Let's Talk About Sex Ed and Educational Equity for Youth with Laurie Ross
This week on Public Hearing, Josh dives into topics surrounding youth justice, comprehensive sex ed, and achieving equitable outcomes for youth with Dr. Laurie Ross from Clark University.
Listen to Public Hearing wherever you get your podcasts and on WICN 90.5FM, Worcester’s NPR affiliate station. And, while we celebrate women all year round, our guests for the month of March are all women who live, influence, and/or impact the City of Worcester, MA. Learn more about our show at PublicHearing.co
Transcript for this episode
Joshua Croke (00:03):
Hello Worcester and the world. This is your host, Joshua Croke. Public Hearing is a show about cities, communities and designing equitable and just futures. We talk with members of the Worcester community, residents, artists, public servants, small business owners, local activists, and politicians about inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous growth. Today, we're talking with Dr. Laurie Ross from Clark University. And as you'll hear in a minute has a million other affiliations and project based work she does in our community. This is the Public Hearing podcast and radio show. Public Hearing is available wherever you listen to podcasts and on WICN 90.5 FM on Wednesdays at 6:00 PM. Worcester's only NPR affiliate station. Laurie, thank you so much for coming on the show. We always start the show, asking our guests to share some background about themselves. Anything that you want to, any affiliations that you want to bring in this space, anything about your background and experience, and also invite and encourage folx to share parts of their social location that they may feel comfortable sharing, which are social characteristics of one's identity that have been deemed to be important by society to bring additional context to our conversation today.
Joshua Croke (01:13):
Some of those might include social class, gender, race, and ethnicity, educational achievement, et cetera. Please share whatever you're comfortable sharing and would like to bring into this space. And thank you so much for joining me on Public Hearing today.
Laurie Ross (01:27):
Well, thank you so much. It's a, it's an honor to be here. Truly an honor. So yes, Laurie Ross. I have been in Worcester now for I guess it's my going to be my 30th college reunion year or something. So that means I've been here for like 34 years. That's crazy, so I came here to go to Clark and I just never left. And you know, in my time, and I guess I can kind of go through some of that in a bit, but who I am now is I am a full professor at Clark University. I teach in a master's program on community development and planning. I'm a mom, I've got two kids in the Worcester schools, a daughter at South High and a son at Sullivan. And I identify as a woman and white, and I recognize a lot of that privilege, you know, that comes from me having been a full professor and my race and class and gender identity as privileges I hold.
Laurie Ross (02:47):
Some of the other things that I do you know, for the last 20 years, I've coordinated something called the HOPE Coalition and hope stands for healthy options for prevention and education. It was an outgrowth of what used to be called Youth Net, and it's now called Youth Connect. And so I've had the honor to work with young people through the HOPE Coalition and spring, an embedded mental health model into the city, through the HOPE Coalition, as well as emphasizing youth worker professional education. We created a youth worker training Institute that has become a college course. So there's so many other things I work as the research partner to the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. And I guess we can get into more of those areas.
Joshua Croke (03:38):
Great. Yes, and, you and I have known each other now for a handful of years and recently started working more and more closely together with some of your work, as well as work with the Worcester Education Equity Round Table. And so both being so passionate about youth in education and like achievement and pathways to like joy and success for young people in our community. I'm really excited to, I'm always excited to have these conversations with you, cause I always feel like I take something away that helps inform the work that I do. And so I'm really excited to share our conversations and your voice with our listeners today. One of the things that I wanted to talk about a little bit is some of the work that you've done in the community around comprehensive sex ed and for listeners. The school committee recently approved the implementation of new comprehensive sex ed curriculum known as the three R's rights, respect, and responsibility.
Joshua Croke (04:43):
And this was a very long journey to get to this point. And before I hand it over to you, Laurie , to kind of talk a little bit about that work and, you know, getting us there, I'd like to just add for consideration of listeners who perked up at comprehensive sex ed, we're talking K to 12 education. So many people on the calls to the council over the past many weeks or the school committee were like, I don't want my kindergarten or first grade are learning about sex and it's, that's not what comprehensive sex is. It's about like the understanding of one's body who is allowed to, and not allowed to touch that body. Like there are so many elements and components that are so critical to the education that young people receive to minimize the risk of violence and you know, so many other like harms that can be caused at the hands of other folx in our community. So just want to add that as a obvious supporter of comprehensive sex ed here for folx consideration. But so Laurie, tell me about some of this journey, cause it's been a pretty long one.
Laurie Ross (05:57):
Yeah. If I were better prepared, I could tell you the year. But I think some people would say it's decades long. You know, I came into it maybe, I don't know, five years ago or so. But the Investing in Girls Alliance, which actually focuses on middle school aged girls had done a needs assessment. And one of the things that was one of the strongest findings of that and that assessment engaged youth, children, you know, young people, middle school, age kids, their families, youth workers, youth agencies, you know, it was a very broad cross section of the community. And, you know, young people, one of the primary concerns they had was about safe and supportive relationships. And so, and I'm glad you made the distinction. You know, it's not necessarily about sex. It's about relationships. It's about how to take care of yourself.
Laurie Ross (06:53):
It's about how to be safe. And so Investing in Girls was really, you know, focusing on girls and focusing on middle school and recognizing that comprehensive sexual health education was something that they were really happy to initiate, but it wasn't necessarily the focus of their alliance. And so from their work came the WISH Taskforce. The Daniels Foundation invested in it and Meredith Westby was a huge champion of this work. And so they brought together, they were able to bring together, you know, a cross sector coalition. And part of the initiative was around documentation and evaluation. And what's really important to understand is that WISH itself was not looking necessarily to reduce teen pregnancy or reduce sexually transmitted infections. It wasn't really about the outcomes in that way. It was really more about building Worcester's capacity to introduce comprehensive sexual health education. So really recognizing that there's a certain level of community education and readiness that's needed before introducing something like this. So alongside of that, of course, we were able to look at you know, Worcester’s kind of data and realizing that there really were some serious issues around high rates of teen pregnancy and high levels of STI’s, but that was not necessarily the thing that we were really trying to address. So I'll take a pause there.
Joshua Croke (08:32):
Yeah, no, I appreciate like the context and also, you know, with Public Hearing, the intent of the show is to think about how do we explore and implement compelling futures that are equitable and inclusive. Right. And I think setting the stage for members of the community to see how long some of these conversations have been going on and how critically important partnerships and relationships are to really moving this work forward. And I know from some of our past conversations and some of the work that we both do, it's almost like there are, I've so often like had ideas in the past of like, oh, why doesn't the city do this? And someone will tell me, actually, someone tried doing that five years ago or 10 years ago. And then these conversations, like keep coming back and kind of are being recycled and thinking about like, what are the progress steps that we're making as a community?
Joshua Croke (09:29):
So I appreciate the like frame of the who, what, when, where, why and how of, of this as well. And it's so critically important, you know, my own lived experience as a queer person growing up without really having comprehensive sex ed was you had to learn things out through either your friends or experimentation or the internet. And like that is a whole other component, which comprehensive sexual health curriculum includes now is the risks and dangers of the internet and like what is safe and what is not safe. And like really just how to build some, you know, intelligence and protection around how one engages with information on, you know, on the internet. And I think that's such a critically important piece of this, that I don't think many folx in the community based on me sitting on those multi hour long school committee discussions really focused on or highlighted.
Laurie Ross (10:35):
Yeah. I mean the level of community organizing that's needed to something like this, especially, you know,, when you're in a community that's kind of as diverse as Worcester is, there's so many different, you know, beliefs and value sets. It can be very frustrating to hear what sounds like harm being done to young people by denying them this kind of information, but you have to keep working through that process. And like, you know, like I said, there are brilliant advocates and activists in the community, some only very few of which you'll ever hear, but the level of strategy that goes into moving a campaign like this and making it successful, you know, was basically kind of the focus of the evaluation work was, you know, kind of documenting that process.
Laurie Ross (11:32):
I think the thing that we learned when we got with WISH to a certain point, 2 years ago, right. And in that we were on the verge of moving the curriculum, a different curriculum at that time, to the school committee. But we realized at that time that we had done a lot of work building community leadership, activating community leaders, engaging youth, engaging families, but we actually didn't bring the school committee along in that work. And so that was a major learning and a major focus and a major realization that, you know, that you can't take any stakeholder for granted in this kind of community change work. So yeah, the level of organizing and the length of time it takes to build the relationships is significant.
Joshua Croke (12:20):
And for something that is so important and literally affects like the health outcomes of young people, it is such an urgent matter, but urgency also has a timeframe for how people may have to for better, or for worse go about actually implementing that, you know, like, cause I've faced so many things that like, oh, this is so important, but it didn't get done overnight. And so now it has been like not forgotten about, but it's like, oh, that didn't work. And it's like, what are the steps that you can like, what's the foundation you can lay to really kind of create the stepping stones to achieve the vision, recognizing that there are going to be people who are anti this work. There are going to be people who don't understand this work. There's a level of education that needs to be provided to the leadership and the people who are making, trying to make informed decisions about these things. And so there's that like frustrating amount of time, as we know in organizing, which is a pretty obviously apparent with the sex ed conversation. Yeah.
Laurie Ross (13:32):
Yeah. I mean, you know, the thing that stays with me ever present, and I think you alluded to that is that like the kids, the youth, the students are only going to be their age for so long. Right? So every moment we delay is another set of young people who are being denied this information. And so that I think lends a level of urgency to the work and it keeps the people that are, you know, organizing and moving the work forward. You know, it keeps, I think it's the motivation and, you know, keeping your eye on young people and their wellbeing. And then, you know, it was really just a very multi-pronged kind of approach where we knew we needed to work with families and we needed to work with the organizations that those families trusted.
Laurie Ross (14:31):
So, you know, the Latino Education Institute was a really important partner when we're trying to work with the Latinx community. And they implement sexual health education. And so they were just natural partners in that. So that was a way to work with families and young people together. And they have a whole model recognizing you can't just focus on the children, you have to focus on their parents and bring them together as a unit. So that was like a huge learning for, I think that the group also engaging the religious community obviously there's an all, you know, religious affiliations they're not going to be able to accept this curriculum unfortunately. But many are. And so, you know, engaging with the religious community and having advocates and allies in that space is critically important.
Laurie Ross (15:29):
Having like the physicians, I think in a lot of ways, having the medical folx weigh in with some of the most compelling testimony, I think I heard in the WISH in the school committee meetings, because they could really talk about, you know, the devastating effects when young people don't have access to that information. And they were really able, I think, to talk about it in a way that there were, it wasn't really from a values place, you know, it wasn't from a political place. It was from a health place. And so I think that that was really compelling as well. Right.
Joshua Croke (16:08):
And, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine. Who's an educator the other day, like, or, you know, a few months back now, I think about the sex ed conversation. And, you know, he's an educator and now the principal of a school. And, you know, he, he talks a lot about the fact that like public education, like public services are to benefit community health, community improvement. It's like centered in community. So it's really challenging. I get heated in the conversation of like, oh, we don't want to allow our kids to learn this because we don't believe that they should learn it in this way. And it's like, unfortunately, there's so many stats and figures, and there's so much knowledge about the harms and the impact of like, not having access to this information and what that ends up being outcomes for, for young people.
Joshua Croke (17:00):
You know, and I'm always looking through things through my own lens because that's how we, you know, envision and see the world. And as like a non-binary and queer person who also runs Love Your Labels, an organization focused on LGBTQ+ youth, we know that like one in four young people now are identifying as queer in some capacity, and we still have so much suppression of identity. And just not even the vocabulary for young people going through those experiences to talk about because of how well silos can still kind of be maintained and like upheld. And like suicide rates are highest for LGBTQ folx, right. Especially LGBTQ youth. And we do a lot of conversation. We have a lot of conversations and have started hosting trainings as an organization that talk about some of the statistics around like LGBTQ, like sexual health and, you know, really just accepting and embracing one's identity.
Joshua Croke (18:06):
And the figure that stands out to me the most, and this is slightly tangential to this conversation, but, and this is the other thing that we'll talk about today, I think is like the intersections of our work and how different aspects of our work are informed by other things that we do. Like right now, we're talking about youth health and there's an obvious and intersecting tie to the youth violence work that we are involved with. And like the equity and education work and how all of this links. But, the one stat that we use that really like shook me when I heard it was from a study that the Trevor Project did. And it was just one affirming adult in the life of an LGBTQ child reduces their likelihood of attempting suicide by 40%. 40%, just one single adult that looks at a queer kid and says, you're valid, you're loved that saves lives. Right. And it seems like, so this simple thing, but so many young people still face this like marginalization and like see a visible erasure of their identity. And they see that play out in schools. When, you know, they're not talked about in health class their experience is, you know, not considered or not presented as something that should be discussed because it doesn't matter. And like, that's what, you know, we do in like the focus of that work. So I'll step off my soapbox now.
Laurie Ross (19:38):
No, I mean, you know, it's one of the things that was one of the primary criteria for WISH was that the curriculum be LGBTQ inclusive for exactly the reasons and actually got me a little teary, just hearing you and like how powerful that is, you know, when you think about like young people receiving this information in schools, from health teachers who hopefully they have a caring relationship with, you know, but that if a health curriculum is institutionalized, that means that means that the institution sees all young people, right. And the folx that were in opposition to the three R’s part of their opposition was because they only recognize heterosexual relationships. And, just looking at the backgrounds of some of the folx that were in opposition, it's like what they support is kind of anti-human beings.
Laurie Ross (20:31):
And it's very painful to see that, you know, when something like this, we are based in love, like young people helped create it. There was a youth advisory group that was part of the creation, you know? And so, and then the words right? Respectfully, you know, it's like, who wouldn't want their children to be in that situation. So I'm glad you raised that. I, you know, it was one of the most important things for the WISH taskforce, that'd be LGBTQ inclusive. And if in that there were curriculum we wouldn't look at because they weren't
Joshua Croke (21:07):
Well, I so appreciate that. And I think the other thing that is, you know, it's great now that the school committee has approved the use of the three R’s. And now the question is how authentically is that going to be implemented? And are the teachers who are currently teaching the curriculum, going to receive the appropriate training to be able to implement this. And for listeners, just as an FYI, the three R’s is a publicly accessible free curriculum. You can go on the internet to the three R’s, download it, read through it, work through it with your kids. It's an incredible resource that also really builds that community relationship because the curriculum also says like, yes, there is a place in the classroom for these conversations, but it also should be kind of in partnership with parents and families on recognizing their role and the importance of that in the life of their kids as well. And so, yeah, so I think of another stat that comes to my mind of like 54% of LGBTQ students have reported hearing like homophobic or transphobic statements from teachers and staff. And so that's the other thing is like, what are the assessments and the criteria that we're going to hold ourselves accountable to, to ensure that the three R's are being implemented appropriately?
Laurie Ross (22:25):
Yeah. That's, I mean, the implementation is absolutely the next, no one, I don't think anyone who's deeply involved in it is taking their eye off of that, you know? And so we'll be planning on holding the administration accountable to the implementation. I think, you know, one encouraging piece is that some of the health teachers, when they were sort of putting their own thing together, drew from the three R’s, because it is accessible, you know, and so that they already had begun to actually incorporate the three R’s into some of their lessons. So hopefully that, you know, is an opening and it means that they're comfortable, you know, with the curriculum, but we will be watching.
Joshua Croke (23:04):
Great. I want to switch gears now and talk a little bit about the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. And we'd love for you to kind of set some some background for our listeners about that and talking about addressing youth success in our community, by removing barriers and, you know, instances of harm within our community and looking at how we're addressing systems level change as well as working directly with community to ensure that their voice leads the change behaviors that we're looking to see in our city.
Laurie Ross (23:45):
Oh, okay. So, one of the things I get to do in Worcester, I'm the research partner to something called the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. And that is an initiative that's co-chaired by the city manager and the mayor and that has a governance council that consists of the superintendent and the chief of police and the district attorney and you know, the Commissioner of Health and Human Services and other sector leaders. And I'm saying all that, just to say that there is high level city attention to this initiative. I also want to say right now at the outset, you know, and I'll get into the details is that we have absolutely recognized that viewing young people through the lens of violence is inherently limiting and is not really reflective of the experiences of young people in the city.
Laurie Ross (24:41):
You know our young people are healthy and resilient and they're not violent. Like that's just an it kind of limiting framework. But unfortunately you almost need to use some of those words to bring people to the table sometimes. And that was actually one of our experiences. Since we created the Youth Violence Initiative back in like 2015, we've actually evolved the initiative into a larger umbrella called the Governing Council on Children, Youth, and Families for exactly the reasons I just said. And that initiative also involves the Together for Kids Coalition, which is focusing on early childhood, you know, zero up to school age, because we forget in our community that kids start before they come to school. Right. So, you know, got to remember the babies and then also the Coalition for a Healthy, Greater Worcester.
Laurie Ross (25:36):
You know, when we think about the social determinants of health, the coalition really is looking at sort of that broad, comprehensive view and also has an equity lens. So the three initiatives go sort of fit together well, and there's a lot of complementarity. So what to say one of the things that, as the research partner we're responsible for is every few years we do an assessment of the causes of violence in the city where we're now working on our third one. And that process has really evolved over time as well. And you know, in the first round, we were very much connected to something called the comprehensive gang model. I think, which, you know, helps you see like probably framed kind of a deficit orientation, which is embarrassing for me to say, but it's true.
Laurie Ross (26:33):
You know, and so but it did help us eliminate certain factors that are drivers of violence in the city. When we moved into the second assessment, we were recognizing that some of the indicators were improving, but that inequity not only, you know, maintained, but even intensified. And so then when we went into the third iteration, which we're doing right now, we kind of said to ourselves if we do the same thing, expecting something different than that, you know, that's like the Einstein definition of insanity. And so this year what we've done is a couple of things differently. One is involving a group of community collaborators in all aspects of the assessment and probably never as deeply as we'd want to, but you know, more deeply than we ever have. And another transformative aspect actually, Josh is working with you. You know, I think that doing the workshops with you and working particularly the first one that we had with the collaborators I think disrupted the process pretty fundamentally and had us really focusing on questions that we probably would not have centered, which had to do with, you know, in what ways do legacies of community harm, maintain a status quo that in turn, then increases inequity in the community. And so we're really grappling with questions that we had not considered initially. And so having these kinds of disrupting conversations are really important.
Joshua Croke (28:14):
Definitely. Yeah. And you know, so much, and this kind of goes back to my earlier point of like how these various experiences that we have in different spaces inform the different parts of our work and really looking at youth success. You know, again, like talking about it from a very asset based way of like appreciating and valuing the tools and the resilience and all of the capacities and capabilities of our young people in the face of adversity and harm and oppression and all of these things that, you know, we, as the societal, we, right, the collective, we have designed barriers that need to be addressed, dismantled, rebuilt, re-imagined. And so that work has been really, really powerful. And I, you know, now doing so much facilitation work and really looking at the process of community engagement from a very equity centered way is centered in hearing the voices of those most impacted.
Joshua Croke (29:27):
And I believe the only, truly authentic way that you can have those conversations in a truly honest and growth enabling way is by addressing harm and healing at the front. Right? Cause like we've experienced this in workshops that we've run in other spaces is people are tired of being asked again and again and again, to give of themselves to share their stories, to share their traumas and then not seeing change happen. So like what level of accountability is necessary to build back bridges or even establish new relationships and new, like trusting dialogue within the community that says like systems of power imbalance have been able to bring us to the table, you know, throw some pizza out and say, tell us about your traumas. And then what's the next step? Like what is moving? You know, what is moving? What is the value of my voice in this space, if not to like move forward progress.
Laurie Ross (30:41):
Yeah. I mean, you know, it makes me think a little bit about back to the WISH conversation, but like, what is the process of readying, you know, community leaders, not just to hear stories that move them for a moment, but to be able to like act on those stories. Right. And so like this question of proximity has been a major one in this work and that, you know, understanding that people who are closest to to violence either because they were a victim or, you know, a family member who is a victim, or were themselves a perpetrator or connected to perpetrators, or are, you know, witnesses in some way, you know, that that proximity creates urgency and proximity also can create the deepest disengagement, right. If you're so close and nothing happens and you can disconnect from that. And so like it's honoring the late, like this idea of like there's layers of proximity.
Laurie Ross (31:45):
And how do you create proximity among people who don't live with something 24 seven so that they feel it the same way that folx who are living with it 24 seven, feel it, if that makes any sense. And so that I think has been the biggest challenge is how do we keep the focus on the issue with a level of urgency and that decision-makers feel like it is something that they can impact. You know, when we start getting into these really complex problems that have been there for a long time, it's like, that's really hard. I feel what you're saying, but I can't do anything easily. And so I'm going to shift over here, you know, to maybe something that's easier for me to do. And, and so that it's like, how do we build that same kind of capacity that maybe that was built around WISH to help with, to move this kind of work forward as well?
Joshua Croke (32:41):
Well, and addressing like the power differential is also a conversation around who is making decisions and what leadership looks like, you know, and I love, and I know we have a shared appreciation for Adrian Marie Brown's Emergent Strategy. It's essentially, it's like the book that I like hand out to people and say like, read this. And like, my copy is all marked up with highlights and circles and ideas and things like that. But she presents the concept of feminine leadership and not so specifically female leaders, but thinking differently about how leadership is looked at and held and maintained within a group or a society. And the thing that really resonates with me there is like looking at humility in leadership and not looking at one, I have to have all the answers or appear to have all the answers to like, I need to make definite decisions and hold that ground so firmly because showing anything else might be considered weakness.
Joshua Croke (33:47):
Right. And I think humility of leadership is one of, or the lack of humility of leadership is one of the biggest challenges that I believe that we face because when you talk about proximity and like the closeness to a challenge, we know from conversations with people experiencing these harms, what they're saying that they need and what their communities need, and then that has not been good enough, right. There needs to not just be, this is what I need. There needs to be like the, why the, what, the, how the description of here's the backstory to sell leaders on making a decision instead of really looking at, okay, this is what we're being told by multiple people in the community let's allow them to lead. Let's let them make the decisions. And as leaders and as decision-makers, our role is to facilitate change and facilitate growth by like trusting and believing the people within our spaces.
Laurie Ross (34:51):
Yeah. That is the vision. I, you know, one of the moves that I think that's being made in that Youth Violence Initiative is to some degree that shift from kind of the formal leadership being at the table to community being the table. And which does not mean that we do not need our leaders. And we know that many of our leaders, I mean, for a variety of reasons, want to reduce harm that young people are feeling. It's not that they don't see that the issue is urgent or anything like that. But it's a bit of trying to hold onto the table too. And if we let kind of community be the table and then the role of leadership is to enact the community vision. You know, I have a sense on a hunch that some of the equity issues we would begin to see change and we would see reductions in an equity.
Joshua Croke (35:59):
And I found it hopeful that the city manager this year is looking at removing school resource officers. So for listeners, police in schools, from, you know, from schools and really looking at and addressing like disciplinary action within school environments differently, because one of the big projects that I'm working on right now is looking at how to reduce the number of young people placed in juvenile detention and the organization JDAI that you're familiar with, that I'm working with has had incredible success over the past 10 years. When you look at the percentage drop, right in the past 10 years, their work has helped to facilitate a drop of 71% in the number of young people who are placed in detention. However, when you expand that and look at the racial and ethnic disparity in that data, it went down 74% for white kids. It went down 54% for black kids and 32% for Latino kids in our community.
Joshua Croke (37:08):
And when we look at the detention numbers, there's also the clear and present, like, if you lay the data on top of each other, it looks like so obvious as a feeder to juvenile detention is how young people are being disciplined and treated in schools. And, you know, so we talk a lot about the school to prison pipeline. And the work that I've been doing with JDAI has led to primarily focusing on school to prison as the next disrupting opportunity for their work to be more equitable, as well as solve for some of the, you know, the pipeline of getting kids from literally from school to prison.
Joshua Croke (37:55):
And so with that, I guess, so we have a handful of minutes left here, and I'm interested about considering your experience and the number of tables that you have the opportunity to sit at, for folx in the community interested in becoming more involved in, like, thinking about this work. Like, how has your, identified at the kind of the front of our conversation, like the privileges that we hold, recognizing the placement that you have in community, how do you balance and prioritize what you're able to do and what you're focused within, you know, these conversations within this change based work?
Laurie Ross (38:44):
One question I think that I'm trying to hold onto, and it definitely is one in the consideration of the removal of the school resource officers from the schools. And that's the question of what does it mean to be safe? And I think that what I try to hold onto is, and I do the same thing at Clark right now with some of the conversations we're having around campus safety is who feels least safe in the spaces that we occupy and what could we do to make those of us who feel the least safe as safe as anyone else. Right. And so if we center that conversation, like there are lots of young people who like the police officer who's in their school, it's, they'd find them friendly and nice. And, you know, and I'm sure that they are nice people, but when we think about the people in our schools who feel the least safe, and then that, how does that correlate to the other things that you just said, right?
Laurie Ross (39:38):
Like, they may be more disengaged. They may be less engaged in their academics. If we center, how the young people that feel the least safe and wonder how do they see having police officers in their school? That's the kind of question I would I want to, and want others to think about what would it take for the young people who feel the least safe to feel the most safe that, you know, we've had folx like, you know, conversations with young people around this assessment. And these questions of safety are so prominent. Like some of the young guys we talked to, they're like, it's too long of a conversation to get into right now. But, if they were to design a place that they feel safe, there would be outdoor recreation space, but it would be behind the building because they're too scared to be seen out front. They're afraid of what will happen. Right. So we really need to think about young people's fear. What and who doesn't feel safe and what would make them feel safe when we make some of the decisions that we're making. So I don't know if that answered the question, but that's what came to mind.
Joshua Croke (40:45):
And I hear that. And I think what jumps into my mind is also like designing space. Right. And thinking about, you know, as a designer, I often find myself answering questions when I, when folx are like, oh, what do you do? And I have always had difficulty kind of synthesizing that until more recently, like, because I've really kind of embraced my role as like a facilitator and the value that that provides by just making conversation easier. And really like being informed from like an equity centered frame, but as a background in design, I think people are like, oh, so you like are an artist, or like you make logos. Like, you know, that's what so many people think about design. And I really look at design actually, IBM has a famous quote, that “design is the intention behind an outcome.”
Joshua Croke (41:43):
And there's creative reaction lab, which I believe is based in Minneapolis, has adjusted the definition slightly to say, “design is the intention and unintended impact of an outcome,” right? Like the intention behind an outcome, but also recognizing that there is an impact that's had, that might not be what was intended in the initial design. So I'm always looking at how do we manage, measure and like, address the impact that's being had. Right. And so that was a long-winded way of saying like youth to our earlier point are aging up constantly. Right. And we don't allow youth voices to lead in the ways that I feel like they truly have the capacity to lead. And, you know, from the physical built environment, you know, your example of putting the recreational facilities behind the building is a great example of like what can come out of really engaging the people who are living this now. Cause I feel like so many people in this work and I'm guilty of this myself, is like when I was in school, you know, like, and I think back to like my experience, cause it's what I, you know, I'm able to draw from, but that's, you know, decades ago. Right. So how do we like actually go to like young people and allow them to lead and make decisions about even things like, how do we want to design learning experiences, right. Like why don't classrooms look different than they did a hundred years ago?
Laurie Ross (43:22):
A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I want to say not that I want young people to feel like they need to be behind. It was really more that the issue of young people want to play, they don't feel safe in certain places. And so when we have to, as a community, think about that, what does it mean if young people are not feeling safe and what are all the spaces around that we need? You know, how do we infuse, what will make them safe in all the spaces that they're in? So it just kind of, it's like, anyway, yeah. That was really very powerful to hear.
Joshua Croke (44:01):
Absolutely. And so in your work, where do you, where do you start? You know, and I know that's a very big and open ended question, but I have heard from folx who have like replied to the show or that I've just had a conversation, they're like, oh, the work and the things that you talk about are so great but they're so like complex and like there's so much so like, you know, that's the work for other people. Cause like, I don't know too much. So like I want to get more involved, but I like don't know where to start. Like how do you encourage folx? Or how do you think about where to start?
Laurie Ross (44:40):
Yeah. I think for me, the where to start is being like being genuinely a learner and being curious about something and then finding the place where you can learn what people are doing and what they're doing and and then keep showing up in those spaces. And then when those groups need something, volunteer to do it, if it's something you can do and then do it and show that you're accountable and that you'll keep being asked to do more and more. Right. So it's, it's entering a space with humility. It's just like what you said before entering a space with humility, coming in with curiosity, wanting to learn, wanting to know what is happening, getting involved, showing up, being consistent and doing what it is you say that, you know you're going to do.
Joshua Croke (45:36):
Absolutely. No, that's great advice. Thank you, Laurie. Anything, anything else that we should be talking about that we haven't yet?
Laurie Ross (45:45):
Probably like a million things, but, I don't know what else, what else to talk about right now?
Joshua Croke (45:56):
So what are some of the upcoming things that like either you're excited about or involved in that you think folx in the city should, should be aware of?
Laurie Ross (46:05):
I mean, I am really excited about having some community conversations about the results of the assessment we're doing for the Youth Violence Initiative. Also, you know, to give a shout out to the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester, but I'm really excited for the new CHIP, the new Community Health Improvement Plan, the process, again, like to what you said about design. Like, I mean, the process was really different this year involved really non traditional community leaders like real intentionality was used to identify people with lived experience in different areas to convene groups of their people, you know, like their people to really talk about health and equity. And as a result, the new CHIP looks completely different than it ever has. And, you know, so we'll be looking to see, does that make a difference in health equity in our community? So that's something I'm really looking forward to as well.
Joshua Croke (47:06):
Yeah, I'm so, one of the things that I've tried to like grapple with right now and really try and do my part to kind of influence within the city is thinking about how do we not only continue to collect this information and engage community in a different way, but how can we build a center of gravity around that so that we have an accessible, localized, or like centralized knowledge share resource that has this data that has this information. And, you know, again, in my work and working at the Venn diagram, parts of systems and different, you know, initiatives within the community. And I always look at, oh, how could we potentially find opportunities within data, looking at the community health data, and then looking at like our transit system and looking at like to identify and find opportunities that could really like lead to beneficial and impactful work.
Laurie Ross (48:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the interesting things I think that came out of you know, with the pandemic it has been some more spaces where some of the higher ed partners are coming together and, you know, a lot of it came together because of Worcester Together and the youth group. And then there was a kind of a higher ed group that came out of the youth group. And we created the college core, which is supporting Woo Labs. You know, like the connections are endless. We need a visual diagram for all of that. But in the conversations about with, among some of the higher ed partners, there's this platform called the Collaboratory. And it was built really more for individual universities to like, be able to not just to inventory knowledge at knowledge creation, but like foster collaboration between community and the university and among researchers within a university, but as a result of this kind of space that we have been working on with the college core, we're thinking like, how can we have a Worcester wide collaboratory? And dlike, so many of these questions are where should it sit? You know, should it sit in higher ed, should it sit in the community? So I think that to avoid community fatigue, some of the stuff we talked about before, like asking the same questions over and over again, and producing reports, nothing happening, like how do we really build like a knowledge base to help answer some of the critical questions and move some of this work forward? Yeah.
Joshua Croke (49:49):
One of the things that, again, that I've talked about for many years, looking at really just being passionate about community-based innovation and, you know leveraging the intellectual capital and talent that we have within our city is how do we create that knowledge resource? And then also connect to the colleges and universities, and really provide pathways for students to work with data that is actionable. You know, I remember when I was you know, I went to an assortment of colleges before I ended up graduating from WPI. And I would remember early on in my college career, I struggled doing some projects because I was like, this is simply for this project. Like, yes, am I learning? Yes, but we're using data from 40 years ago, you know, like why couldn't we be using actionable, like real world data? And if we happen to find something that could make a strong benefit in the community, great. If not, I still had that learning experience, but could we create these pathways for students to be working on? And I know that you and Clark are a really great example of some of that, like creating, you know, getting students into the community to address you know, address what's going on and like providing those opportunities for learning as well as benefit to the community.
Laurie Ross (51:16):
Yeah. And I mean, I think the reciprocal aspect, so, you know, with the college core, we've developed this training for students that's cross university, right. So WPI has been involved. Holy cross, Worcester State, you know, to build sort of a training program or professional development program for students before they engage so that they can really understand Worcester and see Worcester as not a place for them to save or to fix. But to that there's so much happening here and they can learn by getting involved. Right. And so, you know, this training does kind of a Worcester 101 and it, you know, introduces sort of some of the cultural aspects of the city and some of the population aspects. And then the second module is on health equity and anti-racist community engagement practices. And the third module is on ethical community engagement. And so really, you know, yes, our students are a great resource and they also can come into the space, not really understanding, you know, again, humility, not necessarily understanding Worcester or what's already happening here. So I don't know, it'd be cool. Maybe we should work on this collaboratory type of project. I know that's been an interest of yours.
Joshua Croke (52:34):
Yes. And actually I've been having recent conversations again about wanting to bring it back. And it's my like extra extracurricular time right now. But I just see so much value and opportunity at really harnessing that collective power and, you know, that's my whole thing, right? Collective power building, you know building that emergent force within the community. But Laurie, thank you so much. We could talk for days but really value you in the work that you're doing in the community and appreciate you taking the time to chat with us on Public Hearing.
Laurie Ross (53:12):
Thank you so much. I very much appreciate being in conversation with you. So thank you
Joshua Croke (53:21):
Earlier in the show, I mentioned to Laurie, my nonprofit work that I do with Love Your Labels, where an organization focused on supporting LGBTQ+ youth and have recently created a training for schools and communities about supporting LGBTQIA+ youth. This includes conversations about identity, the terms, the letters in LGBTQ+, and more information about supporting young people and creating pathways for success. If you're interested, reach out to me at josh@loveyourlabels.org. Thank you for listening to Public Hearing, our podcast and radio show that airs Wednesdays at 6:00 PM on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester’s only NPR affiliate station. If you're not in the central Mass radio range, you can tune in live via their website at wicn.org. Or you can listen to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you so much to Laurie Ross for joining us today. I always really value and appreciate our conversations. My name is Joshua Croke and this has been the Public Hearing podcast.
Joshua Croke (54:26):
Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! by Design. We're a design studio that facilitates community engagement and social change innovation and provides equity centered design branding and storytelling services. You can learn more at actionbydesign.co. And I wanted to quickly say, as I talked about earlier with Laurie, that I have really become truly passionate about the art of facilitation. And that is a crucial component of what Action! by Design does. If you are looking for any type of workshop, facilitation, mediated discussion, or dialogue surrounding challenging topics, such as injustices in the juvenile detention system, let me know. our audio producer is Giuliana D'Orazio. Thank you to Eric Gratton and Molly Gammon and Shaun Chung, who also support the production of Public Hearing. Also, we love hearing from people about what you might want to hear on the show, or what resonated from a past episode, you can get in touch with us on our website at publichearing.com and as always, thanks for listening.
