Access = Empowerment

There are adults in our society who insist on deciding what, how, when, where, why and who young people can access. Questions like this seems to plague their minds:

• Who does my child hang around with?
  
• What should my students read?
  
• When can I tell her the truth?
  
• Why would they possibly want to know?
  
• Where are those little punks?
  
• How could they?!?
  

And so forth. These adults are considered with every issue that affects youth, and in every sector of almost every young person's life. Luckily, there is growing recognition that when young people have access to information they can change their own lives, the lives of others, and the whole wide world. Here are some examples regarding birth control, school reform, and public health. 

We have to pull back the curtains and show young people the reality. Must.

Its All About Communitatem, Baby!

The word "community" is from the Latin word  communitatem, meaning "community, fellowship," and itself is from from communis, meaning "common, public, general, shared by all or many." That feels good, sounds good. But what does it really do? In an obtuse way it has meant we shared responsibilities and burdens, rights and freedoms. In a practical way it meant we shared common burdens with our neighbors, so everyone paid some amount for the roads and the teachers and the sheriff and the court and so on. It meant we shared the village green and the sidewalks and the schools and the libraries and the town hall and all these spaces we all use everyday. Community meant sharing.

Throughout the 1970s, 80s, 90s and into the 00s there was a growing sentiment that those things we own in common could and should be hacked up and divied out to the few, in order for them to make a few bucks. We did this with roads, hospitals, parks, and government buildings; to some extent we tried to do it to schools, too. Running around were small herds of people who wanted to make money from the things we all have to use everyday, and to some extent they succeeded. Sharing was on its way out.

I'm not sure if we're seeing a resurgence in sharing. But in times when we can't spring for the big houses and new cars and fancier clothes and all the things we indulged in for so long, there must be some silver lining to these clouds. I look up and see this idea of community being reborn right now. A new value placed on everyone's good, an understanding that we're part and parcel of something greater than ourselves. I'm going to talk about that tonight at a community summit in the town of Sumner, Washington. I'll post my notes tomorrow.

History Versus the Future?

In today's body slam match its history versus the future. Weighing in at 5 million pounds comes History, carrying the brunt of civilization on its back, including wars and famine, as well as enlightenment, society and knowledge. In the opposite corner, weighing in at a mere 129 pounds, is The Future, who has broad prospects, possibilities and hope in its support crew.

This morning I'm thinking about the relationship between the historical children's rights movement with today's youth rights movement. The two sound like they are from different planets at times:

• Youth rights vanguard like the National Youth Rights Association call for the need for youth involvement and the expansion of youths' civil rights to include voting, driving, drinking and other important issues. They rarely approach basic human rights, although collectively there is a growing sophistication that is bringing that into play.
  
• Children's rights titans like the Children's Defense Fund and Save the Children calling for young people to have their basic needs met, namely food, shelter, water, clothing, education and health. They rarely vere towards youth engagement, although the topic is gaining popularity. 

There has been both agreement and disagreement in the past, and I have shown some of the connections and disconnections before. My friend and ally Alex Koroknay-Palicz and I have frequently talked about the differences. He emphasizes the difference between the inherently paternalistic perspective of the CR advocates and the empowering perspective of YR advocates. While I see that and readily acknowledge it, I don't think we have to have an either/or perspective about this. At the core of the whole conversation is the remote prospect that yes, they are calling for the same thing - we just need to find the common ground.

There was a time when these two perspectives hadn't diverged. In the 1970s Beatrice and Ronal Gross wrote a book called The Children's Rights Movement: Overcoming the Oppression of Young People, and it was a uniting clarion call for folks ranging from John Holt to Marion Wright Edleman. Powerful statement. But that force was lost somewhere in the 80s when As Soon As You're Born They Make You Feel Small: Self Determination For Children was printed and sold in mass production in cities around the US. This booklet really served as a primer for youth liberation, and threw down the gauntlet between the two movements. NYRA picked it up after that, and has practiced youth-driven, youth-led and youth-motivated action since.

With the weight of history on their backs many young activists today know they're standing on the shoulders of giants. The future awaits, too, as 5-year-olds today are being raised knowing they have rights to the basic and essential human rights - which include involvement. Let's get to work helping the two ends meet, because even if we don't they're going to. 

Schools as Community Centers

Making schools into community centers by opening buildings for 16-hour usage per day, seven days a week makes sense. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is the latest proponent for the seemingly exceptional shift. On Charlie Rose recently he laid down the line, and its good to hear the federal government coming out on the side of communities.

For youth liberationists this may be a tricky call to arms, primarily because it calls for more exposure to these apparent institutions of oppression. However, I am not a liberationist. I am a radical inclusionist, and in this way I believe that any opportunity to transform the adultcentric decisions made everyday throughout our society into being inclusive of young people is a good thing. Now, its not enough to simply decide to let kids come and play or read or eat or hang out or otherwise just linger in schools after school - although I know that is exactly what more than a few young people in this country need, which is a safe and supportive environment to spend with caring adults. I know that. However, I also know that these young people (which included me as a youth), and all young people, need more than just involvement - we need opportunities to become engaged. They need a chance to build that sentiment towards their communities, towards their families and schools and places of worship and neighbors and peers and all these places where we need them desperately to become more than themselves. 

Barack Obama recently reminded us of the urgent necessity of education by proclaiming that, "When you drop out you're not just giving up on yourself, you're giving up on your country." Schools are one avenue for learning that we should uphold and strenghten, day and night, to secure meaningful, successful learning opportunities for all people of all ages. Now, while we're into making them open day and night, let's talk about making schools meaningful...

Crossing The Capitalist Fjord

I don't much get into workforce development for youth for a lot of reasons. One is that I believe its our society's responsibility to create citizenry with a higher purpose than generating capital for a Machiavellian marketplace. However, I am finding myself increasingly leery of the ennobled purposes of dodging the conversation about creating jobs for youth.

So, what does that mean for my work? Well, literally it met that I've been a bit of an entreprenuer all my life, since I was 6 and made a sign for my advertising agency for the front door of the hotel room my family lived in at the time. I did the paper route and snow shoveling and lawn mowing and tried Junior Achievement and participated in an Urban League Young Financial Leaders course before I took my first "real" job when I was 14, when I was hired to teach in a program based on Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Ever after I've been involved in different social entreprenuership schemes, and at my last count I've began more than 50 youth-oriented projects. I've experienced more hesitation at doing this work as an adult than I ever did as a youth.

All that said, I'm about to start addressing ethically responsible ways to help young people meet their own economic goals, because I believe this is an essential consideration for social change led by and with young people. If you would like to help inform me as I move into this area reply to this post or send me an email to adam at freechild dot org.

An Obsolete Society?

"What appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other." - Gandhi

More than 10 years working in public education across the United States and Canada has taught me a few things. Sure, I figured out what works for me when I teach students and teachers and administrators, and sure, I learned about the pressures and realities of everyday school functioning.  I have learned is that Bill Gates was right when he said back in 2005 that schools, as we know them today in general, are obsolete. Worse still, they are oppressive and compulsory, which has always been a dangerous ignitor among tinderbox nations with aspirational lower- and middle-classes. 

But my conclusion may be a little more rough: Schools are just the part of the iceberg we can see.

Our society has relied on adultism to enforce adultcentrism for more than 100 years, and now the fruits of that labor is coming to bear. Child abuse, compulsory schools, the Draft, truancy laws, religious norms, policing practices, and a smear of other tools have been used consciously and unconsciously for more than five generations to oppress, suppress and otherwise keep children and youth "in their place," which has frequently been less-than-human, and is constantly less-than-citizen. 

There are synchromonious emergences happening that will undo this negative reality:

• Readily-accessible technology, including cell phones, laptops and the Internet
  
• Interactive Internet, including collaborative, distributive and generative activities
  
• Increasing socially estute teaching in schools, at home and throughout the community
  
• Vested adults who are concerned about adultism, youth rights and youth inclusion
  
• Powerful young people who are acting more assertively, pro-actively and consciously than all previous generations
  

This is the future of our country and our world, and whether or not we like it is largely irrelevant. The simple fact-of-the-matter is that young people possess more positive power than ever before, and as Gandhi's satyagraha taught us, there is no more powerful force than love and that positive power. 

Let's embrace that power, and that urgency. We have to embrace that urgency.

Inconvenient Youth Voice

When I was a teenager there was a powerful creative force in my neighborhood called the Scribble Crew. "Scrib" was this dude at my high school who had intense design aesthetic and who could pull together people around graffiti, if nothing else. The Crew's work was spread around my area of the city, with random gang tagging happening over and around it. Until I came along. When I was 14 I took the tag name "Paz", and at 19 I became Modem Chi. Now, I wasn't an accomplished artist, and I wasn't that prolific. But I had a little talent, and with some targeted art I made a little bit of a name for myself. Oh, in the late 80s I watched Wild Style and Beat Street, and took what I was doing seriously enough to practice in the back yard, on the margins of school books, and by doing tags of friends names for $.50 a piece for a long time. It paid for extra milk and candy bars at the pawn shop. I was into it. But I never got busted - I had teachers who suspected me, and people in my neighborhood who tried to catch me, and a girlfriend whose name I scrawled across more than one wall figured out my secret identity quick. But never once did the flashing lights catch up with me, and when the search beams peeled across our house they weren't looking for me.

Grafitti can represent one form of what I call "inconvenient youth voice." These are the voices of young people who are urgently struggling to be heard, and whether or not adults like or appreciate what is being said, these young people are going to be heard. The kid markering on the bathroom stall, that crowd outside the class complaining about how bad that teacher is, the girl who drops out because she hated school, and the dudes throwing bottles at the old church because they're pissed off at God are all examples of inconvenient youth voice. The youth member who says the "wrong thing" at the meeting, the young representative who brings 10 friends instead of one, and the 19-year-old who insists on starting that school despite being told no a million times... all of these are examples of inconvenient youth voice. I shared a lot of it myself when I was young, as we all did - because we all want to be heard. The general inconvenience of my youth was that I didn't believe I needed to be heard - instead, I just wanted to get the words or art or action out there, no matter what. Sure, some people spent time painting their personal property after I tagged it, and taxpayer dollars were spent cleaning up the streets I scrawled on years after I put it down. But I wasn't thinking about it - I was doing it.

People who are committed to the meaningful engagement of young people throughout society need to work with young people to find and create and explore and examine new ways to engage disengaged youth, and new ways to make inconvenient youth voice constructive, if not always appreciated or "appropriate."

The argument about the legitimacy of grafitti continues still today, more than 30 years after the art began in earnest. Luckily, some headway is being made. According to today's New York Times, recently in New York City, a strange collection of police officers and grafitti artists sat down for a conversation. Check that out. In the meantime, think about the ways you can embrace inconvenience, no matter what. That's our job.

Democracy: Don't Just Learn It- Live It

Its often been said that democracy has to be taught and learned by successive generations for fear that itd dwindle or die from ignorance. While I don't disagree with that idea, I think the way its being taught in schools and youth-serving orgs across the country is mostly wrong.

First, let me answer the question of why we need democracy education. Democracy is the expression of an idea through action. Its the idea that every person has more than a role designated to them; they have a role they choose. If we choose to be couch potatoes, then that's our role; if we choose to be activistas, then so be it. If we choose to be one role on Monday and a different one on Tuesday, that is our choice to make. Democracy education should teach us about the advantages and disadvantages of each of those roles, and the many more.

This is part of what is wrong with today's democracy education. Its too focused on the politicians and too focused on consumers, both of which are only small roles within democracy. We need an educative process that teaches young people about parenting, community leadership, business ownership, street sweeping, researching, doctoring... All these positions - as they relate to democracy.

Another major disjunction in our democracy education programs, classes and schools is that we're too focused on teaching the formalities of the democratic process. Instead of voting, parlimentary procedure and other obtuse concepts that are marginally useful in daily living. Instead of that potentially alienating and disenfranchising experience - especially for youth - we should focus on developing the democratic attitudes and expressions of young people. What does it *feel* to be democratic? How do (lower case "d") democrats think? Let's focus on experiencing those realilities that can inform everyone's whole life, rather than what we have been.

These are just some ideas on the outset of a much larger conversation - join me!

Airport Revelations

I'm sitting in Dulles Airport in DC after an awesome week. Now I've got my moleskin out, and I'm etching ideas down like I was carving in stone:
*Four books on this work: adultism, the future of youth and my own life's story.
*Two children's books: one on listening to your own voice and one on finding your place in changing the world.
*One motivational book about my Cycle of Engagement and how to use it personally and systematically.
*A new website that acts as a sophisticated wiki focused on youth power, coupled with a youth power library, coupled with an organizational and individual directory.
*A million dollar budget built almost exclusively on fee-for-service training with some foundation funding.
*A permanent training academy located in the DC area that will operate year-around and employ yth and adult educators from around world to train yng ppl and adults from around the world.
*An inexpensive, easy-to-buy and own youth-driven t-shirt company franchise with a franchise-in-a-box opportunity complete with some type of training that focuses on social messaging.

There are a dozen more in this moleskin, and now I've got to marinate on them. Let me know what you think!

The Fierce Urgency of Now

"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are
confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life
and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still
the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with
a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it
ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is
adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled
residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, 'Too late.'
There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our
neglect." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in 1967.

Wars, a sunken economy, increasing homelessness, fewer educational dollars, sicker people and worse crime than seen in a generation are making our world a perilous place to live these days. Yet I want to suggest that there is a problem more pressing than any of those, and that problem is one that, like the others, is ultimately solvable. That problem is one of age segregation.

This is an age of engagement, when more than ever before young people have the opportunity to become engaged with themselves and their peers. Different from ever before they are growing up in peer networks and using forums for conversations that adults never before. They are exchanging stories and sharing insights and swapping advice and telling the truth in ways that previous generations never have - and never have been able to. Consequently adults are backing further and further away, letting children and youth to their own technological devices. And young people are showing this, friending in the 1000s, sharing music and clothing and culture online more than ever before. Simaltaneously, young people are still suffering the heinous indifference of adults towards the practical challenges they face right now: health care, education, afterschool programs, employment and recreation programs are the first getting cut in state Legislatures around the country. And the chasm built to enforce age-based segregation in our society grows, too, as more spaces are created to warehouse children and youth than ever before. This wholesale disconnection from adults comes as classroom sizes explode around the nation, as youth program staff are cut from already meager attempts, and as one organization is merged with another with the intention of cost-cutting, but the reality of lost outreach. When young people can't find belonging in those places they seek it elsewhere, in the comfort of video games, basketball courts, girlfriends' houses and the mall. Pity the community without those spaces, too, as youth will keep seeking to connect with their peers no matter what.

In my workshop here at the CDC DASH annual meeting yesterday I began on this new note, one that is starting to elaborate on a newfound pulse that is coursing through me. I am an adult who is consciously committed to not standing aside while the world passes me by, bemoaning what is wrong. This is a moral and ethical awareness that I have felt lingering in me for years, but couldn't put words to until now. Dr. King's words have never felt more honest, more relevant and more vibrant to me, as I am no longer afraid or even hesitant to see the utter power, the phenomenom and the courage of the new relationships that are changing our world. These relationships are founded in the awareness of adultism, the acknowledgment of rights, and the power of deliberative engagement.

Never again should a person be crammed into a cattle car classroom that is underfunded, overburdened and poorly staffed. Never again should a person be faced with the grim prospect of not finding work simply because they are young. Never again should a person not be allowed to shop with friends becuase they are young. Never again should a police officer incarcerate a youth for truancy. The kid unable to find a place to hang out, the young woman who can't find a contraceptive after she looked, the boy forced to tag light poles because there is no safe space to express his art, the young person turned away at the voting station, the candidate whose campaign is instantly dismissed because she's young, and all of this injustice is based on no discrimination more than AGE. And simply put, I will not accept anymore of it.

Today I call on YOU, my comrades in thought and action, to step forward. Let your stance be known, and do not hold back. If you work in this everyday, change your actions. If you write about this everyday, change your words. If you dream about this every night, change your visions. I can no longer settle for half-baked, half-driven, half-done youth involvement ideas. From here out I stand for nothing less than complete equity between young people and adults, and even more: We are dealing with today's young people, for whom the future is not just a possibility - its a reality. Me and you, maybe not so much. We maybe well aware that our actions will affect another seven generations, but my daughter, the youth in your program, that student in your seat... these people are going to be alive in that future, and many more. We cannot continue to fail them.

I cannot.

Join me in moving forward and facing what that fierce urgency of now - the world can no longer wait.

Speaking My Truth

In his last book Buckminster Fuller began by saying, "Dear reader, traditional human power structures and their reign of darkness are about to be rendered obsolete." That time is now. I am convinced that our society is on course to complete nothing less than a complete re-envisioning of the roles of young people. The conundrum of relying on children and youth to be complacent, apathetic, and relegated recipients of adult problems is about to be solved. The time of insisting "young people are the future" and naming them the "torchbearers" of society is going to end. I honestly hope that young people today do not bear the torch apparent in the suffering of our world today. The crisis of purpose and possibility that I have seen apparent in institutions throughout our communities, with their uniquely oppressive relationships to young people, is about to be solved.

For several years I have been beating around the bush about what this change looks like. When I first designed The Freechild Project I intended to upset the service learning and youth service communities by standing their efforts next to those of youth activists across the countries. I saw the different practices forming a seemless continuum of imperfect yet hopeful possibilities for youth engagement. Afterwards I took aim at the education system, working to re-envision opportunities for students en masse through SoundOut. These two projects, combined with my trainings and speaking engagements and consulting opportunities, have allowed me a great deal of access to real-life examples where the roles of young people are actually in evolution throughout our society.

My analysis is beginning to crystalize, and I no longer have the need or want to marinate on it any longer. After this week I am ready to begin to speak words to truth. I have to thank Melia, Dana, Jonah, Elizabeth, Scott, Jake, Chris, Shawn, Fred, Melissa, Greg, Wendy, Thaddeus and Mishaela. And for you, dear reader, get ready - here I come.

"The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be
done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive
your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told
you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets
buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors
induced or imposed by others on the individual." - Buckminster Fuller

Do You Get It?

I do not believe that a student of human reality may be ethically neutral. The
sole choice we face is one between loyalty to the humiliated and to beauty, and
indifference to both. It is like any other choice a moral being confronts:
between taking and refusing to take responsibility for one’s responsibility. -
Zygmunt Bauman

Bauman alludes to the inherent reason why the people who kick my butt do, and that is this: they actually care - and not in a simple way, either. They throw their hearts and minds into their work, making and manufacturing and connecting and engaging in ways that are authentic and powerful, and they don't hesitate to do those things. They are not ethically neutral, and they make that known on a consistent and committed basis.

Now, I know that when you're surrounded by caring and passionate people who "get it" it can become easy to think a lot of people get it. Its easy to believe the world is actively choosing who is "in" and who isn't. When I worked in youth centers, on ropes challenge courses, at the YWCA and Planned Parenthood, in those afterschool programs, I always interacted with people who got it. They got the struggle against adultism, ageism, classism, genderism, homophobia... they got it. That's one of the ways working three jobs at a time for minimum wage didn't suck - I was surrounded by authentically good people. It was much easier for me to see that folks weren't apathetic about their roles in society and abilities to create change. But I was wrong on more than one level.

The simple fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people who don't get it and who are ambiguous or indifferent to the realities young people face. A lot - maybe 90% of any given population. Those people are who we need to reach, who we need to target. Parents and teachers and youth workers and city council members and principals and activists and store owners and voters and lots of people who should be in the mix, but can't be, or aren't, just because they don't get it. They haven't taken a stance and declared a position. For a long time I made the mistake of assuming that because they didn't get it they couldn't get it. Aside from being patently dismissive and more than a little arrogant, now I realize that's a completely false assumption.

So now I'm going out. Not sure how yet, but I'm going. I'm going to critically engage with the masses who haven't had the ability, opportunity or desire thus far to become fighters and advocates for transformed roles for young people throughout society. Forgive the allusion, but I'm going to preach to the unconverted instead of the choir. I'm going to challenge them to take a stand and make known their intentions. I have to get out of the pews of youth work and into the fields of society, and starting today I'm committed to that journey. Join me?

An Inspiring Evening

Tonight was an evening of vision, and I'm smitten. Smitten by my old friend possibility whom I haven't seen in a while. Smitten by my muse who ocassionally calls me to crash into the rocks, and other times to remarkably clear waters. Smitten by a connection invigorated and by others rekindled. Here's a story about love and respect:

Once upon a time I sat around an interview table in Washington's state education agency with several people who eventually influenced me quite a bit. One of them was a kind older soul; another was a saavy system worker in training; the other was a wonderful and freakishly engaging policy guy named Greg Williamson. Since I met him almost nine years ago he and I have worked together in a variety of capacities, with this last 9 months providing an opportunity for us to strengthen our comradery and ability to succeed together. Tonight I had the privelage of sitting down to dinner with Greg and our longtime friend Wendy Lesko, for whom I have incredible respect - and who is simply an awesome person. If you haven't read her book Youth! The 26% Solution I would suggest you do that today. So Greg and I and Wendy sat together for several hours and plotted our recent individual paths and schemes and feelings, and it was a spectacular time. I heart them both.

I was wonderfully distracted the entire time I talked with Greg and Wendy. Before that meeting I spent several hours with Melissa Helmbrecht Martin. Melissa is the head of an emerging social change empire called splashlife. For three hours she and I had the most spectacular conversation about changing the world that I've had in a long time. As I've talked about before, I have heard a lot of good ideas from a lot of good people. But getting those ideas implemented is challenging for a lot of folks. Additionally, you may know that I myself have several dreams unrealized. Talking with someone who has accomplished so much - including opening a charter schoool, running for Congress, and creating several different social change ventures - was humbling to me. She has started and finished things in a very effective way, and while I've started and finished things I have often wondered about my effectiveness. Melissa didn't wonder - she knew. I need more of that type of authentic courage.

Tonight I learned a lot about myself and my friends, and I'm really grateful for that. Its good to have role models, critical friends and hope. There are many places to go from here - thanks for sharing the ride!

New Norms or New Society?

Just returning from a retreat with 10 of today's leaders in Democratic Education in the US, I am struck by how similar all of these conversations tend to be. Not only in terms of their overlapping concerns (e.g. social justice, youth engagement, meaningfulness) or methodologies (e.g. service learning, nonviolent communication, student/adult partnerships), but in terms of their limited scope: We all seem to have accepted that we can only tweak the system. I don't know if its because of compounded challenges/failures, collective defeatism, or pragmattic realism, but honestly its starting to wear on me.

I feel like I am constantly expected to calm down my rhetoric, to relax my critical lenses simply because it makes others uncomfortable or makes me less desirable. This sort of slight is not new to me; instead, I have received these types of criticisms for years. The strongest relationships in my life are those where my allies, colleagues and friends have learned to listen to my perspective, however critical or "unacceptable" they may be for any given conversation. Today I am beginning to understand that my concerns aren't just that we are failing at implementing any sustainable change or long term solutions to engaging young people; rather, I believe that we have to re-envision and recreate the relationships, cultures and structures we live in in order to fully realize the potential of human engagement, inclusive of children, youth, adults and seniors. We've got to rebuild this thing.

I'll write more later.

Influencing Others to Engage Young People

A large part of my job as an advocate for engaging young people throughout society is to influence people. I want to influence children and youth to get them to become engaged; I want to influence adults to get them to engage with young people. I take this charge excitedly, because I know its here that my abilities are strongest and the challenges can be greatest.

Sometimes in workshops I talk about influencing others with an analogy. One of them is about the raft on the river. Basically, youth engagement is a river, and on that river you have rocks, rafts, barges and speedboats.

• Speedboats understand youth engagement and will not stop or challenge our efforts to promote engaging young people as partners. These folks need minimal support, and when they do its merely in the form of acknowledgment and resources.
• Rafts don't understand youth engagement, but once they understand they move forward and want to do it. These people need education, and the opportunity to see youth engagement in action. Once they are going along they may need some prompting, pushing and pulling, but they're going upriver and they will get there, eventually.
• Barges understand youth engagement and oppose it. These folks are challenged to see the advantage of engaging young people, and they are challenged to understand the breadth of its impact. When they do understand, they are against it, and the inherent assumptions that lie behind it.
• Rocks don't understand youth engagement and oppose it, and once they do understand it they continue to oppose it. They are not sympathetic, and they do not offer "win-win" compromises.

The challenge with each of these archetypes is that they all embody some prospect for hope; simaltaneously, they also show serious challenges for advocates. Because of their enthusiasm and commitment, speedboats can wear people out and make newcomers feel unwelcome or incapable. Rafts may be easily defeated and slide towards bargeness quickly, while barges can exhaust or distract speedboats or rafts. Meanwhile, rocks often act as "hole-makers" in the river, taking down other boats that are striving to make the journey.

In talking in workshops and speeches I'll often confess to focusing almost solely on speedboats and rafts. There are too few advocates who are working to engage young people, and a lot of misunderstanding. The rocks I have tried to work closely with were in high-level positions of authority in large agencies, forcing me to give undue credence to their opinions. So I have learned that we have to balance all those differing perpsectives, and to pay attention to priorities. Today those priorities focus on supporting folks where they are, rather than insist they go somewhere else. What do you think? Who are the "speedboats" in your life? Do you still wrestle with the "rocks"?

360° Youth Voice

Schools, homes, city hall, places of worship, police stations, art studios, community centers, theatres, government offices, parks, businesses, gyms, radio stations, colleges, public spaces... These are the places in our neighborhoods that can help us begin to envision a 360° approach to engaging youth voice. 

Because of dozens of years of programs and research, to think of engaging children and youth throughout these different environments is not impossible. Instead, we are provided a variety of practical templates, important considerations, useful lessons learned and replicable processes. Here are examples of youth voice in schools, community preservation, city hall, community centers, parks and government agencies.

The challenge becomes identifying how those efforts are connected. How do these different places tie together in order to fuse a wrap-around approach to youth voice?

Supporting SoundOut

Over the last six years I have worked with almost two hundred schools across the United States, grades kindergarten through twelve. Thousands of students, teachers, principals, counselors and paraprofessionals, as well as community youth workers and parents have participated in hours and hours of workshops and trainings, action planning and speeches. We have explored dozens of topics, including student voice, student engagement, roles for students in school decision-making, students as classroom researchers, student-written classroom curricula, student assessment of learning, teaching and environments, and so on. The SoundOut.org website has become widely-acknowledged as a pivotal resource for research and teaching about student voice.

Show your support for SoundOut and become a member of our Facebook page by visiting http://tinyurl.com/FBsoundout

Students On School Boards

There is a powerful location for student voice in schools, and its one that isn't even in schools. One of the realities of meaningful student involvement in school improvement is the acknowledgement that a lot of decisions that affect students aren't really made in schools at all. Rather, they are made in cubicals, offices, conference rooms and board meetings that happen far beyond the view of the "average" student, and they happen every single day.

One of those locations is the school board of directors, both at the district and state levels. Of all the different school administration structures I've learned about across the U.S., the school board seems to be a fairly constant fixture. Engaging students as partners on school boards is a tricky venture for a several reasons. Here are some of those challenges:

• Relevance - Many of the decisions school boards make have long-ranging effects whose outcomes aren't obvious or take a long time to see. Why would students want to be involved in making the mundane and tedious decisions that school boards make?
  
• Reputation - Deserved or not, adultism reigns in many student/adult relationships in schools. Why school school boards take students seriously?
  
• Equity - Adults in schools are generally used to treating students in a vertical manner. Why should roles for students on school boards be any different? What would a horizontal relationship even look like?
  

These are just a few of the many other considerations that I have learned dominate the thinking of both young people and adults who are considering student members, student representatives and other roles for students on school boards. Making that reality more harsh is the truth that there are also several practical considerations school boards face, including:

• What are the rights of student school board members?
  
• Which decisions should students be allowed to participate in and which should they be excluded from?
  
• How can school boards secure effective student board members?
  
• Who from local schools is best positioned to be a student board member?
  
• Why should student board members reflect anyone other than high-performing, high-achieving students?
  
• When other members are elected for two- or four-year terms, why should students serve any different terms?
  

And there are many other considerations there, as well. A growing number of school districts already engage students in school boards in some fashion, and many of these questions have been answered by them. There is also a small body of research examining roles of students who are meaningfully involved in school decision-making. This blog is an overview of one of those roles in one location in schools; at some point in the near future I'll re-examine this and provide some critical examination of the questions I ask here. In the meantime, please reply with your examples, ideas, concerns and considerations about students on school boards! Thanks.