We Are Stardust, Indigenous Science-Art-Culture Workshop & Club Activities for Special-Needs Youth

One set of measurable outcomes are specific to the effectiveness of WAS/MSAS modifications for the special-needs youth success:

(a) WAS trainings provided skills to complete activities in the workshop & (c) All participants can identify and/or recognize, improved and/or newly acquired skills

Initially there were fourteen youth, only ten completed the project. Two dropped due to sports conflicts and two were placed into a foster home and could no longer attend. Of the remaining youth, five special-needs (SpEd) youth and five non-SpED completed pre- and post-project skills surveys. Each skill was ranked as follows, reflecting youth status at these two project time points: (1) A new skill I'm learning due to the project; (2) A skill I know I had - it's a challenge for me; (3) A skill I know I have that is easy for me to use/do; (4) A skill I am always good at. The skill categories were I. Growth Mindset & Purpose; II. Motivation & Goal-Setting; III. Social Awareness/Understanding; IV. Relationship Skills; and V. Responsible Decision-Making. Each category listed 2-4 individual skills for the rank. For example, "I am better able to influence my own future and achieve my goals" (II); "I am able to understand another person's perspective and/or feelings from verbal and non-verbal cues" (III); and "I am able to consider how my decisions impact myself as well as the lives of others" (V). Since we were together 75 hours for the 4-week project, it was remarkable how quickly the youth acted as "besties" - they were somewhat familiar with each other at the beginning and within two weeks, they were a very close-knit group. So, not surprisingly, the largest improvement was in social-interaction skills for III and IV.

The project required skills that youth were able to enhance or acquire, e.g., communication (verbal, written) for video scripts and to share thoughts about the science and cultural aspects of the project. Overall, most pre-project skill ranks were in the 2-3 range. Increases in skill ranks were noted for all students in the various categories including juggling multiple demands, have high expectations of myself, and active listening. The youth completed a S.M.A.R.T. Goal that was directly (or not) linked to the project. Basically, all youth met their goal to some degree. For example, several wrote goals specific to learning about stars and galaxies, whereas others wanted to learn beading, patience, waking up on time for the workshop (the cabs picked them up around 9am in the summer!), and one wanted to stay off the cell phone and focus on the workshop.

I also collected daily post-it note feedback - youth answered the same two questions each day as activities varied - "What did you learn/enjoy most today" and "What would you change/did not go well for you today?" I read these at the end of each day and made changes for the following day, e.g., students were able to work in a group or by themselves, especially for the video creation so they could help each other or focus better, respectfully. In general, the workshop days were "fun"; "nothing was bad"; "exciting"; "I liked lunch". Probably the best aspect was the socializing for all the youth as many stated "people are funny"; "others are nice"; "helping others is good".

Youth completed a self-reflection narrative called D.E.A.L.: Describe your learning experience; Explain how you learned, i.e., your skills and how you used them for the project; Attention to learning or why does it matter to acquire/enhance skills for school, work, and socially; Leverage or how will you use these skills for your future endeavors? The variety of responses was interesting: "I want to teach native culture to kids"; another "persevered" with science content that at first did not sound interesting; another was more comfortable with social interactions; and one stated "the beading was hard but it's done".

(b) Youth are able to share the WAS activities with club participants successfully Of the five SpEd youth, only one was qualified to work with the Fall MSAS club but decided to spend time focusing on the upcoming school year instead. Only one of the five qualified non-SpEd youth worked with the Fall MSAS club, although two others said they wanted too - I am not sure why they changed their minds.

Club leaders serve as role models for the five areas of "youth development": bonding/good relationships with adults, resilience, cognitive and emotional competence, and career development. Of the SpEd youth, only the one qualified to work with MSAS met all five criteria. In fact, this youth had the best overall workshop performance. Non-SpEd youth met these outcomes by completing their activities. For the career piece, local community college English, Graphics, and Art instructors spent at least one session working with the youth as well as showing youth their classrooms while giving an overview of the college courses they taught. All youth enjoyed this aspect of the workshop.
; What was accomplished? The project work with students began in early February 2023 and was completed by mid-March 2023 in the approved time period. The project had three sections which the students completed: (1) Science basics about (a) the relationship between the Earth, Moon, and Sun (rotation, revolution, day/night, seasons); (b) Milky Way and pulsating stars, including how telescopes are used to collect data about them (2) Native culture and star stories about the Pleiades (a pulsating star cluster) (3) Native art project: beading, dreamcatcher, spin drum The project timeframe was divided into two meetings for Science, one for the cultural stories, and depending on the selected project, two-three meetings for creating the art piece. All youth shared their previous knowledge and/or asked questions for both the Science and cultural stories meetings. Since one of the four youth is basically non-verbal, sharing/asking questions was at a minimum from this student and involved various hand signals or facial expressions to communicate understanding, enjoyment, etc. These youth shared their meeting experiences with their Special Education (SpEd) teachers more often than with their General Education teachers, and surprisingly, not much with their families, based on my conversations with the youth.

(1)Feedback surveys were shared with all project youth, and their SpEd teachers (only) were asked to collect student feedback since our scheduled project time had come to an end. Plus, I felt that the students would provide non-biased answers since I would not be present recording their answers. Teachers were given hard-copy feedback sheets to record share what they were told by the students during and after project completion. I included a copy of the feedback survey with this final report. Of the four students that participated in the project, one student had a different teacher, and did not respond to the project feedback. This student wanted to complete the beading project yet was unable to do so even though alternate times were offered through May 2023. We think that this attitude occurred because of the teacher's absence on a scheduled meeting day for completing the beading project with a resultant loss of interest in the project. (2) Letters to families requesting feedback were sent home as a (a)hard-copy with their children, (b)emailed to families y teachers, and (b) mailed to the family's permanent addresses listed in our school district rosters. There was no response from families for any three options.

Did you achieve your goal(s)? How do you know you achieved them? (How did you determine and/or measure your goals and outcomes?)
One set of measurable outcomes are specific to the effectiveness of WAS/MSAS modifications for the special-needs youth success - the main change from our original proposal is that youth who completed the original WAS training chose not to be involved as club leaders. As such some WAS-based goals were not met due to this circumstance. That said, we found that the four special needs students were able to complete the activities if they chose to do so, especially with respect to the cultural art piece (one measurement).

For the three verbal special needs students, all had varying degrees of previous knowledge about the science aspects and were very interested while completing the two sessions as evidenced their asking questions and sharing their previous knowledge. The non-verbal student did not want to watch any science videos. All four students were interested in the culture videos that focused on Native-based stories of The Pleiades. From both of these sessions the teachers said students shared their learning along with their own experiences looking at the stars, family stories, and science facts they learned (e.g., that the Earth rotates on its axis "to make day and night". With respect to the cultural art, the students decided which one (or more) of the available art projects they wanted to complete. The facilitator explained how to do each one and each student followed through with limited help - the artwork took 2-3 meetings to accomplish. Goal measurements were completed by These cultural pieces required cognitive skills they did not previously have (e.g., learning to tie a knot) or experience in another setting (e.g., designing and painting a feather or spin drum): both of these examples address WAS and MSAS of shared activity success and improved/newly acquired skills, respectively. With regard to student learning/skills, the modified art tasks required resilience and perseverance - the internal motivation to keep working on the art even though they found it challenging. Other WAS/MSAS goal evidence for bonding adults was shown by the feather made specifically for a teacher, and that all youth looked forward to our sessions and shared their experiences with their SpEd teachers after each session. They were all proud of their art as (see video). In general, their sharing of personal/family stories and completion of their art show that the modifications resulted in successful experiences for this group; in fact, one student asked if we were going to "come back next year" and the answer was/is "Yes!"