Choppin’ it Up
Choppin’ it Up is a collaborative inquiry. The aim is to create more generative ways of co-constructing environments that support youth resilience and provide meaningful alternatives in which youth can thrive. The dialogue will encourage us to develop a greater understanding of the challenges youth face, how they define health and the unique paths they take toward health. In particular we will examine together the patterns of coordination youth and other people in their lives make to cope with adversity and promote their resilience - ways we find to ‘go on together’ .

Resilience
Traditional research offers a definition of resilience as an ability to bounce back from adversity.

In Choppin it Up, we will explore how resilience is situated within a relational context as a pattern of coordination that generates alternative forms of practice for “going on together” and responding to adversity and challenges in our lives. In this context resilience is socially constructed in our relationships with each other. Through our relationships and in our dialogue with each other we create meaning and actively construct resilience.

We will also examine how resilience may look and feel to different people as we work to understand a fuller context and build richer descriptions of people’s lives and experiences.

Transformative Dialogue
Choppin it Up is an invitation for new conversations and constructions through dialogue.

Through a dialogic and narrative process, youth will create a model in their schools that supports ongoing communication and restorative practices around conflict and experiences of adversity. This model offers powerful possibilities for transformation in our schools and relationships with youth, embedded within our conversations and dialogue with each other.

Dialogue provides a powerful way for connecting in the ‘space-in-between’, in the relational space. As we strengthen the ‘space-in-between’, we are creating a sustainable container for co-constructing alternatives together.

Choppin’ it Up will integrate principles for transformative dialogue including: • Create a safe space

• Speak from our personal experiences
• Examine our assumptions
• Inquire into and be reflective of our reactions and responses
• Understand different viewpoints
• Search for local meaning and relevance
• Imagine the future and positive possibilities

Choppin it Up will be developed in active partnership with youth, beginning with learning about dialogue, experimenting with and experiencing potentially new ways of conversation. Youth will have an opportunity to explore methods for dialogue and ‘meaning making’; including the use and critical analysis of language and ‘speaking’, written word, visual media, as well as opportunities to examine the norms, beliefs, attitudes and values we hold or prescribe to about what it means to be in relationship with each other.

Inviting more people into the dialogue will help explore and challenge discourses of power, deficit and pathology and present opportunities for a shift in discourse that allows for more constructive and positive possibilities for youth and our schools. In Choppin it Up, youth will expand the domain of conversation to others who are touched by the challenges and opportunities surrounding them, including parents, teachers, community members, policy makers and the media. Youth will be empowered to embed a dialogic and narrative process into the school and community culture, offering new traditions and ways of ‘going on together’ that support continuous practice and processes to generate meaning and co-construct environments that promote youth resilience.

4 McNamee, S.Adapted from ‘Toward Transformative Dialogue’
5 McNamee, S and Gergen, K. Relational Responsibility: Resources for Sustainable Dialogue