Chapter 6: The Power of Simple, Ordinary Interactions in Developmental Relationships Across Contexts

In our work over the last decade, we have found ourselves in conversations with youth-serving professionals across a wide range of cultural and institutional settings. We have worked in orphanages that institutionalized children with disabilities and a rural foster care village that de-institutionalized children of similar disabilities. We have shadowed hospital social workers who provided psychosocial care to children awaiting medical cures. We have observed and interviewed crossing guards on street corners in urban neighborhoods. We have spent time with staff and youth in residential youth care facilities, youth violence prevention programs led by former gang leaders, and youth summer programs for children from migrant labor camps. These activities have afforded us the opportunities to shadow youth workers in their day-to-day work lives and hear their stories and reflections about what these interactions mean in the context of their communities. By serving as program evaluators, ethnographical observers, and professional learning facilitators, we have made incremental progress towards understanding and appreciating authentic, everyday relational practices from the professionals who serve children, youth, and families.