Browsing by Author "Tzenis, Joanna"

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11
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    4-H Campus Immersion Impact Report: Imagining Futures in Higher Education
    (University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development, 2016-09) Tzenis, Joanna
    Results of this report indicate how participation in the 2016 4-H Campus Immersion Experience has impacted members - particularly how it has impacted their abilities to prepare for a future that includes higher education.
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    Contradictions of Belonging: The Educational Aspirations and Agency of Youth in the Somali Diaspora
    (2018-06) Tzenis, Joanna
    Many young people turn to education as a way to achieve what they hope their lives will be like in the future. This qualitative longitudinal study drew on the capabilities approach and the concept of habitus to understand the ways in which American youth in the Somali diaspora described their educational aspirations and how they exercised their abilities to achieve them. My findings show that youth in the Somali diaspora had aspirations that were influenced by their parents’ pasts as Somali refugees. Many aspired to be doctors so that they might one day be of service to people living in Somalia and so that they would earn enough to care for family members. Aspirations changed (and became more open-ended) through time among the high school youth as they began to more deeply engage in new social fields, like school. My findings also show that youth enacted agency by navigating contradictions they encountered in different social fields. Being Somali (and Muslim) made them targets for discrimination, but also offered them security and strategies to do well in school. Youth navigated a concomitant sense of belonging and isolation in the diaspora—where their biggest social supports, their parents and other diasporic resources, also prompted them to self-exclude from activities outside of the diaspora.
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    Episode 45: Community Engaged Research with Youth of Somali Heritage
    (2019-10-24) Robideau, Kari; Tzenis, Joanna
    What does it mean to be a community-engaged researcher and what benefits does it have for programming in diverse areas? In this podcast, Joanna shares her experience with engaging parents and youth of Somali heritage in community focused research. She shares three key points that will help others be successful in this work: 1. Collaborate with stakeholders 2. Learn alongside the community 3. Ensure reciprocity
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    Episode 9: We can prepare youth for college, but not in the way you think!
    (2017-03-20) Robideau, Kari; Tzenis, Joanna
    "College prep" programs make an effort to instill in youth the desire to go to college and the hard skills to qualify, but it's not enough. They leave out something important - the young person, so many marginalized young people are still not ending up with degrees. Joanna discusses ways they include research around aspirations, future orientation, and social inequalities into the 4-H campus immersion program design.
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    The Minnesota Children, Youth and Families At Risk Project: Impact Report 2009
    (University of Minnesota Extension, 2009) Skuza, Jennifer; Tzenis, Joanna; Sheldon, Timothy
    The Minnesota CYFAR Sustainable Communities Project is focused on strengthening the ability of middle school aged youth to set and achieve short and long-term educational goals by using an innovative and organic afterschool program model that is highly experiential. The aim of the program is to help youth own their learning by igniting their interest in education and to work with parents and guardians to support them in their role as their child's first educator. This impact report describes the program model and the educational resources we used to develop it. It also highlights some of the promising early results, along with the resources developed during the project’s first year. There are also find descriptions of the communities, youth, and parents this project serves.
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    The Minnesota Children, Youth, and Familes at Risk Project: Impact Report 2010
    (Regents of the University of Minnesota, 2010) Skuza, Jennifer; Sheldon, Timothy; Sheehan, Trish; Tzenis, Joanna
    The Minnesota CYFAR Sustainable Communities Project is focused on strengthening the ability of middle school aged youth to set and achieve short and long-term educational goals by using an innovative and organic afterschool program model that is highly experiential. The aim of the program is to help youth own their learning by igniting their interest in education to to work with parents and guardians to support them in their role as their child's first educator. This reports features the impact from the second year of the project whereby sixty-nine youth and seventy-one parents and guardians participated.
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    The Minnesota Children, Youth, and Families at Risk Project: Impact Report 2011
    (University of Minnesota Extension, 2011) Skuza, Jennifer; Tzenis, Joanna; Sheldon, Timothy; Pierson Russo, Jessica
    The Minnesota CYFAR Sustainable Communities Project is focused on strengthening the ability of middle school aged youth to set and achieve short and long-term educational goals by using an innovative and organic afterschool program model that is highly experiential. The aim of the program is to help youth own their learning by igniting their interest in education to to work with parents and guardians to support them in their role as their child's first educator. This reports presents the evaluation results and demonstrates the impact that the Minnesota CYFAR Sustainable Communities Project has had on youth participants during its third year.
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    The Pathways Project/Proyecto Caminos: Youth, Programs & Parents
    (St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota Extension Service, 2011-10) Walker, Kate; Landrieu, Josey; Tzenis, Joanna
    The Pathways Project/ProyectoCaminos is a collaborative research project between theUniversity of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development andthe University of Illinois.The goal of the study is to understand how young people develop real world skills in youth programs, how these skills transfer to other parts of their lives, and how culture comes into play (Latino youth make up half of our sample). It relies on questionnaires, interviews and observations to follow high school aged youth, their parents and the staff from 12 programs. This poster describes the overall study and presents preliminary findings from the pilot study.
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    Rethinking Program Sustainability: A Look at the Minnesota Center for Youth Development’s Children Youth and Families At Risk Project
    (University of Minnesota Extension, 2014-10) Tzenis, Joanna; Skuza, Jennifer
    Grants offer exciting new resources and opportunities to Extension programs and the communities in which they take place. Sustainability must be prioritized in the program design and development of the grant-funded project or it runs the risk of garnering resentment and disappointment within communities. The Extension Center for Youth Development Children, Youth and Families At Risk (CYFAR) team recently successfully completed a five-year sustainable communities project (2008-2013)* The CYFAR team established eight youth programs for middle school aged youth and their parents or guardians of diverse backgrounds living in low income households. The youth and adults were from ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds. By using Mancini and Marek‘s (2004) program theory of sustainability, the poster presentation will demonstrate the ways in which the Minnesota CYFAR project successfully sustained the benefits of the project past the life-cycle of the grant while making the argument that the securement of more funds is not the sole means of achieving sustainability. Relying on program observation, the program logic model and a review of program records, the poster will highlight programmatic examples of Mancini and Marek‘s seven elements of sustainability. While the eight CYFAR youth programs do not operate exactly as they did during the funding cycle, the team‘s implementation of Mancini and Marek‘s program theory enabled the benefits to the community to be sustained. (Reference :Mancini, J.A. & Marek, L.I. (2004). Sustaining community-based programs for families: Conceptualization and measurement. Family Relations. 53 (4), 339-347.)
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    Youth-Led Research: Middle and High School Youth Narratives on the Impact of COVID-19
    (2024-03) Atugonza, Vianney; Dworkin, Jodi; Tzenis, Joanna; Horn, Stacey
    The COVID-19 pandemic impacted how schools operate; in 2020, most schools across the U.S. experienced closures and a transition to remote learning. Families were forced to transform their homes into classrooms while facing many challenges, including lack of space, poor internet, reduced income, and physical and mental health challenges. To better understand how young people experienced these changes, a youth participatory action research project was employed to allow young people to name, explore, and share their experiences during this time. Nine high school students were trained as researchers to conduct interviews with their peers. Interviews were conducted with 36 middle and high school students from one suburban school district in Minnesota. Data were coded into five themes: mental health, changes in priorities or goals, youth voice/youth engagement, family/home and school intersection, and disruptions. This study reveals young people’s narratives on the impact of COVID-19 on their family and school lives – both the challenges and opportunities it created. Findings also reveal how a youth-led research approach can be used to explore issues that surround and affect young people.