Chad Evans, out of school program coordinator of the Boys and Girls Club-Deer River, MN, joined an area-wide conversation about results from a survey that measures Itasca area youth’s perceptions of community. The event was hosted by the Itasca Area Initiative for Student Successs. (PHOTO: Blandin Foundation)
Aaron J. Brown is an Iron Range blogger, author, radio producer and columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.
When leaders in Northern Minnesota talk about the importance of our young people, the words often dressed in paternalistic tone. You get a sort of verbal head pat that would make most anyone blush or roll their eyes. In any case, the conversation is generally one-sided. Elected officials on the Iron Range, especially in local offices, tend to be a a generation or two removed from the experience of picking colleges, graduating, and starting a new career or family. They have a loose sense that young voices are missing, and then try to guess what they might say.
This generation gap, often resulting in tone deaf policy, is among the region’s biggest challenges. That’s why why an Itasca County initiative on the western Mesabi deserves our attention. If you want to know what young people think about living here, why not ask them?
That was the premise of the Youth Voice Community Conversation held Nov. 20 in Grand Rapids by the Itasca Area Initiative for Student Success. There, participants discussed results from a survey of 2,300 Itasca County students between grades 6 and 12. The goal is to use the data to inform how to make area communities better for young people as they prepare to join the workforce and start families of their own.
“Supporting the young people of the community has been an Itasca area priority for a long time,” said Jaci David, a project facilitator for the Grand Rapids-based Blandin Foundation, a major funder of the initiative. “The Youth Voice conversation demonstrates our communities’ commitment to this goal, and the commitment of community leaders to use the tools they need to design informed action.”
“The data tells us that some kids in our communities are doing really well – but not all,” said Mindy Nuhring, member of the IAISS Core Team and executive director at River Grand Senior Living.
You can read the data yourself at the website (http://www.itascastudentsuccess.org/resources/). In essence, researches asked young people about what they should have to to feel valued, successful and confident in their community. In many instances, a majority of students found they had the support to succeed, but a persistent minority of a third or greater did not feel that way or held doubts. A troubling number of students, more than half, do not feel that their community values young people the way they should. It’s clear that bullying and struggles fitting in are also major factors in young lives.
“The information that the community got tonight is rich and deep,” Nuhring said. “It can drive many types of community work, and we believe communities will use it to make significant changes in support of kids for several years to come.”
Nuhring said the data provides information that parents can use to talk to their kids; that community center organizers can use to schedule programming and that schools can use to better connect with students.
“It’s interesting, at the event we allowed people to pick the area that they connected with most,” said Nuhring. “The biggest group by far was the Feeling Accepted group. That’s where most kids went and that shows how important it is to young people in our community.”
Nuhring also said kids want to know more about how to use technology. Many times, older people assume young people know everything about technology, but the reality is our schools aren’t able to teach most students about higher level computer and media technical skills.
Like the struggles of any quasi-rural place with aging demographics and a changing economy, the problem isn’t a matter of policy alone.
“This is a real cultural challenge,” said Gene Roehlkepartain of Search Institute, a research nonprofit that coordinated the study for the Itasca initiative. “The notion of having opportunities for participating in the community, we’ve done some looking at that and found that a lot of young participate in programs in the community, but there are some gaps.”
I’m in a unique position to see the challenges facing young people. I teach at a community college, work with community projects, and come from two large working class Iron Range families, The gaps that exist in high school carry over into adulthood. Young people end up working long hours at dead-end jobs, either because college wasn’t affordable or life got in the way. This population of working poor is growing, and will keep growing if problems like the cost of child care, transportation, affordable housing and rising college expenses aren’t addressed.
Each of these factors are dramatically different today than they were for people who were kids in the ‘70s, and especially from those faced by the kids of the ‘50s or earlier.
Thus it would do this region well to listen to its young people. Leaders in St. Louis County should follow what those in Itasca County have done. Students from Grand Rapids to Ely Lakes are a silent force, capable of re-energizing the Iron Range or abandoning it to ruin. Maybe it’s their turn to call a few shots.
Aaron J. Brown is an author and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He writes the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and hosts the Great Northern Radio Show on Northern Community Radio. This post first appeared in the Sunday, Dec. 7, 2014 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.
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