.  The second was learn about others.  Third, you need to see the individual.  Fourth, Don't assume!  The first thing that comes to my mind when you assume is that you make an "ass" out of "u" and "me."  Fifth, diversity day is not enough.  Sixth, use culturally relevant examples.  Seventh, don't ask the youth to divest of their cultural practices.  I can connect this point to code-switching which we learned about in the article we read called, "Teaching Multilingual Children" by Virginia Collier.  Code-switching is the switching between two or more languages in the context of a single conversation.  Code-switching by students should be accepted, and not penalized.  Which is what the speaker from ALLIED was trying to say in my opinion.  You could also compare Rodriguez to this point they were trying to make because you shouldn't try to take a student away from their first language to learn the public language.  The eighth characteristic is to ask for learn and preferred names.  If a student wants to be called something other than their real name they should do it.  In our FNED class we did the name-tags, so we would be called by what we wanted.  Also, most professors at RIC for the most part ask what your preferred name is, and they make note of it which is a good thing.  Ninth, you have to create safe spaces.  I learned about safe spaces from my first workshop.  Lastly, you must be humble!  Here is another article that I found that talks about cultural competence in youth development that had to do with the presentation that ALLIED gave.  I thought the ALLIED group gave a great presentation, and I learned a lot from it.  The last part of the conference, and the second part of the unconference we heard a few guest speakers, and we had a few prompts given to us at each of our tables to look at and discuss with each other.  That was my least favorite part of the day because I didn't find it helpful or informative of what we did during the day.  When some members from our class went up to the microphone to speak I thought that was pretty cool, and when we just had discussions as a whole cafeteria I thought that went better, and it was more fun.  From this conference I learned that this event has to do a lot with what we learned in FNED.  First, we learned about youth development, and that is something very important that we have to learn since most of us are going to be teachers.  Second, I learned a lot about safe spaces, the LGBT community, and Transgender children that also has to do with our class because we learned that its not ok to judge people that are different.  We should make them feel welcome, and we used the GLSEN website, and the video It's Elementary to help us do that.  Lastly, we learned what it was like to be a culturally competent youth worker.  Which has a big part to do with our class because of our Service Learning project, and the school that we tutor in.  So, that will help us when we return to our placement school for the last few times.  We also had our cultural competency paper which helped me have a little understanding of this topic as well.  Overall, I really enjoyed attending the Promising Practices Conference; I didn't think I would at first; but I really had a good time with the whole class, and I look forward to going again next year!