Deficit View
I have learned so much from my experiences at Crestveiw Teen Night, especially about encouraging students to be the best that they can be despite what they have been through. The idea of the deficit viewpoint deals with feeling or seeing the child’s family or culture as inferior compared to the dominant culture. I feel that these children experience the deficit viewpoint directed at them quite often because of the area that they live in. I have spoken before to some of the teens about this and they feel that often their teachers have these views towards them whether it be because of their skin color, culture, or community. I admit that when I first started attending Teen Night I too had some of these same feelings but after spending time with the teens those views have definitely changed. Now I work towards empowering these teens to combat these views themselves and push them to be the best that they can be. I try to encourage the students that come to Teen Night to remember that no matter where they come from or how others view them, they need to push to be strong individuals. Some ways that we work to do this are to bring in speakers who have been where these teens have been to allow them to see what they can become. We educate them on their culture by watching videos such as the “Tuskeege Airmen” and discuss their feelings towards this. Overall, I think we are going good work to encourage these children to overcome the deficit view and I hope we are able to continue to do so.
College Night
This week at Teen Night we had a speaker come to talk to the teens about college and hard work. The speaker was a law student from Creighton University and she spoke to the teens about the fact that she was not always a straight A student and she did not always know exactly what she wanted to but her hard work was what got her through. I thought this was a great message for the teens to hear because they really need someone to instill a strong work ethic in them. The college volunteers that come help show them that they too can go to college and do what they want to do but hearing it from someone else definitely helped. We allowed the kids to go outside and play around after and anyone who wanted could stay in and talk to Angela about the college experience and share any questions or concerns that they might have. I was surprised that we had a couple kids come in and ask her questions. They asked things like well I like Science and law, what could I do with that? I think it was a great time for the teens to get out their questions and talk with others about college and what the experience is like. It was also nice that she did not sugar coat the experience, she told them college was tough but if you have a strong work ethic and you put in the effort anyone could do it. Which is exactly what the teens needed to hear.
TEEN NIGHT 3/25
This particular teen night was a very important one. We had been off for two weeks and were a little leary that we would not have many students attending but to our suprise it was one of the most popular nights. We were making popcorn with some of the girls while waiting for the rest of the students to arrive and one of our teens said in passing that she had been accepted into Iowa State College. Ashley Smith and I looked at each other and back at the girl and said, “What!” We explained to her with the help of Debra, that getting into college is no small thing and talked about how proud of her we are. Once the rest of the students arrived we had her announce her news to everyone so that we could all give her the proper congratulations. I think it is so important to encourage these students to achieve their dreams and was very suprised that she seemed very nonchalant about her acceptance. She did, however seem more excited when we had her tell the entire group and all of the kids showed their excitement for her. In contuning the night we have the teens watch Tuskegee Airmen, a movie about the first African American fighter pilots and discussed with them how those pilots were treated. We talked about how they were sort of set up to fail and told constantly how the United States was not “their country”. The kids seemes to really get into the movie and we had some great discussion. After we completed the movie Debra asked the teens if they would like to meet one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. One of them has retired in Bellevue and Debra thinks that she could get him to come speak to them even though he does not do public speeches anymore. I was suprised to see all of the girls in the group say yes we would definitely like that but the boys were not giving us much of an answer. We have had issues in the past with bringing a presenter and only having two teens show up so Debra wanted to make sure that they would come if we invited this speaker. We got sort of wishy-washy answers and were talking to one of the lead boys who was acting very strange. We could not tell if the movie upset him, if he just wasn’t interested in the speaker or why he was saying that he didn’t know if he would be there when he attends every single week. We decided not to hound him infront of his friends so after we said goodbye to all of the kids Debra, Ashley and I talked about what we thought was going on with him. This young man was one of our best group members and we really did not understand so Debra decided that she would go to his house and talk to him, she has a strong relationship with the young man and his family. After I got home that night I recieved a call from Debra telling me that we read him all wrong. He told her that he loved the movie and would really like the opportunity to be able to talk to this man but did not want to have this man show up if none of the teens did. This young man had been at Teen Night a previous week when we had brought in a speaker and only Ashley, Debra, he and I had showed up so we cancelled. He said how embarassing that was and if this man was such a legend he did not want to bring him all the way out to Crestview to have no one show up. I was so supprised by this and very proud of him, in my opinion this showed how much this teen has matured over the year and how much repect he has gained for others.
Background
This is my second semester participating in my service learning hours at Crestivew’s Teen Night, formerly CRUSH. Last semester I believe that I really got to know the teens very well and build a foundational relationship to use this semester with them. The first couple times that I attended CRUSH it was to assist Debra with any activities and be present as a positive role model for the teens. Since then I have worked to develop a strong, positive relationship with the teens and hopefully have become someone that they can look up to and confide in. This semester I have become more involved in planning CRUSH activities and have even run the group a couple times in Debra’s absence. I feel now that I am able to make more of an impact on these teen’s lives because I participate and even facilitate the conversations that we have. I am looking forward to continuing my work at Teen Night throughout this semester and following through with some of the activities that we have planned. As we did last semester, again this year we are planning to take the teens who are interested on a college visit in hopes of encouraging them to want to attend college as well as showing them that it is within their reach.
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