Graves' three parts of learning community

I haven't been posting here as much as I should for our class. OK, I haven't posted here at all yet! I'm going to have to come up with some method for reminding myself to do this because it's kind of out of my regular flow of homework, so I need to somehow remind myself to regularly stop and post on this blog and not get lost in simply analyzing the literature.

OK, first to define my learning community that I will observe. In my free time (who has that? :-) I am a scout leader and young men leader for the youth in my local unit of my church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). As YM leader, I try to teach the boys religious principles on Sunday, and then we meet on Wednesday nights for youth activities/scout activities. Then we have a monthly campout that I sometimes attend (there are other youth leaders as well). Our youth group is unique because it is composed of two of our church units: A regular English-speaking unit and a Spanish-speaking unit. These two units meet separately on Sundays but combine for youth activities on Wednesday nights. Ironically, I work with the Hispanic youth while Peter and others work with the English-speaking youth (and actually, "English-speaking" is a misnomer because they all speak English. However, the Hispanic parents often do not, which is why we have a separate unit for them to attend on Sundays).

So this learning community has the goals of 1) learning our religion; 2) learning good social, physical, and mental skills to prepare the youth for adult lives. This learning community meets twice a week (Sundays and Wednesdays, with occasional campouts on the weekend). They also see each other occasionally at school, but they attend a lot of different schools.

As leaders we want these youth to feel a sense of community together, that they will support each other, help each other, and that they will have similar goals. Sometimes, I feel this is working very well, and I'm pleased to see how well racial differences haven't kept the youth from getting along well and being friends. However, I also see where a few youth have not felt like strong members of the community, and of course I want to help them integrate into the community more. It is not surprising to me that those youth who are not as integrated in the learning community are not learning or progressing in the Boy Scout or young men program as much.

As I read the literature this semester, I will try to apply it to this learning community because 1) this is a group I really care about and want to succeed, and 2) it's a different type of learning community than I bet many others in the class will be observing, so maybe it will yield different insights!