In the first episode of the podcast series Journeys in Youth Development, host Georgia Hall, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST), talks to Marisela Montoya, chief program officer at Foundation Communities in Austin, TX, and Kourtney Andrada, senior director of school-based programs at Girls Inc. of Alameda County in Oakland, CA. Marisela reads several excerpts from her essay “Sweet Spot,” about how she happened to wander into an afterschool program and found her calling. She talks about an inspiring interaction with a supervisor who pushed her to constantly look for new opportunities to learn and to share that learning with others. Kourtney reads from her essay “Investing in Communities of Color,” about her early experiences working with youth as both a track coach and as an advisor to teens in a migrant farmer community who would be first-generation college students. She talks about a fellowship experience that shifted her mindset from working within existing systems to changing those systems. Marisela and Courtney’s essays appear in the book The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field: Professional Journeys of Growth, Connection, and Transformation. Through both research and personal essays, the book shines a light on the intricate connections between research and practice, touching upon both the vulnerability and triumph of youth development work. The passionate voices of youth workers in this volume lead to the inescapable conclusion that programs and policies for youth must be informed by these same voices and the values they express.
In the first episode of the podcast series Journeys in Youth Development, host Georgia Hall, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST), talks to Marisela Montoya, chief program officer at Foundation Communities in Austin, TX, and Kourtney Andrada, senior director of school-based programs at Girls Inc. of Alameda County in Oakland, CA. Marisela reads several excerpts from her essay “Sweet Spot,” about how she happened to wander into an afterschool program and found her calling. She talks about an inspiring interaction with a supervisor who pushed her to constantly look for new opportunities to learn and to share that learning with others. Kourtney reads from her essay “Investing in Communities of Color,” about her early experiences working with youth as both a track coach and as an advisor to teens in a migrant farmer community who would be first-generation college students. She talks about a fellowship experience that shifted her mindset from working within existing systems to changing those systems.
Marisela and Kourtney’s essays appear in the book The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field: Professional Journeys of Growth, Connection, and Transformation. Through both research and personal essays, the book shines a light on the intricate connections between research and practice, touching upon both the vulnerability and triumph of youth development work. The passionate voices of youth workers in this volume lead to the inescapable conclusion that programs and policies for youth must be informed by these same voices and the values they express. See more details and order your copy here: https://niost.org/ostbook
About the National Institute on Out-of-School-Time:
For 40 years, NIOST has been a leader in defining, shaping, and promoting out-of-school time (OST) as a distinct professional field with evidence-based quality standards. We bridge the worlds of research and practice to provide OST directors, staff, planners, school administrators, community leaders, and others with research, training, evaluation, and consultation to enhance and improve the quality of programs for all children and youth. https://niost.org
NIOST is a program of Wellesley Centers for Women, a research and action institute at Wellesley College that is focused on women and gender and driven by social change. https://www.wcwonline.org
Georgia Hall:
Youth work is a sacred opportunity to make a significant difference in the lives of children and youth. In the just released book, The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field: Professional Journeys of Growth, Connection, and Transformation, the authors use research and personal essays to shine a light on the intricate connections between research and practice, touching upon both the vulnerability and the triumph of youth development work. The passionate voices of youth workers in this volume lead to the inescapable conclusion that programs and policies for youth must be informed by these same voices and the values they express. Welcome to this first conversation on The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field. My name is Georgia Hall from the National Institute on Out-of-School Time at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field is the latest volume in the series Current Issues in Out-of-School Time, which is published by Information Age Publishing under the direction of series editor Dr. Helen Malone at the Institute for Educational Leadership.
Georgia Hall:
My guests today are Marisela Montoya, who's the chief program officer at Foundation Communities in Austin, Texas and Kourtney Andrada, who's the senior director of school-based programs at Girls Inc. of Alameda County in Oakland, California. Welcome Mariella and Kourtney! Through the work of leaders such as Marisela and Kourtney, practitioners and researchers, we at NIOST have come to deeply and profoundly understand what it means to show up for children and youth. Their stories of trial and triumph have shaped our own work at NIOST. This book aims to lift up youth workers' stories and to help readers connect to these professional life experiences. One of the first questions we explore in this book focuses on how workers actually come into this field. Some pathways are very intentional and others haphazard, and all of them are rich with relationship, connection, inspiration, personal resilience, and giving back. More than many other fields work in OST provides opportunity for self-discovery. In these essays, leaders and practitioners describe how they've learned who they really are through their relationships with youth and families, communities, and colleagues. Marisela Montoya expresses her joy at just sitting and coloring with young people at the end of the day. And Marisela, I'm gonna ask you to read the beginning of your essay as it talks about this first opportunity for you to become acquainted with the OST youth development field. Marisela
Marisela Montoya:
Thank you, Georgia. I took some smart advice from my mother when I was a freshman in college and looked for a part-time job. I needed something that fit in well with my class schedule, and I wanted something that did not feel like a heavy load so I could balance school and work as I pursued a major in psychology with the hope of becoming a counselor. My mom had suggested that I look for a job within the school district, so I would have the opportunity to have holidays off when school was closed. I was not looking for a job in education or working with children, but her advice made sense. I found a job listing with a local community education program for a building monitor. The assigned administrative duties, however, did not always keep me busy, so I often found myself wandering into the cafeteria where the afterschool program was happening. I would help students with homework and often assist them with arts and crafts or play board games if I had the time. I discovered that I really enjoyed working with youth. Without knowing it, I had started on a path toward my life's work.
Marisela Montoya:
Although working with youth had not been my original plan, it quickly became something that I was passionate about. I have heard that finding your career "sweet spot" is when you find the place where your strengths, passions, and values overlap. Several years ago, around the time I first began working in the OST field, I read Max Lucado's book Cure for the Common Life: Living in Your Sweet Spot. He talks about the sweet spot that professional tennis players, golfers, and baseball players reference. Lucado suggests that "the sweet spot is a zone, a region, a life precinct in which you were made to dwell." He goes on to say that "life makes sense when you find your sweet spot," and that is exactly how I feel about the work I do in the OST field.
Georgia Hall:
Thank you, Marisela. So you have this experience, this early experience where you just happen to sort of walk in and--I should say that the essay title for this essay from Marisela is Sweet Spot. And so yours is one of the sort of haphazard step-ins to this field of out-of-school time and youth development. In your essay you talk about later of this experience so later in your starting career and you have this interaction with a supervisor that in some ways sort of shifts some of the understandings that you have about working in the OST field. Tell us a little bit about that experience with that supervisor.
Marisela Montoya:
Sure. I had the opportunity to attend a national afterschool conference with a supervisor several years ago. And we had been there for a couple of days and that last day I was ready to just kick back and relax, and she had different plans.
Georgia Hall:
So Marisela, tell us exactly your position right now in OST youth development, and then I just wanna ask you a little bit about how these experiences have continued to sort of play out in your work.
Marisela Montoya:
Yeah, sure. So I'm currently the chief program officer at Foundation Communities. I was formerly the director of education for several years so I've recently kind of transitioned into a new role, but I still oversee our education and out-of-school time programs here. That was actually kind of something that I was a little, it was hard to let go of in this promotion just because I was so accustomed to doing that work and I love that work so much, but I'm glad I get to play a broader role now. Yes, and I just think that the work that we do, so I work for an organization that is a nonprofit, affordable housing so our primary work is in providing housing stability for families with a ton of wraparound services. So education, health, financial wellness, all those programs are part of what we do. And really just the work in out-of-school time is just really invaluable. It really helps to bridge a gap for a lot of our students who may have working families or may come from families who speak a different language at home. The out-of-school time programs are really beneficial for kids who need a place to go after school and be safe but also get enriching experiences, get help with academics, get mentorship from people who look like them, who maybe speak their language or came from communities that are similar to theirs. So it's just--I just stumbled into it.
Georgia Hall:
This is an amazing trajectory that you have been on coming out of that first experience based on your mother's advice.
Marisela Montoya:
She's gonna love to hear that, too. I told her I gave a shout out to her, and she was really pleased. But really it was just advice. It was just a part-time job I was looking for in the afternoon, and I had no idea what a building monitor was. I would unlock the doors for violin instructors or take tuition for childcare, but I just really started really enjoying the work and the interaction with the students. It was really something that was just a very rewarding experience and something that I've continued to feel rewarded doing.
Georgia Hall:
And speaking to that, you obviously have this long experience now in out-of-school time, youth development field, and I wanna ask you just to share the last part of your essay Sweet Spot also which is because of the fact that you came to the field unexpectedly and you stayed. And sort of now some of the things that have have happened as you've had this longevity in the field and ask you to just please share that last part of your essay too Sweet Spot.
Marisela Montoya:
From time to time I run into former students with whom I have worked. I don't know why I'm surprised that they are all grown up. Somehow I still picture them as the little third graders I had in my afterschool program a long time ago. Many of them now have careers and families of their own, but even though they are all grown up, they usually still refer to me as Miss Marisela. I am humbled that when they hit significant milestones in their lives, they still wanna share them with Miss Marisela, including invitations to their high school or college graduations, weddings, or the birth of children. These moments show me that the afterschool program meant something to them. My career in the OST field was not what I had planned for my life, whether it found me or I found it, but I can surely say that I'm happy and proud of it. I am fortunate that I found my sweet spot.
Georgia Hall:
Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Marisela.
Marisela Montoya:
Thank you.
Georgia Hall:
And I wanna turn to Kourtney now who, similar to Marisela, I think it was an unexpected beginning in work in the out-of-school time/youth development field. And Kourtney, I wanted to ask you, your essay is titled Investing in Communities of Color, and I want to ask you to share the beginning of your essay also with us.
Kourtney Andrada:
Great, thank you Georgia. And Marisela, it's great to hear your story, and there are so many parallels. My first work experience with youth was in college working in a migrant farm worker community advising youth who would be first generation college students. While I was doing that, I saw that the local high school was hiring for a part-time track coach, and since I had run track in college, I applied for the position. The school community was starkly different from the farm worker community, and I felt conflicted but wasn't able to put words or identify exactly what I was feeling. That was my first experience working in a community that didn't feel familiar. I finished the season and supported my students, but could not fully explain why I didn't feel as invested in that work as I did when I was in my advisor position.
Georgia Hall:
So Kourtney, you have these sort of two beginning experiences that are similar in terms of they're both working with youth and in out-of-school sort of experiences, etc., and yet they feel so starkly different to you. And I know that you write later on about having this really significant sort of fellowship experience that maybe that is what helps then put all those things together for you or make those connections it sounds like a little bit. I wondered if you could first sort of tell us about your work now in OST and then tell us about that fellowship experience that you had that you write about in the essay too.
Kourtney Andrada:
So currently as the senior director of school-based programs, I oversee all of our city, state, and federally-funded programs that are based in the schools in Oakland, California specifically. And so I run programs that are K-12 and after school that are both gender-specific and gender-responsive programming. And so the fellowship, I was I would say middle management
Georgia Hall:
So you had this fellowship experience building on some years that you had already invested in doing out-of-school, afterschool, etc. kind of work. And so a light bulb sort of went on in terms of knowing a different approach and knowing a different way. And you talk about really supporting the community around you and how to best support other professionals, etc. And I wonder, so what sort of approach do you take because we're talking about what professional development really should be for people working in this field and how did that fellowship experience change the approach that you have in the ways that you support the professionals that you work with?
Kourtney Andrada:
Yeah, and I like that you said a light bulb came on. I think it's almost like the sun came out. It was such a big shift in my work. And I think the biggest thing, so being raised with three sisters by a single mom and then working for a feminist organization, sisterhood and seeing women grow and develop and be successful was always important to me. But to be in this year-long cohort with 14 women of color magnified that and intensified that, and I realized how I had been navigating the system previously was, I'm gonna make sure the people I'm supporting and supervising live up to this expectation and learn how to navigate this system that was not made for them. And after this fellowship, my perspective shifted to I'm going to change the system so that people of color and women of color can be successful, and they don't have to change who they are. They don't have to transform and conform, but they can navigate the system because it's created in a way and shaped and designed in a way for them to be successful.
Georgia Hall:
This is such an important and valuable approach and just critical to the preparation and the best ways to support communities and professionals working in the field. I wondered, Kourtney, if you would share the last part of your essay, which sort of brings together this idea of and your personal investment and your personal desire to support the community around you, etc.
Kourtney Andrada:
Coming into OST as a college advisor when I was younger, I thought I would do this job for one year before I went to graduate school. But it turned out that it was the beginning of the building of the foundation of my career as a youth development professional. I have become totally committed to serving historically marginalized, low income communities of color and providing growth opportunities for the adults in the field, specifically those who reflect the community that I both came from and serve. I'm not sure how much I believe in fate, but I do know that youth work--and more specifically OST--is the field that made the most sense for me and what I have to offer the world.
Georgia Hall:
Thank you Marisela and Kourtney for sharing your essays, your stories, and your voices. The book, The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field, is now available. You can access information on it at our website at www.niost.org. I thank you for joining us for this discussion today, and I hope you'll be able to join some of our future podcasts that we'll be doing on the additional chapters and essays in the book. I'm Georgia Hall at the National Institute on Out-of-School Time, and I wish you well.