Kaitlynn Weaver found her niche in Child & Youth Studies

caroline.zentner — Wed, 29 May 2019 21:53:55 +0000

When Kaitlynn Weaver (BA ’16) walks across the stage to receive her Master of Arts, she’ll do so knowing she took every opportunity available to learn and develop as a person and as a scholar.

“What has made my master’s experience so great are the people I’ve met here and elsewhere and the opportunities I’ve been given,” she says. “My supervisor, Dr. Kristine Alexander, and my committee (Drs. Caroline Hodes, Jan Newberry and Amy von Heyking) actively sought opportunities for me in places I wouldn’t even have thought to look. The level of investment they had in me, my experiences, my ability to network, to gain confidence in myself, my research and my public speaking skills has been so valuable. The last three years have been so formative for me in ways that I can’t even explain.”

Originally from Rocky Mountain House, Weaver followed in her older sister, Sarah’s, footsteps in continuing her education at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge. Right from the start, Weaver felt at home at the U of L.

“I was able to shadow Sarah as a university student over my spring break in high school,” says Weaver. “I sat in on a philosophy and a sociology class. I was excited and engaged and the philosophy professor asked me questions in class and had me participate like I was a university student. That was really impactful and being here has been awesome.”

When she first arrived in 2012, Weaver studied New Media. As part of the U of L’s liberal education requirements, she also took a class in sociology.

“I really liked it and I liked the way they were talking about people’s identities and power structures, and I wanted to pursue it further,” she says. “I decided to switch my major to sociology and do a minor in Women & Gender Studies, which was a huge part of my university experience.”

As she was nearing the completion of her bachelor’s, Dr. Carol Williams (Women & Gender Studies) asked her if she was considering graduate school and told her that Alexander, who’s also a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Child and Youth Studies and director of the U of L’s Institute for Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS), was looking for graduate students.

Weaver knew she wanted to focus on youth during graduate school, as she had been a volunteer at the Boys & Girls Club of Lethbridge and District and had completed an independent study about youth unemployment with Dr. Muriel Mellow. She obtained a Canada Graduate Scholarship through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which later led to receiving a Michael Smith Foreign Studies Supplement Award.

“When I started my master’s, I was a graduate assistant for a project called Elders of the Future, which was a 10-year project on Blackfoot child-rearing practices in southern Alberta,” says Weaver. “I was asked to run children and youth programming to create photos and artworks for an eventual exhibit at Casa.”

The project, a collaboration between the Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society and I-CYS, celebrated the resiliency of local Blackfoot communities through their family and child-rearing practices. Weaver worked with children and youth at Opokaa’sin and helped organize events around the exhibit.

“I got to work with Blackfoot youth and children at Opokaa’sin and that’s not something I would have otherwise been able to do,” she says.

The foreign studies award allowed Weaver to spend three months studying at Rutgers ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ Camden in New Jersey, the first American institution to have a childhood studies department. Supervised by Dr. Lauren Silver, Weaver lived in Philadelphia, just across the Delaware River from the university, from January to April, 2018. She attended Silver’s classes and met other faculty members in the department.

“I grew more as a person and as a professional in those three months than I ever have in my life,” she says. “I was completely taken out of my comfort zone and immersed in a different lifestyle. I presented in a class, got to talk to every professor in the department and gained lifelong friendships.”

For her thesis, Weaver spoke to Faculty of Education alums, asking them to focus on their childhood experiences and their experiences being adults. Her thesis, titled “Growing the Finest Teachers Possible”: Theorizing how Young Teachers Challenge, (Re)produce, and are Subject to Discourses of Childhood, Adolescence, and Adulthood, examined the expectations of new teachers and the reality they found in the classroom.

“These teachers focused a lot on their own experience as educators and expected a lot more freedom and autonomy in their classrooms to “shape” the children they’re working with,” Weaver says. “They found out that actually, just because they’re adults and just because they’re educators, doesn’t give them complete freedom. The expectations of adulthood and the realities didn’t really match up.”

Now setting off on her life as a professional, Weaver continues to be involved with youth. She recently began employment with Family and Community Support Services (Barons-Eureka-Warner) and the Boys & Girls Club of Lethbridge and District.

“It’s a partnership position funded by the Government of Canada. It’s a full-time position and I work in southern Alberta rural communities and get youth from Grades 9 to 12 involved in volunteering and civic engagement in some way.”

Raising Spirit project receives Canada 150 grant

caroline.zentner — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 17:08:07 +0000

The Raising Spirit project by the Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Society, and supported by the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge’s Institute for Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS), has received a Canada 150 grant worth $10,000 that will allow it to undertake a series of workshops that will culminate in a public exhibit at Casa in September.

“The purpose of the exhibit is to showcase the creative work of southern Alberta Blackfoot children and youth,” says Dr. Erin Spring, a post-doctoral fellow with the I-CYS and Raising Spirit project manager. “They’re not only going to be creating the exhibit in terms of doing the art, they’re also going to be curating the exhibit. It’s going to feature their voices, their stories, their creative capacities.”

From left to right are Kaitlynn Weaver, Tesla Heavy Runner, Dr. Jan Newberry, Amy Mack, Taylor Little Mustache, Dr. Erin Spring and Hudson Eagle Bear.

The Canada 150 Grant, awarded by the Community Foundation of Lethbridge and Southwestern Alberta, is designed to encourage participation in Canada 150 activities and to inspire a deeper understanding of the people and places that shape the country. Raising Spirit is a project to help ensure Blackfoot history, language and values endure and help build future generations. The Canada 150 funding will be directed toward a series of art workshops for Blackfoot children and youth.

“It’s kind of a sub-project within Raising Spirit called Elders of the Future,” says Kaitlynn Weaver, a master’s student working with Dr. Kristine Alexander, a history professor and one of the principal investigators on the Raising Spirit project.

For older youth, Weaver organized a zine workshop that focused on art as a form of activism and resistance. Three- to six-year olds participated in a storytelling and art workshop. A collage-making workshop for older youth is scheduled for March and others will be held at Opokaa’sin, the U of L and Casa. As part of the curating exercise, youth will learn how to mat and frame a photo and how to create an exhibit.

“Our exhibit will mark the anniversary of Confederation by celebrating the resilience of Indigenous families and communities. It speaks to colonialism but also is a way of looking forward and talking about reconciliation, resurgence and resilience to show that their community is strong, that their culture is strong and that their people are strong,” says Spring.

During the exhibit, the digital library created from the Raising Spirit project will be launched to the public, along with a mobile application for the library. In addition to the materials generated from the Elders of the Future workshops, the library will contain photos from principal investigator Dr. Jan Newberry’s photo elicitation project and people’s responses to them, and storytelling sessions with elders and youth at Opokaa’sin.

Raising Spirit has been supported by funds from the Urban Aboriginal Knowledge Network, PolicyWise for Children and Families and the U of L Office of Research Services. Funding from the Summer Temporary Employment Program enabled the hiring of two Blackfoot high school students, Tesla Heavy Runner and Hudson Eagle Bear, as ethnographers and curators.

Along with Newberry and Alexander, Tanya Pace-Crosschild (BSc ’98), executive director at Opokaa’sin and member of the U of L Board of Governors, has served as a community principal investigator. She is joined by Francis First Charger, project elder, and Dr. Michelle Hogue, research consultant and U of L professor in the First Nations Transition Program. Others who have been involved in the project include Ashley Henrickson, a master’s student; Taylor Little Mustache, an undergraduate student; and Amy Mack, lead researcher.

UNews - Institute for Child and Youth Studies (I-CYS)

Kaitlynn Weaver found her niche in Child & Youth Studies

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Raising Spirit project receives Canada 150 grant

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