- Hello and welcome to another Ohio Learns 360 webinar.

My name is Drew Maziasz, coordinating producer at Ideastream Public Media, and today I'm speaking with Brandy Jemczura, executive director and founder of Seeds of Caring.

And Dr. David Childs associate Professor of Social Studies, History, and Black studies Director of the Black Studies Program at Northern Kentucky University.

And today we'll be talking about nurturing civic responsibility in young minds.

Thanks for joining me.

David, can you talk a little bit about your background and what do you think civic engagement and civic responsibility means in terms of a young person's experience or a young person's life?

- I'm a professor of social studies, education and history at Northern Kentucky University.

I also direct the Black Studies Program and also as it relates to this project, I work with our local NPR station on a project called Democracy and Me.

And we do a lot of resources for civic education and democratic education.

And particularly we have been focusing on providing resources for elementary students and getting them involved in civic engagement.

It's really, really important to answer your question because often we think about civic engagement for adults, high school adults.

But if students are already thinking, if young people are already thinking about civic engagement in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, they're already thinking about citizenship, their rights by the time they're adults, they're ready to go.

And that's, that's the fundamental, that's the hallmark of a democracy.

There's an assumption that we should have an educated citizenry.

And when democracy breaks down is when we don't have an educated citizenry.

- -educated citizens.

- Brandy, what about your mission with Seeds of Caring and where did this idea come from and what's the work that you engage with in that organization?

- Yeah, so you know, a little bit similar to Dr. Childs, I think we recognized a need to take something that maybe we've put more focus on for older kids or adults, which is service and volunteerism and the value of that, and really bring that down to the level that our youngest children can understand and can get engaged with.

And so Seeds of Caring is all about engaging kids ages two to 12.

So our preschool and elementary age students in, you know, caring for their community, so hands-on service and volunteer opportunities, community building opportunities, and just getting them out there and understanding that the world around them is a bigger place and that they have a real role to play in making it a kinder, more connected, more inclusive place for all of us.

- That's great.

On, on the Seeds of Caring website, I noticed it mentioned "service, social action and community building projects" as way you get kids involved.

Can you talk more specifically about what those things look like with the kids that are in the Seeds of Caring Program and what kind of lessons do they take away from each of those different aspects?

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know, we believe that all three of those things are really important to kind of weave together.

We think service in a silo without that understanding of this bigger picture of social action and then really building community with another person that it can actually be kind of othering.

And so our goal is to really bring all three of these things together and make sure that kids have opportunities to engage in hands-on projects around them.

So for example, a project that, you know, we do with kids is we might look at, you know, how has systemic racism impacted homelessness in our community?

And for, for kids ages six to 12, you know, we can't get into all the details around that and they're not gonna understand all the, the big picture there.

But what we can do is start to plant those seeds of curiosity in them and help them start to wonder about those things.

And so we kind of introduce these topics and then we help kids really see, you know, what are some hands-on ways that they can make a difference in this, you know, community need area.

And then also how can they build community?

How can they, you know, how, how can we assist them in seeing the world around them in a way that every person needs help sometimes and every person can give help sometimes.

And how can we help them find like similarities with our unhoused neighbors and really start to build that community of, you know, we're all in this together.

So if that, I don't know if that helps Drew, but that's kind of how we approach it at Seeds of Caring.

- Yeah, that's a, a great descriptor.

So David, you're teaching at the college level.

You said you're involved with education at an early level as well.

Can you talk about how young people can develop that kind of civic pride and responsibility before they're hitting 17, 18 and going to college?

- Yes, sir.

It's, it's a gradual process.

Specifically students can understand their position in the world and in their own, in, in society, in their own neighborhoods, in their own towns, in the kinds of things they can do to, to make, make it a better place.

What, what citizenship looks like and, and also civic engagement looks like for the young people, for the youth, is that age is sharing, understanding, even social emotional learning, how to interact with others, how to understand that they're not in the world alone.

And then also understanding difference in, in various ways that are developmentally appropriate for children.

Understanding how to treat folks different from themselves, but specifically also just understanding who the mayor is, who the vice mayor is.

Elected officials, especially upper level elementary students, they can understand that, for example, the mayor's not the boss of the whole city.

There are other people, city council, there are other individuals that they work with, that they interact with that really make the city go round.

And then even understanding the governor, what, what he or she does and all the way up to, to the US and just understanding what goes on and how they too can be involved in it.

And it's not just the adults, but they can involve, be involved in it.

For example, I do class elections when I've worked with elementary teachers, I've had students run for, you know, various offices and we'll do an actual election in the class will build up to that over a series of lessons just to help them understand the democratic process.

There's so much you can do with youth that people don't understand.

- You mentioned the term social emotional learning.

Can you talk a little bit about what that concept actually is?

I think that's something a lot of people have probably heard, but maybe not sure what that looks like in a classroom or what that looks like in their child's life.

- Right, and, quite frankly, a lot of people are afraid of it.

They don't understand.

And it's about knowing how to engage with, with other students in a way that that's practices being a good citizen.

And even things like understanding how to share, how to interact with individuals.

It's a developmental process.

It helps people learn to support healthy relationships.

That's what it's all about, supporting healthy relationships.

So even like if you disagree with someone, it is not okay to hit them or yell and scream at them.

And, and it seems like some of these things are, are quote, common sense, but we're finding that many young people need to be taught this.

And we can, and experts have found that we can quantify it and create learning environments where students can, can learn how to get along with others and, and exist with people, people that are different from them.

And they, they can be prepped to do that instead of just assuming they'll, they'll, they, they know how to share, assuming they know how to speak to people.

We see it a lot with, for example, teenagers not knowing how to have a debate, a friendly debate without, just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean that you have to hate their guts or that you have to fight.

That's why, that's where social emotional learning, the research is really, really helpful.

The curriculum, I should say is really, really helpful in facilitating these learning environments that's going to help students all the way down from kindergarten all the way to 12, help them know how to, to get along with others and support others.

If, for example, if somebody is doing something well, that we encourage them.

It doesn't have to always be about me.

And those are the, the important things about social, social emotional learning.

Just to say a few more things, just being socially aware, responsible decision making, self-management is so important.

Self-awareness, relationship skills, those are some of the buzz words as it relates to social emotional learning.

- Thanks for that explainer.

Brandy, David was kind of talking about kids that might be coming together that have differences.

You see in the classroom, people coming from different backgrounds, different geographic areas, different economic means and needs.

Who do you see coming to Seeds of Caring and what do those relationships look like when kids come together in these programs?

- Yeah, you know, one of our primary goals at Seeds of Caring is building that ability to empathize with another person.

And so I think whether we are talking with a group of children about some need in our community and helping them, you know, build empathy for challenges that someone might be going through, or whether we are simply bringing kids together in a space and they're learning from one another and they're learning to empathize with one another.

That's all one of those re really key building blocks to the, the social emotional learning piece, that empathy piece.

So kids that are coming to Seeds of Caring, I mean they're coming from all across central Ohio and, and now central Indiana.

'cause we expanded our programs into central Indiana this year.

And so they're coming from, you know, all, all kinds of different backgrounds.

Sometimes they themselves maybe have not experienced this particular community need that we're talking about.

And sometimes they have, sometimes they might even be experiencing it currently.

And so, you know, the way that we kind of tackle that, we utilize a lot of children's literature to help kind of, you know, through that use of storytelling to help kids relate, to help them begin to kind of build some of that empathy.

We also use a lot of asset framing.

We talk a lot about how we see people as people and we find commonalities with others before we really, you know, think about differences or maybe even think about needs.

And so I think that the way that we frame conversations with kids really affects the lens that they take on their world.

And so, you know, when we are able to bring kids together also just simply the, the sheer joy of being able to give to others, every child can experience that and every child can really embrace that.

And I think what we hear, especially from our educators who are implementing our programs in higher need under-resourced areas, we actually hear that that is a really powerful shift for kids, you know, to be perhaps if they're more used to being on the receiving end to be empowered as the change makers and the givers.

And you know, that's a, that's a really powerful shift for them.

And it's one that they take great joy and, and great pride in being able to show up for their community in that way.

- I want to ask a little bit more about empathy.

We've used that term and it seems to be such a cornerstone for what both of you are doing.

Can you talk a little bit more about how you approach that concept?

What works best for kids in terms of instilling empathy in these relationships?

- Yeah, there's a lot of really interesting research around empathy and, and it does show us that kids are capable of building this skill from the age of two.

And, but the, a real key building block in, in building empathy is modeling it.

And so at Seeds of Caring, we are frequently trying to model that with young children.

So we are, you know, it, it's important first that kids can understand their own feelings.

And so oftentimes we're tying something into, you know, how, how would you feel if, and then we're trying to help them make that bridge to another person that, you know, might be experiencing that.

So whether we're talking about food, I mean food insecurity is maybe a good example.

You know, we can, we can actually do some stimulated exercises with kids where, you know, they see that food is simply access to food is simply not equitably distributed across our community.

And once they see that, you know, they immediately recognize that something is unfair there and that something is unjust and they want to help.

And so kind of just, you know, using kids have a, a real innate sense of empathy.

They have an, a real innate sense of justice and we can capitalize on that in really important ways with, with young kids.

I think I pointed earlier also to the importance of literature.

There are so many incredible books out there right now that help kids relate to stories in our community and they're fantastic.

So we, we oftentimes will, you know, utilize that in our, in our conversations with kids as well.

And then the last thing I'll just mention, Drew, and Dr. Childs might have other, you know, things to add here on the, on this piece of empathy, but reflection is a really key piece to having that empathy really land with kids and kind of, you know, stick around and, and grow.

And so it's not just about the actions that they take.

So when they're at one of our programs and we might be, let's say packing sack lunches for a local shelter, or we're making a, an activity kit that a child in the hospital could utilize.

It's not actually about the action.

That is not what's going to help that empathy truly build, it's really about the reflection piece.

And so it's giving kids an opportunity to think about why their actions matter and to get them to kind of verbalize that and think through that.

- Yeah, yeah.

I, I was appreciating what, what, what Ms.

Brandy was saying too.

So many great ideas, the the, the sack lunches and, and like she said, people don't realize that children is very innate.

The empathy piece, and I was gonna give some specific examples that we've done or a specific project.

One of my primary roles is to work with teachers in the college of education.

I train teachers, and specifically when I'm working with elementary teachers, we do a lot around bullying because I was a recipient of bullying.

I witnessed it quite a bit in, in elementary.

I saw my, and I remember being empathetic, empathic, really a lot of my friends were being bullied.

We went to an inner city school.

And, but it happens anywhere.

And I always had empathy for my, my friends.

But as I got to middle school, I experienced bullying and I was getting into fights and things like that.

And I often thought, this is the eighties and nineties, I often thought "Where are the teachers?"

"Where is the admin?"

"Where is the administration?".

And so when I begin to train teachers, I begin to do a lot of intentional things around bullying.

Bullying curriculum kit is a great way to get at that empathy piece we focus on.

And I, again, I'm working with adult teachers and then also they go into the classroom and then I can observe them implementing some of these things with the second graders, third graders, all the way up to, I work with high school children as well, high school teachers as well.

But anyway, we focus on racism, body shaming as it relates to bullying.

And a a kindergartner can get that in terms of making fun of somebody because of the way they look.

Things they can't change.

Even if they can change 'em, that shouldn't matter.

But that's a big way.

We, we, we talk about, we get at the empathy piece with bullying, reflecting reflections.

How would you feel if, you know, prompting students?

And, and I've had some success even when I've been in the elementary classroom, creating an environment of empathy from day one coming into here... the researcher Harry Wong talks about when you do classroom management stuff, don't, don't just focus on that first two, three, traditionally teachers do classroom management the first few days of class, and then you assume that the students get it.

But Harry Wong talks about spending as much time as you need to, to, to establish that, that environment and you can create a classroom of empathy if we're talking about a traditional classroom setting through these kinds of activities and as a thread, as a thread throughout the entire school year.

So that, that's a project that we've been doing and we've had a lot of success with.

- You're talking about these real world problems, bullying and body shaming, and we heard you mentioned food insecurity, but what are some of these issues that you might use to get kids activated in the real world?

What kinda lessons are you building for these kids in terms of here's an issue in the real world, here's how you can be more educated, more activated, more engaged with say, X, Y, or Z.

- Yeah, one of the things I started to get at it is the racism piece and the "isms", and trying to help students understand the larger context.

People may not, other people may not look like you, they may not have the same skin tone, but we're part of the human family.

And so that's what we get at in that, that bullying curriculum where it, it can leave the classroom, you know, and go out into the larger world and get them involved.

Especially during, you know, it doesn't have to be relegated to Black History Month, but Black History Month is right there to do, to do more than just, for example, if you have the, the younger, the, the lower elementary grades do more than just coloring the picture of Martin Luther King.

But let, let's look at, let's look at some of the less complex ideas that Dr. King talked about, togetherness, and then also King dealt a lot with poverty.

A lot of people don't realize that.

And, and our friends in the classroom, maybe there's somebody that is struggling with food insecurity, we don't, we don't make fun of them.

Or maybe the somebody's out out there that doesn't have anything to eat.

What do you guys thinking about that?

That's a nice reflecting piece too, without, of course drawing attention to students that are specifically going through that.

But reflection is really good to develop empathy for some of these larger issues.

But King dealt with equality not only race, but economic equality.

And then also a lot of the schools students are experiencing homelessness.

'cause a lot of people will say, well, they're too young to deal with some of the complex issues.

Well, that's not true because a lot of them are dealing with, with housing insecurity.

I I, I experienced a lot of racism as a kid, as a young person, as a elementary student.

And so it would've been nice to have those conversations with somebody if I, somebody could have facilitated those conversations with me.

These are all civic ideas.

It doesn't have to be traditional voting, you know, going to the ballot box, going to city council.

There, there are things that, that young people can do.

That's why brought up social emotional learning because it encompasses a lot of these things.

It, it, we live in a, you know, because of television, social media, et cetera and so forth.

Unfortunately, we're being pushed to be selfish and to focus on ourself.

As you look at Hollywood, the music industry, a lot of what students are consuming is me-centered.

It's, it's me-centric.

The things we're talking about today is about the "us" and the "we".

And there are people out there that we should be thinking about and caring about.

So those are the many ways that we address these kinds of things.

- Brandy, can you maybe talk a little bit about the real world examples besides things like food insecurity and racism?

How do you manage some of those real world examples and age appropriateness?

How do you deal with kids at different age levels?

What kind of issues are appropriate for younger age levels?

- Yeah, no, absolutely.

Yeah, I, I was, I was nodding and enthusiastically there because I think that is one of the pushbacks that, you know, centers around certain aspects of social emotional learning and whatnot, is that it's not developmentally appropriate for children, but yet all of our research shows us that the younger we can start conversations with children, the better off we are.

And so, while it has to be taken through a developmentally appropriate lens, it is, you know, there is, there isn't a, an age that is really too young to begin the conversations.

So, you know, again, we work with the kids ages two to 12 and how we approach, for example, you know, discrimination against our L-G-B-T-Q neighbors, like how we approach that with kids ages two to five is gonna be different than how we approach it with kids ages six to 12 and different than how you would approach it in middle and high school.

Right.

But there, you know, again, I, I know I keep kind of leaning back into some of these resources, you know, some of this literature and, and other just simple ways to talk to kids about caring for another person and respecting another person.

So, you know, at, at at ages three, it might not be delving into what it even means to be L-G-B-T-Q, but maybe it is just a matter of reminding kids that every person is deserving of respect, period.

The end, right?

And then with, with kids that are a little bit older, you know, you can talk about, you know, some of the, the history of, of pride celebrations, you know, and, and what, what some of that has meant over the years.

And there's always ways to approach these topics in, in a developmentally appropriate way to just open the conversation.

And we have so many more resources at our disposal today than we even did five years ago to do that really appropriately with kids.

So at Seeds of Caring, yeah, we tackle topics from, you know, food insecurity to homelessness, to stigmas surrounding developmental disabilities, to racism, you know, caring for our environment.

There's all kinds of things that we tackle and, and we want to ultimately inspire kids to know that they have agency with this, that they, you know, there is a way that they can affect change.

And so, you know, when we think about taking it into the wider community and into like social action and civic engagement and all of this, you know, we really want kids to know that they have a role to play and that they're never too young to, to make a difference.

And kids are incredible when you plant that seed in them.

And when they can, you know, take, take something that they feel passionate about and run with it, it, it's like, you know, there's no limit to what they can do.

And it's really, it's really incredible to be able to witness sometimes and see their energy for it.

And, you know, that passion that they bring to educating others and, and all of that.

- Dr. Childs, can you comment on the topic of age appropriateness and dealing with kids in different age groups?

- Absolutely.

One of the things I kept trying to remind myself to, to, to comment on it that Brandy brought up is the importance of using children's literature.

A lot of the ways I get at some of these empowerment issues, empathy is through children's literature.

I'll give some examples as it relates to, to, to, to African American history or Black studies.

There's some great books on Black hair.

I, I grew up with four sisters and their hair is really important and it's a sensitive topic.

They, they do not want people just randomly touching their hair or pulling their hair and saying, your hair is different.

You know, and, and that's their personal space.

And, you know, it's inappropriate when people, students might say, well, your hair is weird, why am I, you know, and those are the kinds of things that I really have been able to have some success with.

But I was gonna give some specific and how we might empower students.

There's a book called "Hair Like Mine" that's, that's, that's really good.

By, by LaTashia ... ...

I'm sorry, LaTashia Perry, actually.

And there's another book by Lupita (Nyong'o), the, the actress called "Sulwe", and she deals with it.

There's a book called "Locs".

And so these are examples of how one might get at some of these empowerment, empathy issues through literature.

Probably one of the most famous books by Natasha Tarpley is called "I Love My Hair".

Now, when I first started teaching, a lot of these resources were not available, but now there is a plethora of resources where we can get at, I even, I was reading a book, there's some books on disability now for children understanding various types of disability that, that's really breakthrough and cutting edge.

It shouldn't be, but it is, it's, it's some brand new stuff out there that I think is really promising.

So that's what I wanted to comment on in terms of the power of literature.

And you'll have to do your homework, you know, the parents will have to do their homework and, and see what's out there.

Don't assume there's, there's all kinds of stuff out there.

- I want to shift and talk a little bit about politics without talking about politics, because when we think about civics, a lot of people think that's synonymous with our political system.

But any advice on how parents or guardians can discuss civics and politics without engaging in partisanship?

- I would start off by saying, just because we're talking politics, you just said it.

It is, it is.

We always assume it's going to be partisan.

I work with students and parents to, as a starting place, I say people are going to disagree with you--learn how to be civil about that.

I just did an op-ed in the Northern Kentucky Tribune called The Death of Civility and the, the, the loss of our ability to have conversations without blowing up, you know, having conversations with individuals that disagree with us without blowing up.

And I, I often tell my students, whether it's college students, high school, middle school or elementary, that people are going to disagree with you.

That doesn't mean we have to, to to be unkind, or that doesn't mean that person does not like you, or we should not like those individuals.

So the starting place for me is just having an understanding that everybody's not gonna see eye to eye.

And that's okay.

That's the nature of democracy.

Nobody in the democracy has ever fully agreed.

Democracy is messy.

I think people don't realize that, like from the outset, democracy is gonna be differing opinions, different people, voices coming to the table table trying to come at an understanding on, on how to govern or how to go a certain way.

And so, just even from a fundamental standpoint, understanding how, how the nature of democracy is so, so important.

You can have politics, you can be political without it being politics, bipartisan politics.

And I think that's the way forward for all of us anyway.

People get so rattled and, and they make judgements about whether a person is evil based on their political party.

We should, we need to pull back from that.

People always talk about lean into, we need to lean back from that.

- Brandy, how do you separate the civic engagement from politics and partisanship?

- Yeah, I think with young kids it starts with helping them be curious about the world around them and just kind of leaning into like kind of taking the child's lead a little bit on what, what are they curious about?

What, what do they see happening in their community that they want to know more about?

You know, kids are a lot more perceptive than we give them credit for sometimes.

And I think that, you know, if parents and caregivers and educators can just kind of lean into what they're curious about, then the next logical step is helping them understand that they do have some sense of agency to learn more about that topic and then to do something about it.

So kind of regardless of what it is that they're curious to know more about, just kind of helping them understand that they, you, you know, they, they can, they can learn more.

They can have, you know, these, these civil conversations, they can also figure out, you know, where in the community to pour some of their energy and, and take action.

But I, I do kind of think with young kids, it starts with leaning into their curiosities.

- That kind of goes back to a point you made earlier, Dr. Childs, you talked about curiosity and we're talking about mock elections that you set up in classrooms.

What do you see as the area where the most young people are asking questions?

Or in terms of the political sphere, are they most concerned about local elections or national politics?

- A lot of what I do, if we're talking the elementary is sort of demystifying, for example, what a mayor does and helping them to understand the, the checks and balances, the political process.

There's a lot of people involved.

There's just not one person.

And then helping them understand, well, a question that how can I be involved?

But, but I think even whether, whether it's a, a young elementary student to a high school student, to an adult, a lot of people do not realize how they can be involved.

Letter writing, you know, we still do that.

Have students write letters to elected officials.

I was just talking to somebody about that recently, and it doesn't have to be the mayor.

You can write to your council person, you can write to your congress person, you can write to the governor, you can write to somebody in the Cabinet at the federal level and, and you can tie in language arts skills.

I'm, I'm into interdisciplinary kinds of things.

So you can have, you can use it as a project where they're learning how to write and, and they can be vocabulary words and it can be directed towards writing the letter to an official, or writing to the, the Environmental Protection Agency about pollution in the local creek or the local area.

Those kinds of things.

Understanding how our, our school funding works, you know, simplifying that.

There's so many things that students are curious about.

How do they'll ask, you know, questions that may be considered rude.

How do teachers get paid?

How does the principal... Is the principal rich?

Is the mayor rich?

And those are great teachable moments rather than being, being intimidated by that.

But leaning into that question and even doing some, some simple math, just simple understanding at their level that's developmentally appropriate on how to understand these things.

So they're always curious.

And often I will build projects based on their curiosity and those kinds of things, because I believe in on the ground teaching and real world kinds of teaching, that's not abstract, that's connected to the, if, if, if I can make it meaningful for them, it's, it's a win-win.

But even my college students, they, they do not always understand the political process and, and how things work.

One, I I would just leave off with this, this point, people often, this is one of my sort of hobby horses.

People often focus on the federal election, the national election, the presidential election we we're in election year now.

But a I tell tell my students, whether it's college all the way down to elementary, some of the, the most important contested elections are the local elections.

And, and, and who's going to be the sheriff, the county commissioner, the, the city council, the school board.

School boards are probably the most contested political areas in the country these days.

That's the battleground.

And if we're waiting for the general election, we can miss the boat.

I, so I, I had those kinds of conversations and then maybe when students can't vote, we can at least explore the candidates.

Sometime I'll have if, if, if, if they're old enough, we'll watch a political, we'll watch a, a clip of a political debate.

And not always necessarily the presidential, it could be the mayor, you know, or, you know, various levels of government will watch debates and then talk about it in the way that they can understand, and transcribed.

There's so many things that we can do and, and have students understand that.

And, and again, if they're doing this on at an early age, by the time they get to adulthood, they're ready to go.

And it, and it is not partisan.

It's not always, it doesn't have to be partisan.

I think that's a distraction to, to, to say, oh, this is gonna be Republican.

Are are we creating a Democrat?

That's a distraction.

The larger machine of democracy has room for that, for, for disagreement.

- Brandy, kind of jumping off of the topic of voting, I wanted to ask you about how you give these kids a sense of empowerment.

They think, I'm not 18 yet, I can't vote.

And if there is a criticism or a complaint or a feeling of powerlessness and how do you get them to feel empowered and engaged in the process?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

I think one thing that we lean into at Seeds of Caring is always reminding kids that they have a lot of power in being able to educate others.

So, you know, whether that's their peers or their family members or you know, their, we, we have kids that will come to a project with us and they'll feel so inspired by something they did to kind of help out in their community that they wanna take it back to their whole classroom.

And then after they teach their classroom, you know, about how they can, for example, support seniors who might be experiencing social isolation, then all of a sudden that class decides they wanna do this as a whole school project.

Right?

And like the ripple effects are huge.

So just helping kids understand that, number one, they can educate others and that their, their voice is powerful in that way, even if they may not be able to vote yet.

I also think giving them these hands-on opportunities.

When we're talking about young kids, you know, showing them there are things they can do today in their community to help, you know, move us forward to help make our community a better place.

And, you know, kids love those hands-on opportunities.

So I know, I don't think I've shared a couple of resources for that yet, but I would like to, if that's okay.

There's, you know, if, if anyone's in central Ohio or or central Indiana, you know, let's, let's partner together at Seeds of Caring.

'cause we have all the resources and project ideas that you can need.

But if you're outside those areas, there's some really great organizations.

One is called DOSOMETHING.org.

They have all kinds of projects available for kids to really get active in their community.

There's also projects available through SERVE OHIO through an organization called DOING GOOD TOGETHER.

Doing Good Together has both like hands-on project ideas, but also those lit when we were speaking of all the children's literature, they have book lists for all kinds of different community need areas.

And so if a child is curious to, to understand more about homelessness or, or that whatnot, you know, there's a, there's a whole list of 12 children's books that can help 'em do that.

So that's doing good together.

So those are a few of the resources that are out there.

But I, I guess to kind of in summary, I think when kids, you know, do they feel the frustration of not being able to get their voices heard?

Absolutely they do, right?

They, they're very frustrated about certain things that are happening in the world around them.

But I think it's our job as, you know, the support people in their lives to show them that they can make a difference and to make sure that they really internalize that.

Because if they believe that, then when, you know, as they grow older, they will be exercising their right to vote.

They will continue to be engaged in service and social action in the community and, and, you know, continue to grow in that way.

- Dr. Childs, I wanted to ask you about adults in kids' lives.

What would your words of advice be to the adults who are out there and who might not realize their kids are listening when they're talking about politics?

You know, how do you avoid and stay above the negativity?

How do you have these conversations about politics in a way that's not turning kids off from the political process at such a young age?

- This is such a great, great question because I want to, to let, I wanna remind people that civic engagement and democracy and the democratic process and the political process is not inherently partisan.

I think that's the fundamental flaw today.

There's always been healthy debates.

You know, there's, they, they used to do duels back in the day, you know, and people were caned, you know, on the floor of Congress.

But we have shifted into a viciousness that I think people should pull back from.

We can have, if we want the democracy to continue, we have to be respectful.

We have to teach our students to be respectful of those that disagree with them.

That's one of the hallmarks.

And so when we say civic engagement, when we talk about democratic engagement of our students, those kinds of high ideals, we're not necessarily talking about voting all the time.

We're not necessarily talking about who's going to beat, whether, whether it's gonna be Biden, Trump or whoever.

That's erroneous to think about it that way.

But there are, there are the day-to-day things.

That's why we talk about social-emotional learning, that we can teach our students, our, our youth.

They need to be able to, to get along with others.

They need to be able to respect folks from, from different backgrounds.

They need to be able to do that as they get older.

Otherwise, we're not creating very good citizens.

It's going to affect our democratic process.

We love democracy.

We love the ability to vote our hearts and our convictions.

We can lose that if we don't teach our students to be respectful and respect other people's things.

Know, be self-aware of, of who you are and your voice.

Be aware of what you're projecting.

Those kinds of things is all about thinking about others outside of myself.

If I'm always thinking about others, I'm not gonna be cognizant of whether I respect women.

I'm not gonna be cognizant of whether I respect Hispanics or African Americans or people different from myself, but I'm always thinking about myself.

I just gonna be me, me, me.

But if we are other oriented in this democratic process, then we're gonna have a make, make the world a better place.

So I say to the parents, to the adults, you might be a Democrat, you might be a Republican, you might be pro-life, you might be pro-choice.

That's okay because we're in a democracy.

You might be a Christian, you might be Muslim.

That's okay.

We're in a democratic process and, and it is messy.

And embrace that, lean into that messiness and then just come together and figure it out.

We don't have to be messy in our conversations, but understand that it's gonna be different voices at the table.

You may not always like the voices at the table, but let's, let's pull back from the viciousness, especially going forward as we get closer into this, this 2024 election, the viciousness comes out, people are disrespectful and all these kinds of things.

We need to do a better job.

Adults, in fact, it's not the children, it's the adults that, that are, that are behaving badly.

- Brandy, last question to you.

I kind of asked Dr. Childs about adults, and I kind of want to go back to you and once again, ask about empowerment in kids.

Once again, it's because they're too young to vote.

Maybe they feel like their voices aren't heard.

How do you empower kids your younger and younger generations to get the adults in their lives to advocate for their needs?

- Yeah, that's a, that's a hard last question, Drew, but I like it.

I mean, I think that kids are, again, naturally so passionate and they are, they're wonderful, wonderful, you know, little advocates for what they care about.

So I think that so long as, you know, we're giving them opportunities to explore that, and we're really listening to them.

I mean, I, I think it is really important that the adults in their lives are, are listening to them.

But so long as we're doing that, our, our kids will continue to surprise us in the ways that they, you know, bring their passions forward and, and, you know, want to, to continue getting involved.

So I, I think it is about setting, you know, environments for kids where there's safe spaces to have hard conversations.

We model that as, as the, the adults in their lives and, and show them that it's a safe space to have a tough conversation.

And that that's okay.

You know, we ask thoughtful questions of them.

We really give them opportunities to step beyond themselves.

I love, I mean Dr. Childs referenced several times this conversation.

We have to have counter forces to this, me, me, me culture, right?

And that is that that starts with setting an environment where we are thinking about others and we're, we're considering others.

So I, I think, I think that the, you know, adults have the opportunity to create an environment where kids feel safe talking about various things.

And those of us who maybe are interacting with kids, where sometimes maybe that isn't the environment that they're living in, I think that, you know, we can give them a sense of agency and, and remind them that there's something, there's always something they can do to make a difference.

I think those, you know, there's three key truths that we want kids to embrace at Seeds of Caring.

They're that they can choose kindness, they can make a difference, and they can be a friend to anyone in their community.

And so I think just continuing to, to hone in on some of those things with our young people will ultimately lead to a place where they feel more comfortable advocating for what they want and hopefully the adults in their lives continue to support them.

- Well, that brings us to the end of our discussion.

I want to thank both of you so much for joining me today.

- Wonderful.

Thank you, Drew.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for, for, for your patience.

I was on the ground with my 3-year-old, so you, you all know I have some real live experience.

Yeah, I was switching rooms and everything.

So - That's it for this Ohio Learns 360 webinar on the subject of nurturing civic responsibility in young minds.

There's still more to come and we hope you join us again in the future for more educational webinars for families.