The field of positive youth development helps us see that children are not problems, but actually are important to our society. This field helps us see this by emphasizing the child’s talents and strengths. However, they do not shy away from their environment, they look at the child’s life. They understand each child is different and has different stories. Some suffer from learning disabilities or have a troubled living like living with drugs or gangs (Damon 2004).
There will come in time where everyone gets the chance to interact with a child. Whether that be parenting, in your career or mentoring. Whenever you get that chance you will have the opportunity to positively impact them and let them become better human beings. This article explains that the positive youth development’s goal is to “understand, educate and engage children in productive activities rather than at correcting, curing, or treating them for maladaptive tendencies or so-called disabilities” (pg. 15). To me, this quote means you need to teach students in different ways where they actually understand the information rather than teach them like they are robots. When am I first going to interact with children? When I begin my career.
In the future I want to become an elementary teacher. Throughout the years I debated on what I want to do, but they had one thing in common, kids. I have finally chosen the education route because children spend more of their time in school, and in that time you can really impact the student. I was blessed with many great teachers and you can tell off the bat they love what they do. There are so many things wrong with the education and I plan to do my best to put the students’ needs first. There are three elements of positive youth development, the nature of the child, how children interact with their community and moral perspective (Finley 2020). A teacher can easily implement any of these elements on how they approach kids. The one I will use the most is the nature of the child. It is easy to have a stereotype of how each child should be. I plan to see each student as an individual and not as one big group. One student may live in the car and another might have a learning disability, whatever it might be no child is the same. I also plan to try my best to have different ways of teaching, since each child learns different. Perhaps one day I will assign a lesson to be taught outside, implant group activities, or have visuals on my powerpoint.
The way I have thought of interacting with youth has changed over the years. This lesson did make me reflect on how I would interact with students in the future. Adults and older people have to think twice on how they approach the youth, as they are the future and will contribute to our society.
References:
Damon, K. (2004). What is Positive Youth Development?
Finley, K. (2020). Positive Youth Development [Powerpoint Presentation]. Retrieved from Moodle.
Rebecca Cardenas 