(1) What is your essential question? What is the best answer to your question and why?
My Essential question is How can a parks and rec afterschool program best support community adolescence? My best answer is by providing staff willing to build relationships with the kids in programs. This is my best answer because if the staff don't do a good job and make the kids not want to come back, then my other answers which are providing a variety of quality extracurricular programs, and encouraging healthy eating and living, wouldn't matter because the kids would never come back.
(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
First, I had to generate my essential question. Starting in my topic of parks and recreation, I wanted to specifically be working with adolescence. I then started thinking what makes the kids come back and why it matters. Then I arrived at my essential question, how can a parks and rec afterschool program best support community adolescence? Then I started looking at what program's I saw kids coming back for which was the programs, to get healthy for summer, and to interact with the staff. So my answers were very easy to generate. By providing a variety of extracurricular programs, by encouraging healthy eating and living, and by providing staff willing to build relationships with kids. Then i started thinking which is more important. I saw that the kids that hung out with staff came back the most. I saw that staff could become a mentor to the kids and a great influence on them so I came to my best answer. By providing staff willing to build relationships with kids, parks and rec afterschool program best support community adolescence.
(3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
During my research I faced the problem of research. In the initial research checks I'd have information that was useless. This went on for a while until i saw some posts from Afterschool Alliance. I wanted to see what it was about so I looked at their site and their information. I was happy to find that they had all the information I had been searching for. I was then able to use keywords from their site to find more helpful research in other sites. Another big problem I faced was while I was leaving my mentorship I saw a woman screaming profanities at kids accross the street from the center. I then decided to step in to tell her that she can't do that. Her and her husband then decided to yell profanities at me asking who i thought I was. So after I told her that if she had problems with the kids to go in the center and talk to the staff otherwise she could get in a lot of trouble. So I saw her walk in the center and thought everything was fine. The next day I was disappointed to find that she went in and told the staff that I was rude and cursed at her. For a while I had to be going in the office to say what happened and find the kids that she was yelling at as witnesses until I was able to really get back into my mentorship. After that was solved everything went smooth.
(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
The most significant sources I used to answer my essential were the site Afterschool Alliance, and my mentor, Jerrica Bonilla. The site Afterschool Alliance was very significant because all of my helpful research came from this site or this site was used to form key words to find other helpful sites. My mentor, Jerrica Bonilla was also very helpful because of her prior work history. She has worked for a church youth program, a popular afterschool program called Think Together, and at the city of Ontario at the De Anza Teen Center. So with all her work history she was able to answer any questions I had or give helpful information to assist me on my way.
(5) What is your product and why?
My product from my senior project would have to be that now I am able to look at things and figure out where I fit in to help. At the center when a kid needed homework help I'd do all I could to help them with whatever they needed. If a kid needed to use the computer lab but didn't have their library card (needed to access the internet) I'd let them borrow mine. If a kid needed to get a ball off the roof I'd go help. After a while I'd apply this elsewhere. When I saw the neighborhood kids playing basketball with a flat ball I'd go find my pump and pump the ball for them.
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