Group Activities for Latino/a Youth

Strengthening Identities and Resiliencies through Counseling

Krista M. Malott, Tina R. Paone, Krista M. Malott, Tina R. Paone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138806788
• eBook ISBN: 9781317615286
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Directly applicable to practice, Group Activities for Latino/a Youth allows helping professionals such as human service workers, social workers, and school and community mental health counselors to select and apply a series of group sessions with topics relevant to today's Latino/a youth. Each session contains detailed directions, suggested discussion questions, and additional readings on specific topics, with topic examples including grief, identity development, and conflict resolution. Sessions draw on Latino/a cultural norms and strengths to build culturally-informed communication and coping skills in an effort to improve educational, social, and career outcomes. A developmental perspective is used, and sessions are designed to be creative and interactive in order to appeal to the high energy and playfulness of youth at any age. Group Activities for Latino/a Youth helps professionals to better engage and retain Latino/a clients, a group that traditionally experiences one of the largest drop-out rates in therapy, often due to interventions largely informed by dominant Anglo norms and traditions.

INTRODUCTION

“I could go on and on about how it’s so awesome to know more about our culture and share with others about it.”

Juan, participant, ethnic identity group, Mexican-origin youth, 2009

This book provides a collection of group activities with the ultimate goal of promoting the academic, career, and personal success of Latino/a youth. To appeal to youth, these sessions draw upon creative and expressive arts and contemporary issues. They are easily adapted for youth at different ages, and can be tailored for various ethnic and racial groups (e.g., Asians or Black/African Americans). However, to fill a void in the current literature regarding a large and expanding population across the United States, group sessions in this resource are premised on Latino/a cultural traditions and traits. Many of the sessions have been applied by the authors in group settings with Latino/a adolescents of various ages, and the experiences have been described by many of the youth as enjoyable, meaningful, and even life-changing. As written anonymously by one teen who participated in the Latino/a Youth and Ethnic Identity Development group of Chapter 4, “I learned [in group] that Latinos have worth and that we can get ahead and succeed.”

Regardless of the ethnic or racial identities of the youth you choose to work with in applying these sessions, your status as an adult and group facilitator will mark you as the go-to expert regarding group goals, from strengthening ethnic identity to coping with the loss of a loved one. You will also likely be perceived as an expert on the group members themselves. For those reasons, in the next few chapters of this book, tenets of a very large and heterogeneous group identified beneath the umbrella term of Latino/a will be defined and described. Descriptors include history, demography, contributions, and cultural traits across the group. We recognize that fully and accurately describing such a diverse group is an impossible feat, considering the complexity and varied contributions of the many Latino/a subgroups, from Mexicans, to Puerto Ricans, to Colombians. Hence, readers may want to seek out additional readings and training experiences, if the Latino/a population is one that is new to them.

Specifically, Chapter 1 will attempt to describe Latino/as according to history, values, traits, and overall demographics. Chapter 2 will address challenges or barriers experienced by present-day Latino/a youth, to increase facilitator understanding of those issues that will undoubtedly surface during group sessions. Chapter 3 provides a framework for personal reflection of your own ethnic and racial identity, so that you can better facilitate such conversations with the youth you serve. Indeed, researchers have demonstrated the importance of helper self-knowledge and awareness regarding personal identity traits (as well as the willingness to acknowledge such) when working with clientele of color (Day-Vines et al., 2007). In addition, the premise of this book is that strong identities make for strong and successful human beings, with a vast ocean of research to support this, as will be discussed in the next few chapters. We believe this to be as equally true for clients as it is for those in the helper role—and the adult group facilitator can be a particularly influential role model in reflecting a strong and positive self-identity.

The remaining chapters of the book offer detailed outlines of various groups, each a set of six sessions. Topics are designed to address issues common to many of today’s youth, such as grief, discrimination, communication skills, peer pressure, gender norms, goal setting, and exploring, understanding, and strengthening self-identity. Sessions were created to be low cost, with materials required that are easily obtainable. Many of the handouts used in the sessions are included, and efforts were made to provide materials in both Spanish and English. Most sessions can be used with small or large numbers of participants, although researchers have found that outcomes tend to be most positive with five to nine members (Burlingame, McClendon, & Alonso, 2011). Individual sessions can be pulled out and applied separately or used in sequence. Some, such as the Creando Esperanza: Hope Groups sessions of Chapter 7, were designed to build upon one another.

Finally, a note about the terminology applied across this book. We recognize Latino/a as an umbrella term that includes myriad subgroups with diverse traits and origins, from Mayan descendants of Guatemalan origin who speak neither English nor Spanish, to blond-haired Argentines who practice Judaism and speak German. Research tells us that most Latino/a individuals prefer to be addressed and understood uniquely, according to personal label preferences (Malott, 2009; Zarate, Bhimji, & Reece, 2005). Preferences and meanings of assumed ethnic labels can change for individuals according to development, settings, and situations. However, Latino/a will be applied throughout this book to represent the many subgroups, to honor use of that terminology by current scholars and demographers, and in response to the expressed preferences of many Latino/as in our and others’ research who have eschewed Hispanic as a governmentally imposed, and therefore less desirable, term (Malott, 2009; Therrien & Ramirez, 2000). Finally, the use of both the feminine ‘a’ and the masculine ‘o’ at the end of the term Latin across the book offers a more gender-inclusive version of the traditionally used label, Latino.

REFERENCES

Burlingame, G. M., McClendon, D. T., & Alonso, J. (2011). Cohesion in group therapy. Psychotherapy, 48, 34–42. doi:10.1037/a0022063

Day-Vines, N. L., Wood, S. M., Grothaus, T., Craigen, L., Holman, A., Dotson-Blake, K., & Douglass, M. J. (2007). Broaching the subjects of race, ethnicity, and culture during the counseling process. Journal of Counseling and Development, 85, 401–409. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6678.2007.tb00608.x

Malott, K. M. (2009). Investigation of ethnic self-labeling in the Latina population: Implications for counselors and counselor educators. Journal of Counseling & Development, 87, 179–185. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6678.2009.tb00565.x

Therrien, M., & Ramirez, R. R. (2000). The Hispanic population in the United States: March 2000 (Current Population Reports, pp. 250–535). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p20-535.pdf

Zarate, M. E., Bhimji, F., & Reece, L. (2005). Ethnic identity and academic achievement among Latino/a adolescents. Journal of Latino/as and Education, 4, 95–114. doi:10.1207/s1532771xjle0402_3

WHO ARE LATINO/AS?

Krista M. Malott and Tina R. Paone

Our parents grew up watching la India Maria
We grow up watching Family Guy
They ate tacos and tortas
While we eat hot dogs and hamburgers
They went to the plaza
While we go to the mall
Yet we still share some things in common
Like the language we speak
And our pride of being Mexican

Pennsylvanian Latino/a teens of Mexican descent, 2009

The question, who are Latino/as, could fill an entire library. However, to the best of our abilities, we will attempt to present an accurate description of such a diverse group, with particular trends and varied histories, with brevity in mind. Numbered at 53 million and comprising 17% of the total U.S. population, Latino/as are the largest population of color in the nation (U.S. Census, 2012a). It is predicted that the population will continue to rapidly expand, and that by 2060 Latino/as will comprise 31% of the entire population (approximately one out of every three individuals) (U.S. Census, 2008). This group is one of the fastest growing, in part due to high birth rates. For instance, over one out of four of all births (26.3%) across the nation in 2011 were to Latina women (Pew Hispanic Center, 2012). As a result, this is a young population, whereby nearly one out of three (33.8%) of all Latino/as is aged 18 or below, compared to 24% of the entire U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012a). In fact, it is predicted that by 2020 Latino/as will comprise nearly one out of four of all U.S. youth in school (U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, 2007).

Considering subgroup trends, numbers show that 65% of Latino/as are of Mexican origin. Puerto Ricans are the next largest group (equaling 9.4% of all Latino/as), followed by Cubans (3.8%), Salvadorans (3.6%), Dominicans (3.0%), and Guatemalans (2.3%). The remaining percentage includes Latino/as of South or Central America or other origins (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013).

Although some Latino/as are descendants of ancestors who lived on the North American continent long before it became the United States, approximately 36% of all Latino/as are foreign born, with those numbers on the rise (Puerto Ricans excluded). Foreign-born Latino/as comprise over half (53.3%) of the total foreign-born population in the U.S (Pew Hispanic Center, 2013). Issues related to resources (work and health care) and naturalization are high for those who have recently arrived to the country, as Latino/as possess the lowest rate of naturalization of all foreign-born individuals (34.2% for those from South America, and 25% for Mexicans; U.S. Census Bureau, 2010; 2012b).

Latino/as can be found anywhere in the country, although larger concentrations have settled near entry ports to the nation (e.g., southern states close to the Mexican border) or urban areas where greater job opportunities exist. For instance, more than half of Latino/as live in Florida, California, and Texas, and the largest concentration of Latino/as (4.8 million) live in the Los Angeles region (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). Sixteen other states in various regions of the country are home to at least a half-million Latino/a individuals each, with Latino/as frequently migrating to certain locations to be close to family members or job opportunities (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).

A large portion of Latino/as speak Spanish, albeit of various dialects and with differing accents and vocabularies (and differing meanings for the same words). Spanish speakers comprise 12.9% of all U.S. residents, with 78% of all Latino/as indicating that they speak Spanish at home (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Youth from this population encompass the largest percentage of English language learners in the U.S. school system. For instance, of the 4.7 million limited English-proficient students identified in K-12 schools, 73% were Spanish speakers (Education Commission of the States, 2013).

Latino/as are a racially and ethnically diverse people, encompassing indigenous groups (two examples include Mayan and Inca), descendants of African slaves, and those of Spanish and other European heritage. As a result, the term Mestizo has...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Group Activities for Latino/a Youth
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Editor Biographies
• List of Contributors
• PART I: Introduction
• PART II: Group Sessions
• Index