About My Work

Being a kid is hard! Kids today live highly regimented lives with increasingly competitive school and work environments, yet they are expected to succeed with few opportunities for genuine self-expression and autonomy. How do we empower young people to learn and grow? How do we support young people to build authentic communities? How do we model healthy communication and adult boundaries to our youth? In exploring these questions, my training seeks to prepare childcare providers of all backgrounds to care for young people by covering content that often gets left out of other training programs. By understanding the complexities of childhood and adolescence, we can empower our young people while providing developmentally-appropriate care.

Any program that exists to educate and empower young people is inherently philosophical. As such, in creating this training I strive to be clear about my guiding principles. I reject the notion that children are incomplete humans. This training recognizes the innate value and worth of every child, which means meeting them at their unique developmental moment. As I like to say, I believe in the radical idea that children are people. Instead of seeing problematic behavior as something to be punished, I understand it as a manifestation of needs not being met. My training embraces restorative practices to find the balance between maintaining a safe nurturing environment and navigating tricky behaviors stemming from big feelings and unmet needs. In a world that is increasingly hostile to childhood, we can build collaborative spaces for children and adolescents to explore what it means to be a full human.

Program Values, Themes, and Big Ideas:

Children are full people

Autonomy & Youth empowerment

Equalize Power, Disrupt power structures when they are harmful

Fostering healthy youth-adult relationships

Community building

Needs-based behavior conflict management

Child-centered spaces

Academia vs. Lived Experience

DISCLAIMER: This training was designed as a Division III final project at Hampshire College under the supervision of my Division III committee. In submitting this to the Hampshire College Division III archives, I retain copyright of my work but I grant Hampshire College a non-exclusive distribution license allowing them to host, preserve, and make publicly accessible my Div III. You may not use my work without my explicit permission.