ERIC Number: EJ894616
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-Sep
Pages: 32
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0042-0859
EISSN: N/A
"Cuz They Care about the People Who Goes There": The Multiple Roles of a Community-Based Youth Center in Providing "Youth (Comm)Unity" for Low-Income Chinese American Youth
Wong, Nga-Wing Anjela
Urban Education, v45 n5 p708-739 Sep 2010
This article will explore the role of "CYC," a community-based youth center, in providing a sense of what I call "Youth (Comm)Unity" for Chinese American youth from low-income immigrant families. While CYC combines the youths' home and school worlds, it is also distinct from these worlds by forming a new and hybrid culture/space. In doing so, I argue Youth (Comm)Unity consists of three critical concepts: (a) the Multiple Worlds model developed by Patricia Phelan et al. (1991, 1993, 1998); (b) Angela Valenzuela's "authentic caring" (1999); and (c) similar to Gloria Ladson-Billings's "culturally relevant pedagogy," "culturally relevant" understanding (1994; 1995a; 1995b). Through providing the youth with a sense of Youth (Comm)Unity, CYC is able to offer the following kinds of social and emotional support: sense of trust and caring, sense of ethnic self and identity, sense of home and safe space, serving as role models, and sense of being a teenager. Data for this article is drawn from a larger study based on 15 weeks of ethnographic-based research. As this article illustrates, community-based organizations bridge such gaps for youth from low-income and working-class immigrant families, and Youth (Comm)-Unity is key in order to better serve low-income students of color. (Contains 20 notes.)
Descriptors: Role Models, Low Income, Culturally Relevant Education, Youth, Chinese Americans, Immigrants, Adolescent Attitudes, Role, Community Centers, Teaching Methods, Ethnography, Adolescents, Working Class, Caring, Trust (Psychology), Parent Child Relationship, Family Work Relationship, Educational Environment
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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