Podcast Episode - The Good Life Camp, Part 3, with Dr. Nell O’Donnell Weber
Dr. Nell O’Donnell Weber is an essential team member on the Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO) Child Support Services’ Good Life Vision project, including the Good Life Camp.
As the project’s curriculum developer, Dr. Weber is working with the LCO Child Support staff and the project’s dedicated set of local partners to create a curriculum on responsible parenting and economic mobility that speaks to the cultural values and historical context of the LCO and other tribal communities. The curriculum will be delivered in the LCO Ojibwe School, the LCO Boys and Girls Club, the Good Life Camp, and elsewhere to tribal youth between the ages of 13 and 23.
Nell did her dissertation at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education on what American highschoolers know and believe about parenting and child development—giving her background the perfect background for this project.
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TRANSCRIPT of this podcast episode can be found here.
But academic experience alone isn’t enough for a project like this. Nell also has a lot of real-world experience developing curricula and evaluating their implementation.
She also brings to the Good Life Vision a real gift for working outside her own cultural comfort zone and the ability to adapt and rethink the curriculum based on new information and feedback from partners. I think everyone on the project feels fortunate to have her on the team.
In our interview, which took place at the LCO Child Support office, we start by talking about her work to understand how parents in a variety of cultures and circumstances learn how to parent.
She explains that there are three ways that people learn to be parents: how they were parented themselves, their experience, and by formal means (which is the smallest percentage). This background is why culture is so vitally important to this project since, as Nell explains, cultural connection is a protective factor and the lynchpin to building positive self-esteem and pride in one’s culture.
Project
The Good Life Vision brings LCO Child Support Services together with community partners to preserve, strengthen, and renew Ojibwe values in our LCO youth by providing opportunities to learn about their culture’s history, values, and practices to support Good Life parenting and reduce the negative effects of generations of cultural trauma.
LCO Child Support Services plans to accomplish this by developing culturally relevant and long-sustainable curricula and other tools for middle school, high school, and college students and young parents, as well as the development and implementation of the Good Life Camp.
About Dr. Nell O'Donnell Weber
Nell O'Donnell Weber is an independent consultant to the Good Life Vision project with expertise in early childhood education, emergent literacy and numeracy, and global education. She is currently providing technical expertise on a project to understand the beliefs and behaviors related to early learning of the parents in Jordan, with a special emphasis on Syrian refugees. Nell holds a master's degree in international education policy and a doctoral degree in cultures, communities, and education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Article: “American High School Students’ Knowledge and Beliefs About Parenting and Child Development”