Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Year 3, Week 02 (192 total reports)
03.12.2023-09.01.2024
REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Advocating for young people in a growing climate of systemic fear and totalitarianism.
https://www.communitiesoftrust-jerrygoebel.com/youthadvocacy
Best Links of The Week
09.01.2024
Is Dopamine Running Your Life—or Ruining It?
Dopamine is a powerful chemical popularly associated with helping us experience pleasure. Of course, such a powerful molecule will have both positive and negative impacts on our lives. Teens release dopamine when they take risks and twice the amount of dopamine when that risk is taken in front of peers. We also release dopamine when we constantly scroll or see “likes” add up in our social media. Such dopamine “squirts” can be found at the root of many addictive behaviors that risk becoming imbedded into our daily habits. It is important to monitor our own dopamine fixations and to teach young people to do similarly. Healthy releases of dopamine might include laughter, exercise, bonding relationships, engaging conversations, acts of kindness, listening to uplifting music, hearing heroic stories, and experiencing nature. We’re not going to fight the body’s need to release dopamine (in fact, the inability to release dopamine is often linked to depression), so we should, instead, teach ourselves and our young people how to secrete this fundamental hormone in a way that leads to wellness and mental health. As this article indicates, dopamine can either positively run our lives (motivate us) or ruin our lives. How is it impacting your life?
08.01.2024
Why 2024 is shaping up to be the most crucial election year in world history
Purveyors of fear around the world are using their myriad platforms to increase authoritarianism. Elections around the world this year will make multiple decisions about what kind of world we will live in; a world where people have a right to decide who will lead them and what values they choose in their representation or succumbing to power-hungry dictators like Vladimir Putin and his minion, Donald Trump. In the United States, the constitution has built many safeguards into democracy, but not enough to withstand a second attack by Donald Trump and his lackeys in the GOP that fawn all over his every petulant whim and whine. The best way to insure democracy is to vote. That is true for four billion people around the world this year, not just the US.
07.01.2024
Why Some Kids Don't Want to Return to School After a Break
Last week there was a wonderful article about designing schools—not for those who succeed at education—but for those who are failing at it. Lessons learned from such an exercise, could well be used to address the question about why so many young people do not want to return to school, either after COVID, or following any extended break. I’ve been in many schools designed for challenged students where the schools were the safest places in their lives. They were places of learning, yes, but also places of community and well-being. It is not impossible to design such sanctuaries, but they do demand a re-prioritization of learning as a by-product of relationship, rather than the opposite. Of course, we want children to learn in schools, but the deep, curiosity-based, learning needed in the current and upcoming century will only be found if children feel accepted and safe: emotionally and physically. How can these principles be further applied in our Group Homes and Correctional facilities, anyplace where adults are tasked with the maturation of young people?
06.01.2024
Advice From a Therapist on Breaking Free From Intergenerational Trauma
There is no doubt that Intergenerational and Epigenetic Trauma are real. This article points out that the same factors linked to those responses to childhood adversity can also instill the seeds of Intergenerational and Epigenetic Resilience. The primary requirement is adult awareness and training. Resilience is NOT the denial of painful memories, it is the embracing and seeking of deeper responses to the pain of a personal or collective past.
05.01.2024
The Morality Tale of Settler Colonialism
Take some time to dig into the meaning of the phrase, “Settler Colonialism.” How many of the wounds of our present can be found in the seeds of this past? This week, a leading GOP candidate omitted the term “slavery” from a list of causes of the Civil War. It is not that she is stupid and poorly educated, it is that she is conniving and appealing to a base that affirms and supports racism. Supporting Donald Trump and the direction of the GOP doesn’t make you a racist, but it does mean that you will blindly look away while others push a racist, misogynist agenda.
04.01.2024
Use Curiosity to Supercharge Any Resolution
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/use-curiosity-supercharge-resolution-bookbite/47326/
Einstein said, “"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Also, “Curiosity is the lust of the mind. Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature,” and finally, “Curiosity is more important than knowledge.” In your own life, how can you make curiosity more important to you than believing you know the answers to life’s most complicated questions? How can you model the “VALUE of curiosity” to the people you lead or the youth you are assisting? What is the one thing you could do today to challenge any “answers” you have adopted in your life?
03.01.2024
25 Things That AI Will Never Be Able To Do
https://wealthofgeeks.com/things-ai-will-never-do/
In our examination of the structures we build to assist in our children’s growth and well-being, how can we make sure that the 25 values listed in this article are at the forefront? What will make them “AI-Proof” and able to excel when many around them are seeking to diminish creativity and instead enforce compliance?
This Week’s Links
09.01.2024
Is Dopamine Running Your Life—or Ruining It?
Students rally at the Iowa Capitol days after Perry school shooting
The 9 Simple Principles in Physicist Carl Sagan's 'Baloney Detection Kit' Will Make You BS Proof
5 Steps to Not Be a Victim of Your Upbringing or Culture
An Open Border Could Benefit Us All. Instead, Both Parties Want to Build a Wall.
Navigating the Future - Dynamic Trends in Education for 2024 | Cryptopolitan
https://www.cryptopolitan.com/dynamic-trends-in-education-for-2024/
The NRA Under Siege
08.01.2024
Why 2024 is shaping up to be the most crucial election year in world history
A Surprising Way to Stop Bullying
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/a-surprising-way-to-stop-bullying/
Skipping School: America’s Hidden Education Crisis
https://www.propublica.org/article/school-absenteeism-truancy-education-students
Iowa's Christian conservatives follow their faith when voting, and some say it leads them to Trump
https://apnews.com/article/iowa-evangelical-voters-trump-2024-22f81caeaec48f5206709d0c67df4be5
1 in 3 people are lonely. Will AI help, or make things worse?
https://theconversation.com/1-in-3-people-are-lonely-will-ai-help-or-make-things-worse-217924
Unveiling the Secrets of Intelligence and Giftedness
Virginia college students are running a thrift store for transgender and nonbinary people
https://www.advocate.com/news/transgender-nonbinary-thrift-fashion-virginia
Biden wants Mexican help to stop the migrant surge. Here's what Mexico wants in return.
The Impact of Servant Leadership in the Workplace
Supermarket Giant Drops Pepsi and Lay’s Over Price Increases
https://apple.news/A0RrOB_k9TJSFdrvSmer-4A
5 Things for Parents to Know About Youth and Technology
07.01.2024
Why Some Kids Don't Want to Return to School After a Break
Trump just promised an authoritarian ‘task force’ to impose Christian ideology
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-2024-christian-right-truth-social-rcna132082
If MAGA Could Just See This the Trump Cult Would Be Gone Overnight
https://politizoom.com/if-maga-could-just-see-this-the-trump-cult-would-be-gone-overnight/
How Trump Taught America to Tolerate Brazen Corruption
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/trump-taught-america-tolerate-corruption/677040/
Trump’s Veiled Threats To SCOTUS Do Not Go Unnoticed
https://politizoom.com/trumps-veiled-threats-to-scotus-do-not-go-unnoticed/
06.01.2024
Advice From a Therapist on Breaking Free From Intergenerational Trauma
Here Are the 7 Most Heinous Things Wayne LaPierre Said As NRA Leader
https://newrepublic.com/post/177904/heinous-things-wayne-lapierre-said-nra-leader
Trump Said 'We Have to Get Over It' About School Shooting in Perry, Iowa, in January 2024?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-perry-school-shooting/
Nearly 300,000 lives could be saved in the next decade if states followed California’s example on gun laws, study says
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/us/everytown-study-us-gun-safety-rankings-2023/
The Next Big Idea Club’s March 2024 Must-Read Books
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/next-big-idea-clubs-march-2024-must-read-books/47375/
School Shootings by State
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with-the-most-school-shootings
Gandhi in South Africa: The Formation of the World-Famous Pacifist
https://www.thecollector.com/gandhi-south-africa/
Creating Sticky Goals to Embrace Success
05.01.2024
The Morality Tale of Settler Colonialism
The GOP Completes Its Surrender
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/gop-complete-surrender-trump/677029/
You thought 2023 was a big year for AI? Buckle up.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2024/1/4/24023025/ai-predictions-2024-election
The Ultrawealthy Are Sitting On $8.5 Trillion In Untaxed 2022 Profits: Report
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billionaires-tax-biden_n_65971f6ce4b0912833af6d32
Grief: What Is Normal and What Is Prolonged Grief Disorder
U.S. reliability on global stage imperiled as GOP plays politics with Ukraine aid
Who’s Afraid of Calling Donald Trump an Insurrectionist?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/donald-trump-insurrection/677028/
How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers & Writers Have Always Known
Illinois Judge Closes Juvenile Detention Center After “Facility in Crisis” Fails to Meet New State Standards
04.01.2024
Use Curiosity to Supercharge Any Resolution
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/use-curiosity-supercharge-resolution-bookbite/47326/
Mayorkas: Texas governor’s migrant busing is a ‘failure of governance’
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/03/mayorkas-texas-governors-migrant-busing-00133605
The Real Harvard Scandal
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/claudine-gay-harvard-plagiarism/677007/
Some overlooked good news from 2023: Six countries knock out 'neglected' diseases
The Problem With Control
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unpacking-anxiety/202401/the-problem-with-control
03.01.2024
25 Things That AI Will Never Be Able To Do
https://wealthofgeeks.com/things-ai-will-never-do/
New York Closed Psych Beds for Youth in Crisis. Now, Foster Care Programs and Host Towns Are Being Pushed to the Limit.
https://www.propublica.org/article/pleasantville-cottage-campus-new-york
1949 To 2024? Why The Geneva Conventions May Not Survive Gaza And Ukraine
https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/humanitarian-laws-rules-of-war
“A concerning finding”: New study on fake news detection uncovers a disturbing trend
A librarian was fired after refusing to ban books. She fought back
Schools don't want kids on cellphones. Is banning them the solution?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2024/01/02/should-schools-ban-cellphones/72012262007/
How to Stop Our Triggers From Affecting Our Relationships
Why Therapy Should Be Subversive
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202401/why-therapy-should-be-subversive
9 Motivating Books That Will Supercharge Your 2024
https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/9-motivating-books-will-supercharge-2024/47306/
24 things we think will happen in 2024
The Polls Prove It: Many Republicans Love Fascism
https://newrepublic.com/article/177796/polls-republicans-trump-maga-fascism
How Emotional Neglect Can Cause Lifelong Lonely Feelings
It's Time to Start Taking the 14th Amendment Very Seriously
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a46269061/14-amendment-sections-2-and-3/