By Dr. Robert Sege, 5/13/20, from positiveexperience.org/blog
Note: The image above was provided by Artists for Humanity, a nonprofit organization of teen artists and designers which HOPE is currently working with. This picture was taken before the Covid-19 pandemic, and we encourage social distancing/public health requirements.
It’s easy to focus on the negative now that we are two months into the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, we turn our attention to some of the Positive Childhood Experiences that form the basis of HOPE. This blog focuses on how adolescents and young adults across the country have demonstrated their engagement (engagement is one of the 4 Building Blocks of HOPE and has been discussed in a previous blog).
First of all, to state the obvious: teenagers and young adults have experienced massive disruptions in their lives. Students are no longer in school. Sports teams don’t practice or compete. Stores are closed, and after school jobs and activities vanished in days. Graduating college and high school students were hurried out of school, without the graduation ceremonies to mark their accomplishments.
Although rates of serious illness and death are extremely low in this age group, their social distancing and sheltering-in-place play an important role in making the world safer for all of society. There are many stories of teens and young adults accepting public health requirements like social distancing and other safety measures, with remarkably little griping considering the circumstances. Here are a couple of examples of students still learning, even though schools are shut and they are staying at home: these high school journalists are still putting out news, and the Boston Globe wrote about these students working hard to get into Boston Latin, a public exam school. We think that many others have figured out how to keep their educations on track, although many face economic and infrastructural inequities that make this difficult.
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