The Power of Mentoring

I have been very busy lately as I transition back to my "normal" responsibilities.   I admit to a bit of trepidation about returning to the office after being away for 6 months.  My little bit of anxiety was immediately replaced with gratitude and delight when I found the welcome that was waiting.

I wanted to share a phenomenal trip I had to Olympia and Portland the last full week in June.  Mike and I traveled to first Olympia to meet with Maria Chavez-Pringle, Associate Professor of Political Science at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, and then we traveled onto Portland to attend the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  It was an amazing journey and a fitting finish to my sabbatical.  Each piece of the journey yielded riches I am honored to share here.  Today I will complete my piece on Maria.

I first encountered Maria at a seminar I attended at the University of Washington Tacoma Campus in May.  She was one of the speakers on a panel that focused on Immigration and Latino youth.  I began corresponding with her to try to get a time to meet and interview her and was happy after several mishaps including being stuck in a ten mile back-up on Interstate 5 on our first scheduled date to get a meeting set up with her in her hometown of Olympia last week.

Maria has an amazing story.  I was first drawn to her because she spoke clearly about the inequities in the immigration system and the trends from a political science point of view.  So much of what is wrong is related to policy.  I was further drawn to her when she said that she received her PhD from WSU.

We met at our favorite Olympia coffee house.

Maria at Batdorf and Bronson Roasters

Maria is working on her 3rd book.  She is interviewing first generation Latino professionals who are the first to graduate from college in their families.  It mirrors her own history.  Maria grew up in Orland, California, daughter of farm workers.  Her first language was Spanish.  She experienced daily prejudice in her home community and was subjected to a childhood of what she calls de-Americanization.  Her experience was not untypical for young Latinos.  She was tracked out of the college preparation courses.  She got pregnant at age 16, was rejected and ejected from her family home.  She married the father of her now 30 year old daughter and lived with him for 8 years, learning the trade of dental assisting and then moved to being a pharmacist's assistant.  Her journey to higher education began at a community college and  and then she applied to one college, California State University at Chico because it was close and familiar where she received her BA and teaching credential in Social Science.  She applied to graduate school at Chico and chose Political Science because it did not require her to take the GRE.  After completing her Masters in Political Science at Chico she found her way to WSU where she spent 4 years completing her degree.   She credits the difference in her life to wonderful mentors and helpful community supports that enabled her to get childcare for her daughter, access housing assistance, etc.  I think some of the credit goes to her own determination and desire to make the best life for herself and her oldest daughter and later for her new family (husband and three younger children).  She is very proud of her now 30 year old daughter who is working in Seattle.

Maria shared with me a link to her April, 2015, TedxTacoma Talk on the De-Americanization of Latino Youth.  I highly recommend that you watch her talk.  She talks about living the de-Americanized life and how her experience is different partly because she is a citizen.  She recommended we watch McFarland, USA, the recent movie by Disney.  She said there is much truth in the experience that reminds her of her childhood.  One of my California colleagues also recommended the film.  I think Mike and I will watch it soon (in between stages of the Tour de France..).

The wisdom Maria shared with me was the importance of exposing young Latinos who do not have a history of educational achievement in their families to the opportunities, responsibilities and rewards of completing high school and college.  She spoke of her mentors and the need for youth who are first generation college students (and high school students?) to have mentors that can coach, inspire, encourage and listen. Research shows how powerful mentors can be for youth development.  I spent some time yesterday visiting with Lindsey Karas at Sterling Meadows/Mercy Housing who I profiled on June 3rd.    Lindsey explained the difference that graduate students who spent a year mentoring the first generation Latino high school students in the homework club at Sterling Meadows make in the lives of the students.  The graduate students take the time to visit with the students in the setting of their high school and outside of their community center.

I left Olympia inspired and very glad that I had taken the time to meet with Maria.

I will close this post for today and write separately about the amazing experience we had at General Assembly.

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!

More NorCal Reflections

My last visit in California before we headed north was with Dr. Lucia Kaiser.  Lucia is an Extension Nutrition Specialist with University of California at Davis and is in the final stages of her career at UC.  I was somewhat familiar with Dr. Kaiser's work having seen it highlighted at professional meetings.  I had never met her before and was charmed by her warmth and her commitment to her current project.  I was glad I had the opportunity to interview her.

Lucia in her office.

Her project focuses on delivering messages about parenting and obesity prevention to newly immigrated residents of the Central Valley in a rural area near Fresno.  About 400 parents are involved in the study and only about half participate. About 79% are Mexican immigrants and there is a fairly low acculturation level in the group.  Some of the things they are learning are that parenting around food is a difficult thing to influence, especially when the cultural norms are different from those being taught.  The more hands on, the more impact on and involvement of the students.  They have gone to having a promotora teaching hands on cooking classes and moved away from some of the more didactic classes. They also have formed a walking club to promote physical activity.  This fits with what we have experienced as well.   Lucia shared that the mothers are getting mixed messages about the obesity risk their children face.  They are using health report cards to share with the parents weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) information.  Lucia was not understanding why the report cards were not really influencing behavior until she dug a little deeper.  The area physicians were advising the parents not to worry, not to put their kids on diets and were assuring them they would "grow out" of their fat stage.  This is a common concern in our country and it speaks to the need to help the medical community understand the importance of non-diet interventions for children.  I am working on a study that is focusing on helping both parents and preschoolers understand about satiety and becoming aware of their cues for satisfaction and fullness.  Lucia and her team took a community awareness approach and used simple graphic examples to compare the obesity rates in the general population and in the targeted community.

The color of the folders represent obesity rates in the normal population and then the targeted community. Green represents normal weight, yellow, at risk and red obese.  The comparisons between the right side (average population) and the targeted community (left) speak for themselves.

The parents were able to see the differences and Lucia reported that the "lights went on" (my words).

Lucia hopes to continue this work in a consulting role in other communities after she retires this fall.

We had a very interesting discussion about the role of trauma in her study community and in the immigrant community as a whole.  I have been asking about trauma all along the way on this trip and about teen parents and the status in each community where I have made program visits.  I shared my experience of visiting with the women in the Kino women's shelter in Nogales, Sonora.  I shared what I learned about the high incidence of rape for women who attempt the border crossing.  Lucia and I shared tears.  It was good to see that she was not hardened to the reality of what was happening.  She spoke about rape as well.  She has colleagues in school of nursing who are finding rape is an issue with teens and that some of the evidence points to the field workers.  I am concerned about the culture of sexual assault that is created by the inhumane conditions on the borders and during the journeys through both Mexico and the US.  I know it is compounded by impoverished lives folks are forced to lead and the shadows in which many exist.   I am aware that the fear of reporting a rape can be exacerbated by fear of the law, immigration issues, cultural silence about rape.  It is not a good situation.  This was not the first time I heard concerns about sexual assault of young Latinas on the trip.  

I cannot help but think that the trauma exists at the community level and is exemplified in a variety of ways.  I wonder how much trauma, post traumatic stress and the threat of loss and grief affects the choices people are making about food and their weight? Good questions to which I do not have the answers.  To assume that there is no impact would be a mistake.  Lots to think about.

I am almost half way through this sabbatical and I have more questions than I have answers.  I suspect this is part of the process.  I am certainly learning a great deal so far and look forward to the next 3 months.  I will continue to blog.  I am finding it very helpful for my own learning.  One of the gifts of this time away from my normal duties is having the time to reflect and process.  I have always enjoyed journaling and I am finding a renewed energy for that in this blog.  Upcoming is a trip to Arizona, a trip to New York City, work with a colleague and scholar in Oregon and time to start working on fund proposals for our Fortaleciendo Familias program revision.

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!