Humanizing Pedagogy for Equitable Futures
What does it look like to provide social and emotional supports to youth during a remote summer employment program during a pandemic?
Drawing on the voices and insights of youth participants and program staff involved in New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program in 2020, this series of practice briefs highlights strategies that educators used to be more fully human with the youth they served.
Read the practice briefs below and learn more in the full report.
Practice Briefs
Brief #1
Building Community
Many programs identified the importance of building community as a way to help youth regain a sense of connection and purpose. Yet, they acknowledged many challenges to building community within the context of short-term remote programming. This brief describes three pedagogical strategies that programs used to build community.
Brief #2
Holding Space for Vulnerable Sharing
Many programs in our study recognized a need to provide safe spaces where youth could openly talk about, make sense of, and directly process the pandemic as well as the racial injustice that were at the heart of their experiences in the summer of 2020. Learn about three pedagogical strategies in this practice brief.
Brief #3
Revitalizing Hope
Many programs in our study identified a need to provide opportunities for youth to regain a sense of hope about the future: the future of the world, of their local communities, and their own personal trajectories. This brief describes three pedagogical strategies programs used to revitalize hope.
Brief #4
Developing Networking Skills
The practice of networking—reaching out to more expert others through cold contacts or mingling at professional events—is a common way for newcomers to a field to connect with professionals. Learn about the pedagogical strategies that can support this important activity.
Brief #5
Unpacking Workplace Discrimination
Research shows that youth who are critically aware of how discrimination plays out within the workplace in relation to their own identities experience positive outcomes, yet not all work-based learning programs make workplace discrimination transparent or help youth anticipate how they may be impacted by it in a given industry. Read this practice brief to learn about supportive pedagogical strategies we observed in our study.
Brief #6
Encouraging Help-Seeking Behavior
Becoming lost or stuck is a natural part of the learning process, especially for youth who are simultaneously learning work-readiness skills, remote learning technologies, and professional norms. This brief describes pedagogies that encourage help-seeking behaviors, which allow youth to mobilize social supports and institutional resources to resolve these issues and move forward.
Brief #7
Orienting Toward Change
Many youth will experience social and emotional needs around adjusting to nonlinear career trajectories, unstable work landscapes, and novel professional environments. The pedagogical strategies in this brief focus on supporting youth through the uncertainty and transitions that are common in professional experiences.