Kristen Carter

     Purposeful Play is the idea of learning through playing. Youth workers need to be mindful of learning opportunities during play. Adding values and purpose to play makes it purposeful play. The 6 p’s of Play  Permission  Process  Passion  Productivity  Participation  Pleasure       Care in youth work is focusing on the developmental needs of the child. A standard definition of care is “the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.” I believe as youth workers we take that definition to the next level by showing care for our youth and helping them build a better future for themselves. We should feel interested in our youth. As stated in Mapping Interconnected Care there are many ways one can show care including providing snacks when needed, having a clean and organized learning environment and connecting with the youth anyway you can. 

   After doing the Youth Development Ideology Inventory I learned that I fall into the critical youth development ideology. I believe that youth can make a difference and they have a voice. Youth can have important ideas and can contribute to the world.  Youth and adults works together to develop public role play. I learned that I can make a change for the better with youth. When working with youth I should provide spaces that ask youth what they think.      We did this inventory in  my YDEV class last semester and I kept it. I am in the same ideology as last semester.

A time that I felt injustice was at my job at cvs. About a year ago now my manager told me she wanted to make me a supervisor that means higher pay and more responsibilities. I told her yes I am interested and she told me there were a few things I needed to work on. So I worked on those things and showed her I was ready for the responsibility. She never promoted me and instead gave it to two other people and I had been there longer and knew more than both of them.      This made me feel like I didn’t deserve it and I knew that I did deserve it. I felt like I was not good enough for the position. When someone young, newer and did not have the knowledge for the position was given it I was ready to put my two weeks in but I couldn’t because I needed a job.       If this happened again I would still put my two weeks in because I have been there long enough and deserve more. 

         On October 9th I went to a training for my internship. I learned so much and felt that it was very informative. The first thing that we did was an icebreaker. It was sort of like tag but one person said "step" and when he said it you can take a step in any direction and avoid getting tagged. If you were tagged you became part of a wall and every time the person said step you would step forward making the playing space smaller. Then we learned about passing out snacks and that we have to keep record of each child if they take both components of the snack. I thought that was a no brainier but you can not discriminate against any child when it comes to giving them a snack. Every child has the right to a snack.      The second part of the training the whole group was split into two groups and each went to one station and then we rotated. The first station was about maintaining a safe environment for the children. I learned about the 5 golden rules for maintaining safety

After reading Mapping Interconnected Care three forms of how teachers can care stuck out to me. The first being when the teacher provided snacks for her students. The teacher went out of her way to buy snacks for the class. The teacher did this thinking it would help her students stay awake during class. (That would work for me, I love snacks). She thought about it more and thought sometimes students just need a snack.  Second is having a clean learning space for the students. This tells the students they deserve a clean area to learn. The third one sort of confused me but the teacher connects her sexual identity to the way she teaches. By the teacher doing this it allows other students to connect with her and to talk about their sexual identity.   I have not started my internship yet but over the summer I worked at a sports camp with youth ages 6 to 13. One way care was expressed was the youth had some say in what activity we were going to play and if they did not want to play the

       When I started at CCRI I wanted to be a nurse, a radiologist, and then I decided Social Work was for me. I then transferred to RIC in 2015 with a social work major. Later in 2015 my mom received a phone call from DCYF that my cousins were being removed from their home for reasons I don’t want to get into and they needed a new home. In the middle of this everything changed for me and my two brothers. I was not living at home anymore but it changed a lot of things for my parents and brothers. They couldn’t do or go anywhere out of state without permission from the boys Mom (which does not make sense to me because she doesn’t have them anymore so why should she have a say in anything). The boys couldn’t even get a haircut without moms permission.      I was 7 classes away from graduating with a bachelors degree in social work and this whole situation with my parents and my cousins and how the biological mother treated the social worker for DCYF made me want to change majors a