When I say Y you say DEV !

What is YDEV?

Youth Development is a collaborative effort of working with youth to improve their social, emotional, and developmental skills. Often times this collaborative effort takes place outside of school hours for example an after school program, or community based program. Youth Development has been around for a very long time, but it's identity has changed over time. Today there are three ideologies that a Youth Development space can be. Those are Risk and Resiliency, Positive Youth Development, and Critical Youth Development. A Youth Development space can be more than one of these ideologies but most of the time there is a focus on just one of them. What's so special about Youth Development is that it is a very different approach to working with youth than a typical school or academic program. Youth Spaces usually focus on strength-based approaches and putting the youth's needs first instead of just "fixing the problem".

RIC Open House

RIC OPEN HOUSE

For my second event I went to the RIC Open House in November with Dr.McKamey. It was a lot of fun! It made me realize how much I miss seeing the other YDEV students and Dr.McKamey. It was also a little sentimental because I'm graduating in May and won't be coming to these things anymore. I went later in the day so I didn't really get to talk to many prospective students. Instead I really got to catch up with Dr.McKamey and the other YDEV students. I even talked to one of the juniors about possibly interning at Beat the Streets next year, so that was awesome. Events like these just solidify how close the YDEV community really is. I had probably met like 2-3 of the other students that were there, but all have something in common and that's YDEV. I feel like the people who chose this major seem to have really similar values and views on things because I always get along with any YDEV major I meet. It's an amazing feeling. I was a psych major before at my previous schools, and I didn't experience anything like what I've experienced here at RIC as a YDEV major. I wish I could've had more opportunities to express this to prospective students! Don't worry though I'll be coming back a lot next year as an alumni :)

Growing up Hearing/Growing Up Deaf

The first event I attended was during diversity week at RIC. It was held in the SU Ballroom. The title of the event was Growing Up Hearing/Growing Up Deaf. I also attended this event for my sign language class I am taking this semester, ASL 102. The reason I am counting this event for YDEV is because I  plan on using ASL in my career as a behavior analyst. This involves working with youth with autism in a school setting that may be non-verbal. ASL is often used as a form of communication for these students. It is more used with much younger children with autism, but can be used in schools as well.
This was a great event. It was facilitated by two women. One teacher who is deaf and works at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, and also Marie Lynch who is hearing and is the head of the ASL dept. here on campus. The teacher talked about her struggles growing up Deaf especially when it came to her education, and not having access to sign language until college, which was very surprising to me. Marie talking about growing up hearing with two Deaf parents and often times having to be the translator and advocate for them. This forced her to grow up much faster than her peers, and made her involved in every aspect of her parents lives.
I actually had my first interaction with a Deaf person since learning ASL. (Besides my Deaf professor). I was pretty nervous but it went very well! I was able to sign that I had been taking ASL for about 3 months, and the reason I was taking it was because I want to work in a school someday and teach it to children.
Going to this event made me realize how much more advocacy work has to be done for the Deaf community. As a person that may be working with this population there are things I can do as a hearing person. For example, I can insist on closed captioning at the movies, even if I don't know if there is a Deaf person in the audience. Also, try to get more places with drive thrus to allow text orders for drive thrus. These are just some small actions I can take to make the hearing world more accommodating for Deaf people.

Here is a video of me from ASL class. We had to make up a fake family.