Event Two

              For my second event I was lucky enough to attend adoption day. This event was done through my internship at DCYF. On this day the court makes a big event for the families participating in adoption day. Walking into the court house had a different feeling one would experience any other day. Getting off the elevator you could see balloons, and pictures of the children being adopted hung up on the walls. There were so many activities for the children to participate in while waiting for their adoption time and once the adoption was finalized.  There were people dressed up as characters from movies like Elsa from frozen and the bear from the Pawsoxs. There were tables of food and frozen yogurt set up for people to enjoy. A couple of children had made free bracelets and were handing those out. Children were getting their faces pained and animal shaped balloons. The families were also offered a free family portrait; I thought this was a great idea for the new families. I was allowed to sit in the court room when the adoptions were taking place and it was a wonderful experience. Everyone in the court room was smiling and so happy. Once the adoptions were finalized, you could see how much joy it brought the families. The children that were adopted received a bag, I’m not sure what was in the bags but I could see a big teddy bear sticking out from it. I really enjoyed going to this event. It was nice to see good happening in the courthouse instead of bad. I think the children there also enjoyed it a lot it made the day special for them with all the activities happening and the news being there as well.

               I believe adoption day corresponds with many themes we see as youth workers and youth development majors. As youth workers we want to see the youth and families we are working with do the best they can. We want to see all their hard work pay off. Some of the families at adoption day have been trying for years to be able to have their adoptions finalized. That day, all the hard work they did and everything they went through finally paid off. That is what this career path is all about.

               Here are some links with more information about adoption day along with a video.

1.      National Adoption Day Page

2.      A video of an Adoption Day

3.      National Adoption Day Facebook page

 

                                     

                                         

 

Event One

The first event I attended was the advising event youth development had. At the event a significant amount of youth development majors came together in Gaige hall and worked to answer questions about the youth development program along with advising questions. The event started off by everyone in the room introducing themselves by saying their name, age, and how their day was going. This is a youth development activity that was taught to the program by a group called youth in action. One person will start and say “bug in” introduce themselves and when they are done they will say “bug out” and then the next person will do the same. This was a good activity to do at the advising event because there were a lot of new faces interested in the youth development program. During the advising event a lot of questions about courses and the program were cleared up for everyone. It was fun being able to interact with others in the youth development program along with helping each other create class schedules and answering questions.

The connection I saw from our advising day was with youth in action. Youth in action is run by the youth who participate in the group. I saw a connection with our advising day because we ran the event. We worked with other youth development students to answer questions. Our advisors were there to help whenever we needed them, like youth in action does. Below you can find an article written by Adeola Oredola, the executive director of youth in action. You can also find more information regarding youth development below.

1.      Youth in action article

2.      YDEV information

3.      YDEV advising central

                     

Resilient Kids

 

For this blog we had to watch the video on resilient kids. I really enjoyed this video I learned from it as well. Thinking back to when I was in elementary school and even middle and high school having time and learning these techniques would have been very helpful. As Vanessa said it is easy for children to get all worked up but they do not necessarily know how to “calm down” like they are often told to do. Being taught how to calm down in situation will really help children. The schools that are implementing these techniques are already seeing higher grades from students. I also really enjoyed this video because I learned how to calm down like they talked about. Using the techniques like Vanessa and the children in the video discussed can help in ways of relieving many stresses in your life.

               Watching this video also reminded me how important it is to relieve stress and to calm down when you have a lot going on in your life. Stress is not good to have in your life so if you can do simple things like taking a step back and breathing it will help you in the long run. Finding something that helps relieve the stress in your life like yoga, running, or even talking to someone about what’s going on are good things to do.