PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION
The artifacts found on this page focus on coursework that required analysis of best practices for program implementation. The artifacts cover topics including staff and volunteer training and motivation as well as managing teams.
VOLUNTEER ON-BOARDING PLAN
This artifact was completed in collaboration with several classmates. We were tasked with completing a volunteer onboarding plan. We created a plan for Camp Sunshine volunteers following Bauer’s (2010) four C’s of successful onboarding: compliance, clarification, culture, and connection. Completing this assignment allowed me to personally contemplate the onboarding that I have received previously and helped me think critically about how to improve onboarding for my future staff. This became even more important as I became the Youth Programs Manager at The Mockingbird Society and was charged with onboarding an entirely new team of Engagement Coordinators. I walked into the manager role with no guidance for onboarding, except my own experience with Mockingbird as an Engagement Coordinator. I knew that I wanted to do a better job of onboarding than I had received and the practice I received in creating an intentional onboarding plan for Camp Sunshine allowed me to create a process for Mockingbird. Afterall, the best designed program is nothing if it does not have well trained, supported, and encouraged staff and volunteers to implement it well.
Bauer, T. N. (2010). Onboarding new employees: Maximizing success. Alexandria, VA: SHRM Foundation.
MOTIVATIONAL THEORY PAPER
This artifact required me to interview several staff and volunteers at an organization to understand their motivations for working/volunteering at the organization. I chose to learn about the Oasis Youth Center staff and volunteer motivations. After interviewing the staff and volunteers, I realized that there were many different reasons that kept them motivated to show up and serve the program participants. Some of the factors that stood out to me were the importance of open communication, strong interpersonal connections with other co-workers/volunteers, and a supportive work culture. As a result of this assignment and other coursework on staff and volunteer motivation, I have focused on ensuring a team/organizational culture that fosters open communication, connections with others and in general a welcoming and supportive work culture. As a new program manager, one action step I have taken is to ensure the team I supervise has time to meet just as peers. This has allowed a team that does not work in the same physical location to find peer-support and build stronger relationships with each other.
APPLICATION AND REFLECTION OF E-QYP
This assignment required me to create an activity based on the developmental stages of the intended audience and desired outcomes, and then to evaluate the success of the activity design. I was very excited to complete this assignment because I had been wanting to create an activity to help my program participants write articles for my organization’s newspaper The Mockingbird Times. Once again, my class assignments coincided with the work that I was doing each day. Almost a year later, I still use the worksheet that I created for this assignment with Mockingbird participants.
Throughout the assignment, I learned the value of scaffolding or providing a foundation for learning by slowly making concepts more complex over time. This concept is based from Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective and the Zone of Proximal Development (Hauser-Cram, Nugent, Thies & Travers, 2014). The other value that became clear through completing this assignment was the need to maintain a growth-mindset when working with young people. A growth-mindset means to have the belief that skills, abilities, and intelligence can be development (Yeager et al., 2016). As youth development workers, if we do not believe in the potential of our young people, then we limit their potential.
Hauser-Cram, P., Nugent, J.K., Thies, K.M., Travers, J.F. (2014). Development of children and adolescents. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Yeager, D.S., Romero, C., Paunesku, D., Hulleman, C.S., Schneider, B., Hinojosa, C., … Dweck, C.S. (2016). Using design thinking to improve psychological interventions: The case of the growth mindset during the transition to high school. Journal of Education Psychology, 108(3), 374-391.
YOUTH FRIENDLY COMMUNITY PAPER
For this artifact, I had to interview a youth worker about their ideas of how to build a youth friendly community. It was the first time that I was able to apply the theories that I was learning in class to the real-world. I focused on social health development. Through this assignment and the entire Foundations in Youth Development (YDP 8000) course I realized that defining positive youth development is difficult and can be ambiguous without clear communication. There are many frameworks that can be utilized including the 5 C’s PYD, the 40 assets, etc.
In completing this assignment, I also recognized that is challenging to separate different areas of development as they are intertwined. For example, while I focused on social health development, the individual I interviewed discussed that positive social health development is difficult to achieve in the absence of physical health development. Any area of development does not occur in isolation but rather can occur concurrently with other areas. This concept has been important for me to understand as I work as a youth development leader. A program element can be designed for a narrow and specific outcome and, in fact have, more broad impacts. This assignment laid the foundation for my professional philosophy that youth development leaders must think holistically when designing, implementing, and evaluating programming.
LEADERSHIP CASE STUDY
This artifact coming soon.