Hello readers!

This week was filled with learning and expanding my knowledge on how to reach an audience in which I am not as familiar. The week screamed of cultural competency and cultural humility for me. In order to truly learn, I realized I had to leave some traditional concepts I had in order to positively impact the children I plan to teach. In making the curriculum for our Bright Lights Summer Camp, I immersed myself into researching how to adequately teach and communicate with at-risk children. This research included scholarly work, educational videos, and on-site interviews. Within each method I learned a lot, but a few things stood out to me.

As noted in the previous post, Lower Lights Ministries offers many programs. A part of the many programs is their recovery program that includes housing. Two women from this program agreed to meet with me to tell me their stories and offer advice. I asked them if they could tell me something they wished an adult in their lives had mentioned to them while they were young. Both spoke about the importance of feeling safe. Safe enough to reach out to someone and talk about their lives. They also talked about how there are individuals pulling kids into detrimental environments. One of the women witnessed a man wrapping up drugs in wrapping paper and calling a young kid to his door. He told the kid to deliver a birthday present to a house on the same block for $2. The kid not knowing what was in the birthday present delivered the drug dealers ‘gift’. I was told that these are real situations that these kids could be in within this area and teaching them boundaries was extremely important. This incident might shock many but this is a common and realistic event in some areas. Although, there is potential danger anywhere, many children attending Lower Lights live in an area where anything deemed safe is not isolated from the by-products of an impoverished area. I was told by the staff that an outside Mailbox created for the neighborhood kids to grab books from had to be removed. It was removed because it was quickly turned into a drug drop-off zone. When kid-friendly concepts and environments are manipulated in this way it would be wrong to educate my class in a way that does not speak to their realistic needs.

My goal for the summer is to help give them the best tools to protect themselves and expose them to the many avenues they can take in life. I want them to know that there is another world out there waiting for them and that they have the power to get there.

See you next week!