Becoming a Youth Worker:
A Tool For Developing a Practice Framework
Introduction: As you progress in your own personal and professional journey toward becoming a youth worker, you will need to make some very important decisions. These decisions belong to you. Along the way, you will interact with teachers, trainers, supervisors and mentors who will hopefully inspire and motivate you. If you are open to it, you will grow and continue to learn from the youth, families, and communities in which you are privileged to work. Each of these influences may guide a given approach for you – but in fact – each and every component of your professional practice framework is the result of decisions that you and only you can make. The following is a framework for assisting you to think about these decisions and to support your process of realizing your own professional identity as a youth worker. Your framework will undoubtedly change as you continue to grow, change and develop. To know and understand how your own framework is constructed, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and what future direction you’d like to take it – support you in being the most ethical, effective and positive youth worker possible.
During this semester, you have been guided through a variety of learning experiences. Each of these will hopefully contribute to your own process of completing these questions thoughtfully and thoroughly. This exercise is in actuality, your final examination – but you will have most of the semester to write it, to revise and rethink it, and to make it your own. A dialogue between these questions, your own heart and mind, classroom activities, readings, discussions and ideas suggested is where you should look for answers to the questions.
Your paper should include the spirit of the questions within each section, but you don’t have to answer them each individually. It should be a careful and analytical overview of your model which should reflect the readings and activities in class. It will be graded on its completeness, thoughtfulness and careful consideration. It will not be graded on whether the instructor agrees or disagrees with you…your practice framework is your own. THIS IS NOT AN OPINION PAPER IN WHICH YOU WILL SIMPLY TELL US WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THE CLASS OR THE MATERIAL. It is expected to be academically rigorous and thorough which means your ideas should be referenced with enough academic citations and facts to support your examples and opinions (at least 7 different resources). It will be graded according to the grading rubric presented above. Done correctly, it will be one of the most challenging papers you have ever written.
Mechanics:
Title Page
Content Pages (Maximum of 7 content pages – introduction, body, conclusion)
Bibliography (minimum 7 unique references)
The questions are divided into three sections, with the idea that your practice framework has three primary components in addition to a well-developed introduction and conclusion:
What is my philosophical framework for practice? What do I think and believe?
Who am I as a professional youth worker? What is my professional identity?
Where am I going? What will my field of practice be? Where will I best fit into the youth service system as it currently exists?
Remember – the following sections include questions as guidelines to help you develop your paper – you may use any, all or none of them as you build your paper. Just answering questions in a paragraph format does not complete this assignment correctly as a well-developed paper will also include academic references to support each answer or response and will be woven throughout each paragraph and opinion, idea, example, or analysis:
Paper Structure:
A. Introduction
B. Section One: What is my philosophical framework for practice? What do I think and believe?
What do I believe about why some kids are a success and some kids are not?
What do I believe are the most effective ways to engage a youth in a positive, and success-oriented relationship?
What do I believe about families; how they should be involved in services and/or programs that their children/youth are in?
What do I believe about the role of research in developing programs for youth and families?
What do I think makes youth resistant to change?
What do I find most frustrating about youth and family-oriented work and what do I do about that frustration?
How should communities play a role in the success of youth and how do I act accordingly to support and promote this?
What “lens” do I use and why?
What successes will I celebrate in youth and family oriented work?
What successes will I celebrate with youth and families? What should this be like?
C. Section Two: Who am I as a professional youth worker? What is my professional identity?
How will I deal with the professional power that I will generally have in my role as a youth worker, i.e., what is the nature of that power and how will I use it?
How will I work with persons and groups that are different than myself? Do I appreciate how different values, goals, motivations, customs and communication styles may affect the way that I work – or do I expect that everyone will be like me?
What do I have control over as youth professional and what do I not have control over?
How will I take care of myself as a youth worker – restore, rejuvenate, and reconnect?
What do I need to know right now to be a more competent and effective youth worker?
What do I love most about being a youth worker and what am I afraid of, or dislike and why?
How does my own adolescence affect the work that I do as a youth worker?
Who is my youth services hero or heroine and why?
D. Section Three: Where am I going? What will my field of practice be? Where will I best fit into the youth service system as it currently exists?
What groups of youth would I most like to work with and why?
How will I deal with youth oriented systems, often large bureaucracies or funded by large bureaucracies, that may not always be culturally competent, or that may have direct or indirect discriminatory policies, procedures, or attitudes that undermine fair and effective services for all?
How will I decide to work in systems that don’t always have youth or family friendly policies or practices?
What is the best way to work in between systems that don’t always work together as they should?
How will I continue my own learning and developing as I progress through my career?
E. Conclusion
