Oregon Encounters

I spent the week in the Central Willamette Valley last week.  My base was in Corvallis, home to Oregon State University. Oregon State University has been endowed with major gifts for building a center for families, scholarships to first generation college students from rural areas and to promote parenting education throughout the state of Oregon.  The Ford Family Foundation has been a leader in the process and has joined forces with other foundations in Oregon, including the Oregon Community Foundation and the Meyer Trust.  The Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative (OPEC) is coordinated by Denise Rennekamp at OSU.  Doris and I were fortunate to be abler to meet with Denise at her office in the lovely Hallie E. Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families.

Pictures do not do justice to the beauty of this building.  The wood all came from Oregon as a condition of the funders who made their fortune in the timber industry.  

It was a pleasure to catch up with Denise who both Doris and I know from our work.  Doris earned her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies at OSU and I know Denise from a multi-state collaboration in which we were both involved for a number of years.   I spent most of the time listening to her share about the evolution of the OPEC Hubs and the real expectation that the hubs are about developing community based sustainable collaborations and not to fund programs long term.  She shared some success stories and some not so successful examples.  I admire the work OSU and the greater statewide community of funders have tackled the need to support parents of young children.

I had contacted Denise early in my sabbatical planning about making some program visits and she recommended several exemplary programs.  The one program I connected with is Adelante Mujeres based in the city of Forest Grove in Washington County, Oregon, west of Portland.  I was able to travel to Forest Grove after landing at Portland Airport and before I drove to Corvallis through the verdant orchards of the Willamette Valley.  I was a little familiar with Adelante Mujeres because I had done research on their programs on Denise's recommendation and had met the director, Bridget Cooke, at a WSU event some years before.  

I drove into Forest Grove, a sleepy little college town (home to Pacific University) on Monday morning.  Thanks to my trusty GPS I had no trouble finding my way to the Adelante headquarters.  I was immediately charmed.

Adelante Mujeres: Education, Empowerment, Enterprise

Bridget Cooke, co-founder and director

Adelante Mujeres (Forward Women!) was founded by a small group of low income Latina immigrant women and their allies to improve the quality of life for themselves and their community in 2002.  I highly recommend you visit their website and learn more about the mission and the amazing work that is being done.  Two of the programs Bridget told me about that I wanted to return to visit are the Chicas Program and ESPERE.  I took the descriptions right off their website.

• Chicas is an innovative youth development program empowering Latina girls to develop their leadership potential, adapt healthy lifestyles, develop cultural identity and achieve academic success with high school graduation and college enrollment.
• ESPERE stands for Escuela de Perdón y Reconciliación (School of Forgiveness and Reconciliation) and is a workshop that helps people develop proactive strategies to address and overcome conflict and learn the power of forgiveness. ESPERE trains families to manage conflict with compassion and understanding in a way that leads to healthy, violent-free relationships.

The Chicas program is an afterschool and summer program and soccer camp for girls from 3rd-12th grade.  It currently operates in 13 schools.  The program began in 2008 and has grown exponentially. Bridget shared that the big event everyone was getting ready for was the soccer tournament for the girls teams that were drawn from the different Chicas programs.  Chicas works with girls in the following age breakdown: Grades 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 and 9-12.  Some of the graduates are now on staff with the program.  The Spring 2015 newsletter that Bridget shared with me features the inspiring story of one such young woman.

I am also very intrigued by the ESPERE program.    The six sessions are taught within the context of a a leadership class for Latina women and focuses on letting go of fear, sense of danger, desire for revenge and related feelings that come from historical trauma from being victimized.  Many of the Latinas who have come to this country in recent years have experienced sexual assault, domestic violence and other forms of abuse.  ESPERE provides a space to explore and release the feelings of shame, anger, fear and more.  Bridget reports that it has been very powerful for the women who participate.  I want to know more and to talk with both participants and facilitators.

Adelante Mujeres takes a holistic approach to their work with Latinas.  I have not addressed the other projects they operate.  A visit to their website is worth the time.

I left Forest Grove wanting to return and spend a couple of days there. 

I drove from Forest Grove through the lovely Willamette Valley and was surrounded by hazel nut groves, vineyards and rolling green hills.  It was a great way to travel to Corvallis.  My long journey to Arizona and back has diminished my already lukewarm feelings about interstate freeways.  I arrived in Corvallis to meet Doris at the Multicultural Literacy Center.  The center was filled with color and textiles from around the world.  I was right at home with al those fabrics. I met with the director of Casa Latinos Unidos de Benton County (CLU), Erlinda Gonzales-Berry, and Doris Cancel-Tirado, my host for the week.  Erlinda is the founder of CLU and has returned to be interim director. The purpose of CLU is to provide connection, education, support for Latinos in Benton County.  They nurture leadership in the community.  Erlinda said that two things were currently occupying her time - a Festival (Summer Fiesta) that will be held this Sunday, June 21st, and labor issues.  They have worked with the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries to solve wage and other labor disputes.  The event will be a fundraiser.  CLU works on a very low budget and is looking at ways to create sustainable funding paths, perhaps charging for translation services.

This lovely display was in a storefront window in downtown Corvallis.  I went twice to photograph it and was unable to get a great shot but you get the idea from this and the poster.  I love the embroidered cloth on the table.

I met and interviewed the president of the Organization of Latinas Unidos (ULO), a women's group that are supported by CLU.  Felisa Torres was featured in the Corvallis Gazette Times yesterday for her work as a community volunteer.  Felisa was also recognized by Benton County Health Department with a "public health service award."  Felisa, Doris and I had a great conversation about the development of the ULO group.  It grew out of a group of women who came to Zumba and Cooking classes offered (through a grant Doris wrote) at their children's school.  Once the grant ran out the women who had grown close organized themselves to be able to pay for on-going classes and childcare.  Two of the women became part of the founding board for the ULO.  The original group focused on planning and organization.  The Women's Group meets weekly and they educate themselves and support each other.  Felisa shared with me that most of them had minimal schooling in Mexico and felt the need to grow with their children.  They also wanted to feel better about their lives so they worked on self-esteem and leadership.  The group has been very empowering for each other and have contributed to the community.  About 10 women belong at any given time.  They are cultural ambassadors for health, families and the school and community.  The women were recently asked by the school board to meet with candidates for the superintendent position and their feedback was taken seriously in making the decision.  This group also wanted to be able to talk with their youth about sexuality so they started by taking a class with a trusted community member who helped them create a workshop for the teens.  The idea that a trusted person is delivering information that they understand and feel comfortable with is the secret to their success.

Doris and I had an interesting conversation with Felisa and afterwards about a statement that I have heard from several sources, that Latinos do not volunteer.  Doris and Felisa and Adelante and many I had seen on my journey belied that notion.  Doris pointed out that the word "help" was more characteristic of what happens.  Latino culture has a more communitarian (as opposed to individualistic) orientation to life.  Helping the family, the school, the neighbor all happens because it helps the community in which the families live and work.  Both Felisa and Doris stated that the community needs us.  Doris also pointed out that a shift in frame of reference is important for understanding the phenomenon of helping.  She stated that volunteering is something that often comes from a place of privilege.  Having time and/or money to volunteer is often something that is a condition for doing worthy work.  It gave me much to think about as I prepare to return to my usual duties where so many of the volunteers who work with our programs have time and money.  

Doris and I traveled to Eugene the next day to visit an agency that has been serving Latinos in Lane County for 42 years!  Centro Latino Americano started as advocacy group and is now a multi-service center.

Service Directory for Centro

Trevor and Doris

Doris and I met with Trevor Whitbread, Program Manager, who gave us an overview of all the services the agency offers. He spoke passionately about the services they are providing for "minority" at risk to keep them out of the juvenile justice system and for those who are already involved with the system.  They have developed a successful mentoring program and work with a number of community partners.  They have developed a community impact model in which many sectors of the community (education, health, parks and recreations, workforce preparation, social services) team up to help steer the youth towards positive futures.  Both Doris and Trevor spoke to concerns about Eugene being a center for Human Trafficking which is a concern statewide.  I was surprised to hear that Eugene was a center in the state where issues of forced labor, sex trafficking and ongoing issues with coyotes and immigration paths arise.  I wonder what the landscape is in my state?  

Trevor also spoke about a successful women's support group that has grown out of the Alcohol and Other Drug treatment program but is not focused on addictions as much as support for life.  

I asked Trevor for what advice he might share with others and that I would add it to my blog.  He said that is very disappointed in the inequities in education that still exist and that any way we can tell the stories of of the "other side" (realities of life in the Latino immigrant community) we should.  We need to make the message about the life challenges that these generous people face accessible to both politicians and the general public.

I think I will stop for today.  I will write one more time about my visit to Oregon and some insights Doris shared with me that I think need to be recorded.

As always, thanks for reading.

Local Heroes

Dear Readers and Friends,

I have been taking time away from the blog to read and write non-blog projects lately.  The book I am reading is a scholarly and well written book about the impact that being undocumented has on children's development.  I will dedicate an upcoming entry to that.  I am almost finished with the book and want to do a complete review on this site.

I have been working with a group of colleagues on digesting some data we gathered from youth alumni of our Fortaleciendo Familias program.  We conducted focus groups with youth at three sites.  Overall 512 youth completed the program.  We managed to pull in 17 for follow-up focus groups.  It was a learning experience for all of us and as we have digested the meaning of the transcripts and explored the themes expressed by the comments, we discovered consistency across the sites.  Our youth expressed increased understanding of their parents and conversely, that they were able to communicate their thoughts and feelings with their parents with more trust.  My writing group (AnaMaria Diaz Maritinez, Jennifer Crawford, Irene Overath and I) identifies four major themes that emerged from the data.  We saw that the youth acknowledged the changes that occurred in their family systems as a result of participating in our program, we saw a number of competencies that lead to positive youth development emerging in the youth, the youth told us about scenarios that were indicators of increased resilience in their lives and they told us that the craft projects that they did with their families that were designed to raise awareness about family strengths and their values were still important symbols in their homes.  Our article is on version two and we are almost ready to send it off for review.  I am really glad we put collective minds to the task of refining this important data. I see the youth and their parents as well as the dedicated facilitators who conduct the program as the local heroes.

The program has been really popular in my county and in other places where funds are available to offer it.  On my sabbatical task list is designing a process and cost estimate to remake the video portion of the curriculum and to find support for that process.  I have already found out that video production is expensive and it will take creative funding to make it happen.  I am diving into the waters of making connections for future funding this week.

Shuksan Middle School Graduation, March 2014

I often share this picture because it holds out the promise the program has for people.  Isabel Meaker who organizes the Shuksan program told me recently that at 6th grade orientation she signed enough families up for a full class that will take place in early 2016!

Isabel is another local heroine.  I met Isabel through Lindsey Karas, the last of the local heroines I would like to shout out to today.  Lindsey coordinates resident services at Sterling Meadows - Farmworker Housing run by Mercy Housing Corporation.  Mercy Housing Northwest oversees a number of properties throughout the west.  Our local WSU Extension team supports Sterling Meadows by embedding nutrition and gardening programs there and by serving residents in our Fortaleciendo Familias Program at Shuksan.  Lindsey is the fulcrum for the services that are designed to wrap around the children and their families at Sterling Meadows.  There are many collaborators that work with Lindsey and she deserves the recognition she received at a recent reception held as a fundraiser for her programs.  She works with Western Washington University (WWU) faculty and students to support the ongoing education of the students.  The success of the program is simply expressed.  They went from a 0% graduation rate among resident teens to a 100% graduation rate over the past seven years.  I was amazed and really proud to witness the speech from the polished and proud young woman who shared what Lindsey's program meant to her.  There were numerous examples of youth who not only completed their high school degrees but went onto college.  The word excelling was used to describe some of the youth in the program.  The homework club that utilizes WWU students is part of the reason these youth succeed.  The safe and supportive and predictable housing they grow up in also provides an atmosphere that lowers stress and allows the kids to focus.

I do not have a picture of Lindsey and her lovely student Crystal to share.  I received a lovely thank you note from Mercy Housing thanking me for my donation that has a photo of these local heroines.  There are some great videos that share what Mercy Housing NW is doing to support residents in having a successful and healthy life path.  They are short and sweet and worth seeing.  I recommend them.

Part of my passion for housing comes from my nine (yes 9!) years of board service at Lydia Place.  One of our big fundraisers takes place June 4th at Depot Market Square in Bellingham.  I am excited to go.  If you are interested in attending, tickets can be found at the website above.  It is a joyous and colorful event!  

Enjoy your early June!

Thanks for reading.

The Big Apple, aka New York City, Part 3

As I began to write today I thought of the old familiar name for New York City and "Big Apple" immediately came to mind.  I really had no idea where the name came from and what the heck apples have to do with NYC.  The name was popularized in the 1920's by a sports writer for the NY Morning Telegraph.  I used the ever helpful Wikipedia to enlighten me.  In the 1970's the New York City Visitors and Convention Bureau adopted the name in promotional campaigns and it is still in use today.

I was thinking of my own interpretation of apples - healthy, fresh, temptation, red and round, etc.  I think NYC holds all those paradoxes and more in its existence.    I come from the state of Washington where, like New York state, apples are an important agricultural crop.  We love our apples here.  I have three trees in my small yard.  I think that NYC fed  my soul in a way that apples feed my body.  I felt nourished every day I was there.  I look forward to returning some day.

One of the many wonderful experiences that my colleagues at Cornell Cooperative Extension shared with me was an opportunity to meet Dr. Jane Powers, Project Director for ACT (Assets Coming Together) for Youth Center for Excellence (COE) at Cornell University's Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR).   Jane and I met together to discuss the work of the Bronfenbrenner Center and her work with ACT for Youth.  ACT for Youth COE is funded by the New York State Department of Health to reduce risky sexual behavior and to promote positive outcomes among youth.  Jane's group provides technical assistance, training and evaluation support to seventy-seven grantees across the state.  The work of CUCE-NYC is interwoven with the work of BCTR.  Several of the key leaders of CUCE-NYC are part of the BCTR and several of the staff I met are engaged in the work of the Center.

Jane, Jackie and Drew

Jackie Davis-Manigaulte serves on the executive committee for ACT for Youth COE.  She is the program leader for family and youth development at CUCE-NYC and supervises the the NYC staff who are part of ACT for Youth COE.  Jackie is an amazing woman and resource for both internal and external partners throughout the city and state.  She was busy writing proposals the whole time I was in the office!  I am still in awe of the resources she has helped draw to the work of Cornell in the city and the relevance the programs have for urban youth and families.

It was synchronicity at work when Jane said she needed to come to the city from upstate to visit with providers.  I had expressed a desire to learn more about the work at CUCE-NYC that focused on sexuality education.  What came together was a meeting of providers and CUCE-NYC staff, Jane and me over lunch.  Jane and I met to brainstorm a series of questions and the conversation that took place was really rich for all of us.  Jane made it very clear that the session was not about her monitoring compliance and encouraged all the providers/educators to speak frankly about what was working and where there were issues with the mandated programs.

Front row: Melisa, Drew, Jane, Marisol
Back row: Luis, Eduardo, Michele, Ashwini, Ed, Caroline
CUCE-NYC staff and ACT for Youth COE providers

We decided to focus the conversation on three areas with specific focus on teens and immigrant families.  We asked them to describe both the victories and the barriers they experienced in their work, to share the messages that resonate or that frequently pop-up and any wisdom they could share about engaging parents.  What I share is a summary without mentioning specific names of the speakers.  All of the educators worked either in school based or clinic based settings with teens in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn boroughs.  

Victories

• We are delivering the programs in their language and they are connecting with the kids.  
• Establishing a trust in the context of a class on sexuality can lead to teen coming to the school health center for a one on one meeting with educator who also works in the clinic.
• The community of youth is owning the program and are embracing the messages because they are using peer educators who are embedded in the community.

Challenges - our discussion evolved around the connection between parents and the families and the disconnect than can happen during the process of the adolescent development.

• Parents feel intimidated by many sources and that feeling intensifies when the child starts to pull away from physical contact.
• Parents are trying to prevent the emotional consequences of being intimate which is challenging because they may not have experienced emotional intimacy themselves.  
• Access to services may be a challenge because of (undocumented) immigration status.
• Kids are raising kids and teens are parenting without much parent involvement.
• Need to make all messages non-shaming for teens and for their parents.
• Healthy and unhealthy relationships are based on what they see.

Messages 

• For parents: Use door openers rather than door slammers (What do you think? Where did you hear about that? vs You are too young.  I'll let you know when you can talk about it (sex).
• Virginity and purity were topics to which the group had a wide range of opinions.  The group consensus seemed to be that splitting hairs over virginity was not productive although the youth do it all the time.  They counter these with the following: Stay Safe, Abstinence, Consent in terms of making an informed choice and decision.  Know the consequences.  Violation of consent or non-consent is wrong.  Challenge the preconceived notions that exist around virginity and purity.
• Teach and use the correct names for body parts and the biological processes associated with sexual development, sexual behavior and reproduction.

Parents - other issues to consider

• Imperative to target parents and to teach them to be transparent and clear about both the biology and body parts.
• Encourage both parents and youth to find healthy and comfortable ways to touch each other and their friends and siblings as the youth age.  Touch is an essential need that kids will seek elsewhere if not satisfied at home.
• Advise parents to start where they are.  Have them think about what advice and teaching they received and what they would like their children to have.
• Reinforce messages through publications in Spanish and that are appropriate for different Latino groups (Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, etc).
• Talk about gender with parents and the roles that they grew up with and how gender is perceived today in their communities.
• Start embracing the family that their role in the development of the youth.  Put sexual development into the context of other things, do not make the discussion about SEX to the exclusion of the other changes the adolescent experiences.
• Educate everyone what it means to "stay safe."  Be aware that parents may have experience as either victims or perpetrators or witnesses of sexual assault and/or domestic violence.

I have many thoughts about this conversation and how I can translate some of this conversation into my own work as return to WSU in July.  I will not share those now.

An irony of this trip for me is the memory of our one and only visit to Times Square.  On one side of the street Disney characters where posing like crazy with an intent to get people to attend the Broadway show featuring Disney themes.  On the other side of the street was the Naked Cowboy and his Indian Princesses.  I rushed by in order to get across the street.  What I did see were two young women, mostly or completely naked, breasts painted with feathers in their hair.  Young adult men were thronging around to have their pictures taken with these women and I am guessing the Naked Cowboy was taking the tips.    What messages did that give to the many folks of all colors, ages, sizes and nationalities who thronged the square that day?  I was not impressed and could not get away fast enough from the side show this created.  If and when I return to the city, I will not go out of my way to visit Times Square.   Mike and I created routes that circumvented that three ring circus after our one encounter.

Life in the Big Apple. 

Thanks for reading.

Latino Resilience Enterprise at Arizona State University

I traveled to the Tempe/Phoenix area this week for a whirlwind visit with the Latino Resilience Enterprise team at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University.  I became familiar with the amazing work that is happening within the LRE by attending a series of sessions at the National Council on Family Relations 2014 meeting in Baltimore, MD.  I was fortunate to make connections and to work with Dr. Rebecca White, one of the co-directors of LRE, to arrange a visit.   Thanks to the LRE and especially to Stefanie Fuentes for their care and time in making it a productive day for me.

Stefanie showing off the gorgeous bow she put on the bag they gifted me with as a memory of my day.

I spoke with Rebecca to get an overview of the work LRE is engaged with and to gain an understanding of her work directing the Success in Latino Neighborhoods project.  Rebecca generously shared a number of articles that she and others in her group had published and also gave me a recommendation for a book I have just ordered: Immigrants Raising Children: Undocumented Parents and their Young Children By Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2012.

Rebecca's project is one of seven initiatives listed on the LRE website.  I want to spend some time talking about her work before moving to other work of the LRE.  Rebecca is funded by the William T. Grant foundation as an early career scholar.  It is a prestigious award that will fund five years of her work.  Her first graduate student for the project comes from our very own Washington State University Vancouver Human Development Program.  Elizabeth (Liz)  Burleson came south to work with Rebecca and the neighborhood project.  She is a statistics whiz and was also drawn by the strong statistical analysis focus of the program.  I remember Liz from our regional NCFR conference when she was the undergraduate poster winner.  It was great to connect with someone from home.  I was delighted to go out to lunch with Liz and Michelle Pasco, Rebecca's first year student on the neighborhood project.  We had a conversation that ranged from statistics, the hard work being a graduate student requires, life and work balance and the reasons they both chose to come to ASU.  

Liz Burleson, data whiz and second year graduate student and WSUV graduate.

Michelle Pasco, first year student, UCLA graduate.

Both young women are working with a project in which they are using photo elicitation with youth in Latino neighborhoods gather qualitative data about what the youth perceive are the strengths and challenges of living in their neighborhood and they are also working with a large data set that comes from Los Angeles where there are many such neighborhoods.  Some of the preliminary findings that Dr. White reported are that Latino youth receive increased ethnic orientation beyond what the parents are providing and that this increased orientation and Spanish language use act as moderators and protective factors against substance abuse and other risk behaviors.  I came away with more questions than answers as always but I was really enriched by what I learned and from the resources I now have for deepening my learning about the benefits ethnic identity has on adolescent growth and development.

I met with several other students.  Many thanks to Diamond Brave, Danielle Seay, Chelsea Derlan, and Sara Douglass for sharing their work with me.  

Diamond, Danielle and Chelsea are all involved with the Supporting MAMI project.  MAMI stands for Mexican-origin Adolescent Mothers and their Infants.  I had a little familiarity with the project because I had attended a session that Diamond gave at NCFR in Baltimore.  If you have been following my blog you are aware of the interest I have in the issue of teen parents in the Latino populations.  These young women were engaged in significant work with their mentors in understanding the connection between parenting/family stress and family support and its influence on child development and parental mental health in these moms.  The study is longitudinal, having the 204 adolescent mothers and their children and extended families for six years.  I asked them both for the takeaways from their work.  They provided me with path analyses of their work.  My early work in statistics during my graduate studies helped me enormously.  Diamond's work showed significant negative relationship between parenting efficacy and economic hardship on adolescent parenting stress and that the adolescent stress negatively impacted the adolescent's endorsement of their child's readiness (academic and social emotional) attend kindergarten.  This finding seems very intuitive and has many implications for how teen pregnancy and parenting is handled on the school and community levels.  

Chelsea works with the Family Stress model and found that economic pressure and maternal depressive symptoms are connected to co-parenting conflict between the grandmother and the mother and are compounded in future years with co-parenting conflict with the father and increased hassles for the mother that result in the both acting out and internalizing behavior problems in the 6th year of the study.  I asked Chelsea where the salient points of intervention could be made that might mitigate these effects on both mother and child.  She pointed to year three of their data when the depressive symptoms emerged and in year 4 when the mother-grandmother co-parenting conflict emerges and influences the child's later behavior.    My mind was spinning with possibilities for education and support.  

Danielle was looking at the transition of maladaptive parents within the MAMI sample.  She has found that teen parents who are parented with psychological control more likely to engage in punitive discipline and have higher potential for abuse of their own children.  Effect size is small but robust. We wandered into a long discussion of incidence and effects corporal punishment and authoritarian parenting because I have a long standing interest in the subject.  Danielle had experience working in India before she came to ASU and was doing community training to reduce the amount of corporal punishment and shaming being used as a control mechanism in a secondary school.  I enjoyed our conversation.

My last interview of the day was with Dr. Sara Douglass who is completing her two-year post-doctorate work with the Foundational Director of the LRE, Dr. Adriana Umana-Taylor.  She had just completed the "pilot" study of the IDENTITY project in which they compared 4 groups of 9th graders that received the newly developed curriculum that helped youth explore their ethnic identities with 4 groups of youth that not receive the lessons. Initial findings of the project are that family messages about ethnic-racial identity assist young adolescents in exploring their identity but less so as kids age.  They are less likely to come to resolution of their ethnic-racial identity as a result of family messaging and need some support from other sources, including their parents for creating their own identity.  The benefits of cultural pride are well documented.  Sara gave me some great resources with which to follow-up.

Dr. Sara Douglass

I was exhausted and completely sated with new knowledge by the time I left the LRE.  I had the misfortune of coming down with my husband Michael's generously shared cold that morning.  I was really glad that I took the time to visit Tempe on March 31st.  I was surprised and pleased to know that the city was closed to observe Cesar Chavez's birthday. He is an honored man throughout the SW.

My selfie!

Sign on City Hall 3/31/15

This was a long post so if you made it all the way through I appreciate your attention. I am writing on day 3 of this danged cold and wanted to remember this amazing visit.

Thanks for reading!

Tucson Treasures, Part One

Tucson held many treasures for my sabbatical experience.  I was able to have conversations with two professors at University of Arizona, attend a graduate seminar on the Feminization of Migration, interview a wonderful graduate student who helped me get connected with UA folks, have an in-depth conversation with a social justice activist and visit the Arizona State Museum where we were treated to a tour by "the best docent" they have (the lady at the front desk informed us).  I believe it after having had him take us through the native peoples' exhibit.

I am in awe of the work I saw happening at the University of Arizona.  I think I will start this post with a shout-out to Jose Miguel Rodas, a graduate student at the John and Doris Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences.  He and I met for tea at a wonderful shop just across the street from the University, The Scented Leaf Tea House and Lounge.  As a tea drinker I was thrilled.  He picked it out as a place to meet having never been there.  I am sipping a cup of one of their herbal blends as I write.  I went back the following week and even dragged my coffee drinking husband in to just see it.

Jose

Jose is a graduate student in PhD Program in Family and Consumer Sciences with emphasis on Family Studies and Human Development.  He hails from Montclair, NJ and attended Montclair State University for his BA.  He also was an Americorps member and received a National Science Foundation Fellowship to go to University of Arizona.  He has never been to the state before he packed his car and drive out to begin his graduate program.  Jose and I met at the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) meeting in November 2014.  We were part of a poster session on Saturday morning, a time when many folks had already left for home.  We had lots of time to talk.  We exchanged information.  He offered to help get connected with some folks in Tucson and he did!  I was so glad to see him again and to learn more about him and the work he is doing.

His career goal is to teach in a college setting.  His research focuses on mental health disparities, especially with Latino adolescent youth, adolescent development.  He is also very interested in family dynamics and parent- child dynamics.

His own story is that he is the son of immigrant parents who came from El Salvador.  He was born in the US and his father is a citizen.  His mother has a work permit and is legal.  He is working to get her more permanent status.  He has cousins who had to flee from El Salvador because they were being forced into gangs.  He said that the gangs in El Salvador feed on poverty.  He knows personally the impact of the politics and conditions in Central America on young people and their families.  He has recently been looking at what causes people to leave their homes and travel so far in such dangerous circumstances.  His own experiences in the SW have changed his world view.  Growing up in New Jersey he never heard the term "brown people."

He is currently working on his Master's thesis (1st step on the journey to the PhD).  He uses the theory of ambiguous loss to examine Latino caregivers - parents of youth and how the bi-culturalism that emerges causes loss for parents.  He is focusing on the loss of traditional values and beliefs that is more typical for the youth.  The children are being raised in dominant culture.  He is examining depressive symptoms caused by this loss and how we can mitigate it.  

Dr. Pauline Boss is the leading expert on the topic of ambiguous loss.  I heard her speak several times at NCFR. Her work helped me understand and work through some of my own grief and loss after my daughter Kate died in 2002.  We never had closure or the chance to say goodbye. I recommend looking into her work if you or anyone you know is struggling with unresolved loss.

Back to Jose's work.  He is currently working with the community in South Tucson to pilot a program to teach parents how to understand the process of adolescent development.  We did not have a chance to talk more about this because he had to rush off to class but I am guessing some of the challenge is that the cultural milieu in which these young people are developing is very different than what their parents experienced.  I invited him to come visit us in Washington and hope he does after his thesis is completed.  I would love to pay back some of the connecting he did for me by introducing him to colleagues and community members in my state.

I so enjoyed my time with Jose.  I am so hopeful for the future when I meet young scholars like Jose. I hope we can be connected for many years to come!

I will close this post with a couple of pictures I took as I visited campus that beautiful Friday in February.  My next post will connect you with Dr. Anna Ochoa O'Leary.

Orange trees on campus!

Waiting for Grandfather

Thanks for reading!