Nakkula Chapter 2

Context Mapping helps adolescents figure out who they are, who they want to be, and what role they play in society.  Youth are able to work out the identity vs. role confusion through a context map.   Mitch asks Julian to list the various spaces and relationships he must negotiate each day like family, school, and activities.  Mitch then asks Julian to write down what people expect of him in the relationships and activities that he has.  Finally, Mitch asks Julian to pay close attention to how he feels and to note when he feels safe in situations and when he feels uneasy.

The four identities mentioned in this article are:

• Foreclosed Identity: is when a person has committed to a certain way of life without exploring it carefully and without experimenting with alternatives.  This identity can be pushed upon a person by family, friends, or peers.
• Diffuse Identity: is when there has been no commitment to one particular Identity.  There has been no exploration or consideration to an identity.  Those in this status are easily influenced by others and often change their minds.
• Moratorium Identity: A person actively explores roles and beliefs, behaviors and relationships, but does not make a commitment to either one.
• Achieved Identity:  This occurs when the identity crisis is resolved and there is a high commitment to the selected identity. The ego-identity is successfully integrated within the individual.

My Context Map:

RIC-Internship, Practicum, Professors, Classes, Work- study, Friends

Little Shepherd Preschool- Parents, Children, Co-workers, Mentor

Home-Family, Boyfriend, Friends, Babysitting

Understanding Youth Adolescent Development for Educators by Nakkula

This whole article was very meaningful, but what really caught my attention was the meeting of the minds.”  If educators want to make a bigger impact on their students and their thinking then educators must share how they think and make sense of content, so students can get the fundamental tools to share in the thinking process.  According to Nakkula, the key is that the educators’ thinking be made as transparent as possible in order for students to connect with them.  Basically if Ms. Peterson was upfront about her expectations of Antwon he might be more open to talk with her about his fears of failing.  Then again it could be reversed; if Antwon were able to openly talk about his fears of failing then Ms. Peterson might respond to him positively.

 I think another big key to this is for the educator to understand their students’ way of thinking and how they think.  Nakkula made a great point with the statement, “without a concerted effort to learn how our students think, it is virtually impossible to optimally share our thinking with them.” What I think this means is that each person learns from knowledge that other people have and are influenced by that knowledge this process can also be known as scaffolding.  I really enjoyed the example about how if a teacher constructs a safe place their notion of “safe” can be very different than a student’s version of what “safe” is, looks, and feels like.  In order for educators to construct a safe place with their students the teacher must be upfront about what she/he already knows a safe place to be like.  Then educators must pick the brain of their students to find out what they think the meaning of “safe” means.  After basic knowledge is made both the teacher and student can co-construct ways of interacting with one another in a safe place.  This process scaffolds their new learning and ways of interacting on the content and knowledge they already possess.

     Both teachers and students need to work as a team to learn from each other.  Just because a teacher has that title that does not mean they have attained all the knowledge that they need.  It is only natural that a teacher would gain new knowledge from their students after learning how their students think and process information. This also goes for students in the sense that they might think that they know everything now, but once scaffolding takes place and the teacher is upfront with them about what he/she expects then they will be more open and willing to learn.

Here are some great scaffolding strategies to use in any educational environment: Click Here

Egg Drop with Youth In Action

In class on Thursday we did an egg drop along with the youth in action students.  I remember that the first time I ever did this was in high school and we did it to help us learn about Physics. This time I am so glad that it was not to learn about Physics, but learning about the different classes in our society, such as the poor/working class and the middle/rich class.

  For this activity we were given materials by the youth in action students and my groups materials consisted of paper, rubber bands, condoms, balloons, and paper bags.  With these materials we had to create something that would protect our egg from breaking when dropped.  My group decided to put the egg in a cup covering it with a condom and other soft materials that we had and blowing up the condom to put the cup with the egg in it.  When the youth in action group came over to us and took away some of our materials, we didn’t let that discourage us because we were more than half way done and we thought our egg would sustain the fall.  To our dismay it didn’t sustain the fall and the egg broke.   After thinking about how the materials were taken away and how the groups that were inside working on their egg had more materials than the groups outside (my group) it kind of felt like we were set up to fail before we even started.

   Connecting this all back to Ullucci, I can see how most children don't know what they have until they see what someone else has.   I can see how a lot of people/children might think that they are being set up to fail in life with the lack of resources that might be given to them, but I feel like we all have the ability to really persevere over adversity.  I am sure that there are people out in our communities that have come from nothing, but because they want to make their life better they have overcame them.  I think that for everyone there is room for improvement both within an individual and the institutions around them.

        I feel as if it is wrong that some communities get resources and others don’t.  Today not everyone is going to have what someone else has and it’s really sad. I wish that all communities had the same resources because then individuals would feel more prepared for the world a head of them.  We see schools in different towns in Rhode Island that always have new textbooks and other schools that barely have enough textbooks for everyone or there are schools that have the newest technology.  Just because some schools have more that doesn’t make their students any  smarter or better off than a student whose school has less, they are just learning in a different way. People who are poor feel like there is no way out and that feeling of there being no way out is passed down from them to their kids and so on.  When people feel like there is no way out, that is when our institutions need to step in and change. They need to change in some way when it comes to there being more jobs, more school materials, and higher salaries for workers.  This would make communities feel like they are being backed up and someone is rooting for them to succeed.

    There is a quote that I have always loved and I feel like it really pertains to everything we have learned about.  It states, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Everyone has a special purpose that they bring to the world and every word that they say or don’t say matters.  The world is a big place, but everything that is done either by you, me, or someone else is important.

Here is an article that gives some good tips on essential skills that can be used for overcoming adversity: Essential skills