Balance media consumption. You can stay informed and in balance. The barrage of negative news of all kinds can leave us feeling afraid, angry, helpless. It’s ok to take breaks, to tune down or tune out for short and longer stretches. Practice spending as much time creating, exercising, socializing, reflecting, being silent, singing, dancing, playing, sketching, and dreaming as you do catching up on the day’s news.

Add in daily doses of laughter. Laughter can be a great antidote to global pandemic stress! Find different ways to nurture your humorous side, and reach out to people who make you smile. Smiles are contagious!

​Build your brain. Taking care of your cognitive side can boost your esteem, help you make better decisions, give you more insight. Read and listen to things you’re interested in – science, technology, astronomy, deep oceans, dense rain forests, languages, cultures, your own ancestry, even the neurological impacts of stress.  STEAM habits of mind refers to this as the practice of “Stretch and explore.”  More on adolescent cognitive development here. More on learning how to manage secondary stress here. 

By Beck Govoni, ​After School Coordinator at the Cambridge YMCA

“Safe Space” reads the sign on your program door. As you enter you pause, perhaps for the first time, you actually pause and think about those words written across an upside down triangle. You survey your classroom. Is your program a safe space? Who or what is it a safe space for? What is the point of the sign on your door?

These questions and line of thinking is the first step to working towards creating a safe space for transgender and gender nonconforming youth in your program. Creating a safe space is more than putting a couple of stickers on your door and calling it a day, yet as everyone who works with youth knows, stickers do hold great importance.

What Leaders Must Do to Ensure Building Culturally Responsive Afterschool Programs
​by Lissette Castillo

By definition, “culturally responsive” education must, among other things, “use the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them.” In addition, “challenging racial and cultural stereotypes, prejudices, racism and other forms of … oppression” is a defining element of the term, coined by Dr. Geneva Gay.

Considering the current chaotic state of our nation, the miseducation of children of color and the widening opportunity gap—often erroneously called the achievement gap—it’s time to eradicate the consistent and oppressive structures of racism in educational programs.

Students of African and/or Indigenous descent (DAIP) deserve programs exhibiting a range of practices that honor their identities, linguistic assets and cultures—in addition to de-centering whiteness from our learning spaces and collective learning, and grounding that is centered within the context of culture and race.

By Mercedes Soto

 On Sunday, May 31st, my partner, 12-year-old son and I participated in the “Wee Chalk the Walk: A Family Day of Action for Black Lives,” to chalk messages of love, hope and support on our city sidewalks.  We walked up the block to City Hall, where we wrote the names of many, but not all, of the Black Americans who have been killed at the hands of police and vigilantes. A photo of our chalk memorial was included in a Cambridge Day article.

On Monday, June 1st, City Hall reopened to staff. As I returned from my morning walk, I noticed that someone had erased the word “Black” from “Black Lives Matter.” My first reaction was shock, anger, then (after a few deep breaths) curiosity. Why are we still having to explain what we mean when we say Black Lives Matter?

Nearly seven years ago, after the acquittal of the aggressor who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin while he was walking home from the store, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi founded the Movement for Black Lives and first used the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

By Melinda Barbosa and bo lembo

Hey Compassion Champions!
Many of you "zoomed" into our workshop on April 30th.
You lifted our moods and made us feel hopeful for the future.
We appreciate your honesty about this challenging moment and how hard it is to talk about our feelings, especially when it feels like we don't know where to plant our feet.  

We prepare and think a lot about these spaces and practice being present in the moment with other humans (Youth Work 101!), which means sometimes some of the "technical" content gently gets woven through the workshop. We believe many of these things you already know, but may not have words for it yet. Here are the slides.
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Keep reading and you will find more journaling prompts!​

by Marlees West, Program Director, Frisoli Youth Center

As an extrovert, movement has long been my only solitary activity. Long runs help me center myself and  release some of my excess energy before I connect with others. In the last year, pilates has helped me to get ready for a day of: connecting to staff and young people and families; talking and learning, and teaching and thinking. By myself, at the end of the day, pilates helps me process everything that I learned, heard, and felt.

Like all of us, physical distancing has rocked my world.
I no longer have all those in-person social interactions to feed my extroverted soul. So, I created “Socially Distant Pilates People." I made my daily exercise routine a social time, initially with just a small group of 4. Over the last few weeks, our community has now grown to include more than 20 people. We 'FaceTime' ten minutes a day, once a day, every day, to do pilates together. That’s it! But that short ten minutes (followed by a virtual dance party) has felt really good. It’s kept me connected to my own identity as a teacher and facilitator (and now as an amateur pilates instructor!) and to my friends and family and friends of friends. It’s quickly become the best part of my day, lifting my mood and energy, and jump starting my creativity. I feel connected.

By Mercedes Soto, Impact Evaluation Advisor, Agenda for Children OST

Yesterday, when I was walking and listening to a podcast, in the April Fool's Day early morning snow flurry, I saw this colorful child's drawing zip tied to a tree.  The message "We are in this fight together so we must remember to be kind to each other." brought me to tears.  I was overcome by this wave of grief for all of the people and the ways of life we've lost and the people and ways of life we are losing.     

Dear OST Community,
We are living through unprecedented closings of schools, out-of-school time programs, and non-essential municipal services.  Our daily lives have been disrupted and many of us are worried about our children's learning, and supporting our families, our neighbors, and the children, youth and families our programs serve. 

It is important to take this time, when we have been taken out of our regular routines, to reflect on what is most important and what can we learn from this experience.  What are the ways that you are taking care of yourself so that you can care for others? 

By Melinda Barbosa, Quality Coach and Trainer, Agenda for Children OST

We know storytelling can have long-term beneficial impacts in our work by creating a sense of belonging and connectedness, allowing us to reflect on our personal identities, and to build communities that create social change. 
 
When you have deadlines looming, progress reports to write, and a new curriculum unit to put together, it can feel like there’s not enough time to just talk. Storytelling is more than talking. It’s a practice in deep listening and noticing within ourselves to uncover what is actually important, and asking us to tend to the emerging needs of the group. 
 
Keep reading for some tips on how to bring storytelling to your team: ​

In this video, a single Colombian mother tells us about the process of supporting her son to reach college after having faced a number of obstacles. She also tells us about how a CSI College Success Coach played a key role in the success of her son.

Every day, in and out of school, middle schoolers are exploring who they are in the world. As youth workers, we can help them shape their story. Every concern, problem or “drama” that middle schoolers share with us can be an entry point to helping them form their identity. How do they see themselves in their own story? Victim? Hero? Supernatural Aid/Mentor?

As youth workers, I think we live our lives with an inherent optimism. We walk into our jobs every day believing that the young people we work with are going to change the world, and that we can give them the tools and resources they’re going to need to do so.  Now, we’re practical, too…we know some of our youth will need more assistance or resources to reach the same heights as their peers.  We know that structures and systems in the world around us will sometimes do more to slow our youth down than to raise them up.  And so our optimism is tested.  And sometimes, it is pushed to the brink…tragedy strikes, seemingly intractable problems rear their heads, and we have those moments where we think nothing can change.