YOST 5952 Everyday Lives of Youth
Mike's course is a great shocker for those f us who grew up and were trained in the traditional style of learning. I think that my work in the field, as well as experience growing up in the Boy Scouts and 4-H helped shift my focus from a classroom style of learning to one more experiential. This class provided a great foundation to work from, allowing us to make decisions about our own learning subject and style. The work begun in this class spilled over into an independent study and allowed my to delve into the lives of rural gay men in MN, and learn more about the LGBT community that I am a part of.
YOST 5954 Experiential Learning: Pedagogy
While I feel like I had a pretty good grasp of what experiential learning was before Terrance's class, it provided a theoretical foundation for the importance of experiential learning through defining our personal learning style, examination of Dewey, parent's of experiential learning and engaging in our own experiential learning project. I was able to further develop a Diversity and Inclusion workshop sparked by the learning around the LGBT community, and build on what I began in Mike's class previously.
YOST 5956 Organizational Approaches to Youth Development
Perhaps the most technical and concrete of all the core classes, Jennifer helped remind me of my love for writing and telling stories while presenting good information, as well as a more in depth look into logic models and strategies of youth work organizations.
YOST 5958 Community: Context for Youth Development Leadership
Jerry's class was a nice capstone to the series of core courses and provided time to reflect on the learning I engaged in over two years and it's application into my own community context.