Shadows Dancing on the Walls

Writing from historic Benson Hotel in Portland on the last night of a grand Oregon adventure.

Specifically, I just returned from Oregon's Adolescent Sexuality Conference in Seaside -- a classic "beach town" in a place one doesn't typically associate with beaches.

I am compelled to write this now because the last day of this conference was MIND BLOWING.

Today's keynote speaker was a prof from ?? Oregon State?? Ben Anderson-Nathe.  It would be impossible for me to re-create his points, but as this post title reflects he used Plato's cave allegory to talk about how we in the youth field are still essentially looking at shadows on the cave wall when it comes to our work. Caveat:  I'm writing this now largely for myself, so apologies if any random or familiar person reads this and is wondering what in the world I am ranting about.

He challenged the entire concept of "adolescence" and suggested that by continuing to wed ourselves to the term and idea, we are limiting how we approach our efforts AND continuing to "frame" young people negatively. In essence, he took the entire teenager/young people framing shift (hat tip to frenemies at the FrameWorks Institute) and NUKED it! Taking the whole "adolescence is an artificial construct" to it's natural conclusion ... and then it got really interesting.

My words, attempting to capture his sentiments:

• We use the term "positive youth development" without ever defining what "positive" really means -- and thereby allow the dominant perception of what young people should be to dictate it. When in fact that dominant perception is pretty crappy and framed by mis-perceptions in the first place.
• We get all caught up in the concept of "development" when again, we're pretty much stigmatizing young people as being all about that process instead of valuing their actions, the way they think or what they are outside of/in spite of a developmental context. And the kicker -- forcing a view through a developmental lens further entrenches all the negative stuff and makes it easy to continue treating them as other.

While lots of this totally aligned with my thinking and was essentially close to my own message -- where he took it had troubling(?) implications for my work.

• Where Gisela Konopka wanted adolescence viewed as a stage or life period that should stand on it's own without attaching it to "in-betweeness" I felt like Ben was saying we should eliminate it entirely! And that perhaps the construct was entirely culturally bound and intentionally constructed to essentially "keep them in their place."
• Our adolescent development training uses the "Zits" cartoons to highlight how adults are challenged by how development plays out with young people, he saw it as demonizing young people!
• That the developmental "tasks" we associate with adolescence are really life-long tasks. We say children don't really develop abstract thought until age X -- yet even young children (he talked about his daughter here) ask questions about highly abstract ideas around time and love and so forth. That brain development never really stops. That identity development never really stops.

It was a GREAT but JARRING experience to be in the seat squirming as my own sacred cows were sacrificed. Tables turned! He did to me what I do to others! heh.

I am deeply committed to the idea that when adults (society, systems, etc) don't understand development they don't support young people well. I am deeply committed to our adolescent development training.

But the ground is shaking.

I'm trying not to go into either/or thinking. I'm sure there's an "and" here. Perhaps it has to do with exclusively relying on development to explain or justify ALL adolescent behavior, brilliance, contribution, challenges. Perhaps it's more about being sure that we recognize -- and here's a Gisa idea again -- the amazing-ness of young people as being about THEM not just their developmental process.

Is this a process? Adults have to transition from 'young people are "other" because they don't share our values and behave like we do' TO 'young people are "us" yet hard to see that way because they are developing in a way different than we as adults are' TO 'young people are awesome'?

I don't know.  I'm going to be thinking -- and talking -- about this for a very long time.
 g/

Rich Picture -- Barriers to Youth Connections

I just finished a one credit class in my woebegone MLS program. The final project for the class was to assess a situation, challenge or opportunity and analyze it from a "soft systems methodology" perspective.

Without offering too much detailed blahblah, the point was to take a systems -- or holistic-- look at your issue and attempt to map it out using a variety of different tools.

I LOVE these tools. Go check them out. Super good instruction -- and fun!

For your amusement, I'm posting one of the picture/maps I created. My focal point for thinking was on the issue of youth connection.

As we all know only too well, youth feeling/being connected -- to school, their family, caring adults -- is uber protective.  For this assignment I spent a lot of time thinking specifically about why youth are NOT connected to caring adults outside of their family.  As per the assignment, I interviewed a bunch of folks -- two coworkers (Kristin T. and Jenny O.), a college student (Jakki T.) and a parent of a young people (Dan J.)

This picture here doesn't reflect any specific interview -- rather it portrays what I got from the lot of them together.

In the version I submitted I was able to add little text bubbles via a PDF to give the image more content. Can't figure out how to do this here -- so bear with me.

You can see two distinct barriers that separate the young person from the community. The barrier closest to the young person is #1, the fence like barrier is #2.

Glynis' "Rich Picture" of barriers to youth connecting with caring adults

Barrier #1:
Young people have internal & external challenges that get in the way of finding and creating challenges:
I don't trust you.
You don't get me.
I don't know how.
I don't know what that is.

(Note:  I was uncomfortable putting this barrier here as I don't think young people are entirely responsible for it. That said, it came up STRONG in some of my interviews -- which made me feel like it should be addressed.


Barrier #2:
The systems and structures that we put in place to support young people actually create barriers to connection and isolate young people in a "teen world"

You can see that there are very few access points through which a young person might contact a caring adult. A little passage through their faith community or work in a local business.

The primary access they have is through their own family and schools. But are those really great access points?

Schools:  Schools are constructed and evaluated around a single set of measures: grades on standardized test and graduation rates. There role as "babysitter" is reinforced by families that need to have two working parents to make ends meet.

After school:  Afterschool activities are a rare place where connections with caring adults are valued AND where young people find opportunities to make connections with the community.

Family:  Families and community both believe in the primacy of the family which ultimately minimizes opportunities for young people to engage with other caring adults.

Finally -- and I didn't mean to do this as it didn't come up directly in any of my interviews -- media/digital technology is also part of this picture. I think it is an access point -- but not a fabulous one:

Media:  New digital media technologies present vast opportunities for access and relationships with community (and the world), but these are not optimized for development as they are unstructured and not supervised for quality and understanding.

So what do you think? 
What is missing from the picture?
Do you think these barriers are real?
Are there access points I missed?