Format
Workshop
First Presenter's Institution
Wholistic Stress Control Institute
First Presenter’s Email Address
kelvinwalston@wholistic1.com
First Presenter's Brief Biography
Kelvin Walston has coordinated and supervised five federal Sexual Risk and HIV funded federal grants and served as WSCI Senior Health Educator for 20 years. Mr. Walston holds a Master of Arts Degree in African Studies at Clark Atlanta University. He has worked in the Public Health field with community coalitions for juvenile populations for the past 20 years. He was integral in facilitating and writing of one of WSCI evidenced based preventions programs receiving SAMSHA’s highest accreditation for effective programs. His additional experience includes coordination, training and programming for Youth Peer Leadership Trainings.
Second Presenter's Institution
Wholistic Stress Control Institute
Second Presenter’s Email Address
tjohnson@wholistic1.com
Second Presenter's Brief Biography
Tarita Johnson, MSW has 20 years of experience facilitating and managing a range of programs prevention and intervention programs for children, adults and families in the areas of substance abuse, life skills, vocational development, violence prevention, stress and anger management, teenage pregnancy prevention, abstinence education, sexual risk avoidance, and aesthetic arts. A standard part of her work involves developing infrastructure tools for program operations. She has worked with the community extensively in organizing interventions and community coalitions, workgroups, health fairs, HIV/AIDS testing, prevention and intervention programming for African American youth, women and adult’s reentry populations. She has written more than 15 grants and has been the co-principle investigator and/or Program Manager of nineteen federal grants, several state, local, and foundation grants. She has successfully completed psychosocial and mental health assessments, performance reports for funders, internal programmatic reports, and other related online reporting systems. Ms. Johnson has worked extensively with establishing and sustaining prevention programs and community coalitions. Her experience further includes, quality assurance management, evaluation and program analysis, coordinating services for linkages of care for minorities and juvenile populations, supervising social media programs for youth and young adults. She has served on several coalitions, including the Georgia Ryan White Planning Council Priority Committee. Ms. Johnson received the M.L.K. Community Service Award for her work with the juvenile justice populations. She has a Master’s of Social Work degree, is a certified School Social Worker, and is a certified Red Cross HIV/AIDS trainer.
Location
Session One Breakouts
Strand #1
Heart: Social & Emotional Skills
Strand #2
Health: Mental & Physical Health
Relevance
Wholistic Stress Control Institute, Inc. is proposing to provide an educational and engaging hip hop workshop on the delivery of its Blueprint: A Sexual Risk Avoidance and Wellness program. This interactive prevention program is connected to the conference’s HEART and HEALTH strands. The topics to be discussed per the HEART strand include: character education; communication skills; positive identity development; decision making; and goal setting. The topics to be discussed per the HEALTH strand include: drug, alcohol, and tobacco education; teenage pregnancy, HIV, and STD prevention. All topics listed are included in the 8-week program curriculum that also utilizes hip hop and African American history modalities.
Brief Program Description
Calling all health educators interested in utilizing hip hop and African American history as an teaching tool to decrease risky behaviors. The objectives for this educational and engaging workshop will provide innovative ideas to: 1) engage youth utilizing hip hop music; 2) integrate African American history to enhance positive identity concepts; and 3) increase pro-social skills to prevent teenage pregnancy prevention and other negative behaviors.
Summary
The hip hop culture has been criticized for its depiction and glamorization of sex, drugs, alcohol, violence, teenage pregnancy, and overall negative character traits. However, the roots of hip hop culture encompassing varied communication mediums, conflict resolution, anti gang, pro-social skills, entrepreneurialism, and knowledge of self through cultural pride are hip hops guiding principles. These principles served as a positive code of ethics for youth and the blueprint for Wholistic Stress Control Institute, Inc. sexual risk avoidance and wellness program.
This presentation will provide an overview of Wholistic Stress Control Institute’s REACH Project: A Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Project model. Various activities utilizing Hip hop and African American history will be implemented as take home learning opportunities. These activities will demonstrate how to utilize these art and cultural forms as change agent strategies for specific HEART and HEALTH strand topics. The programs evaluation results and a question and answer session will be included.
The REACH Project provides an evidenced based, wholistic approach, grounded in the social learning theory. It promotes the benefits of self-regulation, poverty prevention, healthy relationships, goal setting, resisting sexual coercion, dating violence, and other youth risk behaviors such as underage drinking and illicit drug use without normalizing teen sexual activity. REAL Essentials, an evidenced based, age appropriateness and medically accurate curriculum, developed by the Center for Relationship Education is taught. The project also incorporates a multi-faceted positive youth development approach which includes: 1) College, Career and Vocational Explorations; 2) Stress & Anger Management (Conflict Resolution/Effective Communication/Decision Making); 3) Money Management; 4) Art & Cultural Development (African American History and hip hop infusion). Peer leadership training, social media programming and parent education are the remaining components. The project targets 250, males and females, ages 13-19 in Fulton and Dekalb counties, who are in foster care or group homes, had contact with juvenile justice system, live in low income communities, and/or are at risk for teenage pregnancy.
Evidence
Per evaluation measures, lessons at all sites were held with fidelity to the program design. Of the participants who completed the program self-reported.
Those Less Approving of Teen Sexual Activity:
- 79.4% reported plans to delay having sexual intercourse until they graduate from high school/get their GED.
- 74% reported plans to delay having sexual intercourse until they graduate from college/another training program.
Less Approving of Other Risky Behaviors:
- 71% will make decisions not to drink alcohol.
- 73.6% will make decisions not to smoke cigarettes and cigars.
- 74.3% will make decisions not to use other tobacco products.
- 71.7% will make decisions not to use electronic vapor products.
- 70.7% will make decisions not to use marijuana.
- 70.9% will make decisions not to take prescription pain medicine without a doctor prescription or doctor prescribed usage.
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Dating violence/violence skills:
- 84% of students look for information and resources about dating violence.
- 93% of students resist or say no to someone who they are dating or going out with if they pressure them to participate in sexual acts, such as kissing, touching private parts, or sexual intercourse.
Substance abuse avoidance decision making skills:
- 71% of students will make decisions not to drink alcohol
- 74% of students will make decisions not to smoke cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, or little cigars.
- 74% of students will make decisions not to use marijuana (also called pot, weed, or cannabis)
- 71% of students will make decisions not to take prescription pain medicine without a doctor’s prescription or differently than how a doctor told you to use it.
Self-regulation skills:
- 87% of students will resist or say no to peer pressure.
- 91% of students will resist or manager their emotions in healthy ways that are not hurtful to themselves or others.
- 93% of students will choose to spend time with friends that keep them out of trouble.
- 95% of students will think about the consequences before making a decision.
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The data shows that the REACH project is making a significant impact in the lives of the youth.
Rap Music and the Empowerment of Today’s Youth: Evidence in Everyday Music Listening, Music Therapy, and Commercial Rap Music. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257544331_Rap_Music_and_the_Empowerment_of_Today's_Youth_Evidence_in_Everyday_Music_Listening_Music_Therapy_and_Commercial_Rap_Music [accessed Sep 07 2018].
According to A TALE OF TWO CULTURES: HIP HOP AND SCHOOLING AND THE IMPACT ON AFRICAN AMERICAN IDENTITY AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT by BARBARA S. WISNIEWSKI (2011) dissertation, she found and cited the following:
- When an educator acknowledged such a cultural affiliation, rather than used it to discipline, students felt more at home in school and more connected to such an educator. This underscores the need for educators to acknowledge students’ hip hop identities as an aspect of building positive student/teacher relationships. Rather than viewing hip hop as a tool to challenge racial oppression (such as in Sampson, 2004), participants understood hip hop culture as more about the pool of resources from which they constructed a sense of themselves in the context of being Black and living in an urban area.
Sampson, C. (2004). Black Voices, Black Souls: Black Music as a Means of Voice, Resistance, 92 and social Transformation in Education. Thesis for Master of Arts, Graduate Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education, University of Toronto.
- It is important to bridge academic and hip hop identities. For instance, Geneva Gay (1994) links positive identity with social compatibility and student achievement, writing: “…Since ethnic identity is closely related to academic performance, feelings of personal competence, and social adjustment and all of these are important components of quality education for young adolescents, they all should be taught simultaneously.”
Gay, G. (1994). Coming of Age Ethnically: Teaching Young Adolescents of Color. Theory Into Practice. Summer, 33(3), 149-155.
Learning Objective 1
1) To learn Wholistic Stress Control Institute, Inc. REACH: Sexual Risk Avoidance and Wellness model
Learning Objective 2
2) To learn evidenced based hip-hop and African American history activities for youth prevention programming.
Learning Objective 3
3) By the end of this presentation, participants will be able demonstrate two mindfulness stress management engaging techniques (deep breathing and music mediation) to increase youth coping skill development
Keyword Descriptors
Hip Hop, AfricanAmerican History, Teen-age Pregnancy Prevention, Self Regulation
Presentation Year
2022
Start Date
3-7-2022 10:15 AM
End Date
3-7-2022 11:30 AM
Recommended Citation
Walston, Kelvin M. and Johnson, Tarita, "Hip Hop, African American History and Mindfulness Tools for Successful Facilitator Engagement" (2022). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 6.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2022/2022/6
Hip Hop, African American History and Mindfulness Tools for Successful Facilitator Engagement
Session One Breakouts
Calling all health educators interested in utilizing hip hop and African American history as an teaching tool to decrease risky behaviors. The objectives for this educational and engaging workshop will provide innovative ideas to: 1) engage youth utilizing hip hop music; 2) integrate African American history to enhance positive identity concepts; and 3) increase pro-social skills to prevent teenage pregnancy prevention and other negative behaviors.