This book is a call to action to parents, youth workers, policymakers—anyone who works for and worries about the next generation—to recognize and promote the values of caring in public and private life. It is about teenagers—those who no longer need the care given to babies and children but who still need support and guidance. Diana Mendley Rauner offers a rare focus on youth development as a process of experiencing care and learning social responsibility.
Much public discussion of youth focuses on individual achievement and a limited set of markers of success, on the one hand, and increasingly punitive responses to failure on the other. Missing from these discussions is an appreciation for the importance of caring and social responsibility both in the environments we create for young people and in our expectations of how they should act and what they should become.
"They Still Pick Me Up When I Fall" develops ideals for caring interaction, articulating specific behaviors and habits for practitioners as well as policies and practices that characterize caring organizations and caring societies. Each chapter begins with a profile of a youth-serving organization, drawn from the fields of education, youth work, and counseling. Throughout, an intellectual framework for care is interwoven with the voices and experiences of the youth workers and young people involved in the struggle to create a caring society.
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgments
- CHAPTER 1: Caring for Our Youth: A Call to Action
- Finding Words
- An Ethic of Care
- Beginning the Inquiry
- CHAPTER 2: The Practice of Care
- A Model of Care: Attentiveness, Responsiveness, and Competence
- Care: A Habit of Action
- The Cultural Content of Care
- CHAPTER 3: Mutuality, Trust, and Boundaries
- The Mutuality of Caring
- Trust: The Foundation of Care
- Boundaries: Protecting Youths and Protecting Caregivers
- Care as the Context for Change and Growth
- CHAPTER 4: Learning to Care
- The Role of Expectations and Social Norms
- The Role of Instruction, Modeling, and Competence
- Continuity and Turning Points in Development
- The Impact of Youth Community Service
- CHAPTER 5: But What Does Caring "Accomplish"?
- Care as a Protective Factor
- Caring in the Classroom
- Special Relationships: The Impact of Mentoring
- Measuring Care: Valuing the Process
- CHAPTER 6: Sustaining Care: Caring Schools and Other Organizations
- Providing Care Beyond the Family
- What is a Caring Organization?
- Caring by Design: Organizational Practices
- Reaching Beyond the Walls: Practices that Create Connections in Young People's Lives
- CHAPTER 7: Building a Caring Community
- Extending the Practice of Care
- Trust as a Moral Source
- The Challenge of Caring in Public
- CHAPTER 8: Reinventing Care in Public Life
- Care as a Social Norm
- Opportunities for Caring
- Beginning the Journey
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Text
Audio
Adobe DRM
Login to your account