Just Us 4 Youth

Can You Love Someone Despite Their Decisions/Choices I think it depends on who you ask. Based on our society and community day with “cancel culture” the answer is “No”. If someone doesn’t agree with you push them away, you spew hate, you do everything but love them. But, where does this lead and take us? It brings us to a more divided and separated group of people.  I believe you can love someone despite their decisions. I mean look at your parents. How many times have you done something and despite that they came and loved you through it? The best example is Daryl Davis. For those who don’t know him, Daryl is an African-American man who friends a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert White.  Despite their differences, they actually become best friends and Robert stepped down from the Ku Klux Klan. If you haven’t seen the TED Talk I highly recommend watching it.  The hardest part of loving and caring for someone despite their decisions is putting your values onto them...

The Power of Example - Teaching Children to Lead Children are our future. It’s cliched and maybe even a little cheesy, but it’s also undeniably true. We have to set the youth of today up for success so that they can become the leaders of tomorrow. One of the simplest and most effective ways to teach kids how to become leaders is by setting a good example. Just Us 4 Youth ’s mentoring program is based, in part, on the idea that when children can see adults thrive, they can learn to thrive, too. Here are some ways you can lead by example and help make the future brighter and more confident:  Value Education  Children, at-promise* kids especially, need to see the value of learning.  Talk with your kids or mentees about how you’ve used what you learned in high school and beyond.  Demonstrate the power of continuous learning .  Consider returning to pursue a higher education.  Make time for reading , encourage it in kids, and talk with them about books.  D...

My teaching journey began in September of 2005, months after I received my B.A. in Spanish from Cal Poly. I first started working as a substitute teacher for three different districts, Chaffey, Upland and Pomona districts.  A year after, and thanks to a friend that I had at that time, I received a great opportunity to work as a full time teacher at Chino High School while I was still working on my teaching credential. In the two years that I was at CHS I learned the overwhelming challenges that a first year teacher goes through. These tough experiences should be used, in my opinion, by educators as an impulse to become better professionals. Two years later, my teaching career took a different route as I began to work for Pomona Unified. My first teaching assignment was at Ganesha High. With two years of teaching experience I was confident that I was better prepared to cope with the challenges of being a teacher at a new school. However, I was totally wrong. Through the middle of th...

Loneliness despoils apartment complexes, trailer parks, small homes, garages and parks across the inner city. She runs through the brains and bodies of our youth like a tsunami bursting onto the shores of our neighborhoods, affecting the physical and mental well-being of our children.  Our youth are particularly vulnerable to the damage that she brings. Her waters incite the rise of growing incidence of depression, substance abuse, and suicide, and she washes away from them the securing supports of those who love and care for them normally.  Her waters swirl children into an empty section of the soul where disconnection reigns, and youth are tossed by her waves, worsening anxieties, mood disorders, and cognitive decline. And she drifts youth far from the shore of learning, blocking their access to the liberating truths that guide them into destiny. With her constant roar, their attempts to wade fail and fatigue sets in. The light fades and social media is the unde...

I never expected for my life to turn out like this, my mother has never been there for me. She has never loved me, but her other kids have always been more important than I was to her. I was 3 when she decided to leave my life and leave my dad with a huge responsibility. My father has no family to turn to, he has no one, but he still raised me to the best of his ability, although he comes up short often.  It was hard growing up without a mother. When my father enrolled me in soccer when I was younger I was excited because I was actually good at it. I enjoyed playing it. When I was younger my heart crashed because I would look at other boys bringing their mom and dad but I had no one. My father is an older man and he’s always working. I hate it because he just never had the time for me.  When I was in second grade I was excited because my school gave me a letter saying I was getting an award for mathematics. That day I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my dad. I ran ho...

Hi…My life has been full of so many difficult moments and here is one that I would like to share with you. I will be talking about how my life went from down path to high path.  My family and I have struggled so much in life. Being 3 years old and coming to the United States alone was definitely one of the most difficult and risky things you can ever do. Having no money, no family or anyone to rely on is very hard. Not knowing if your parents are protected or just in general if they are going to come back with you with their lives. When all that was over I thought my family and I were finally going to be together and happy, but I was wrong. Money problems started, my parents started having relational problems and I was going through a tough time individually. At the time all that started to happen my dad left back to Mexico and was gone for a while. My mom got into depression and things in the house started to change. I got pushed away and was barely talked to. Then my da...

Urban youth work is an honor to be a part of, but it comes with it’s challenges. It's often thankless, and the fruit of your investment doesn’t show until years later. It’s not financially rewarding as people think (for many years I’ve been flat broke lol), nor is it glamorous, especially when you are dealing with age old urban issues that lead to death, violence, addiction, and more. Recently as a 19 year vet of urban work, I have been faced with a particular challenge that hasn’t been easy for me to swallow. That challenge is being blamed for things or being accused of things when it has absolutely nothing to do with me, or when the accusations are the furthest from the truth. I’ve put some thought to this and felt the need to write to encourage youth workers around the world.  When facing this challenge it will make you want to quit, tuck tail and run. Being blamed for something creates resentment, anger and frustration and it will cause you to do things that ...

“I didn’t plan on being a single mom, but you have to deal with the cards you are dealt the best way you can” (Tichina Arnold). I thought as a child raised in a home by all women and no fathers around it was normal, only to realize that when I became a mother, I was repeating a cycle of raising fatherless children. Growing up I was raised by my grandmother. My mother passed away when I was two years old. She was murdered. I knew my father, but not really and the memory I do have of him he was either high or drunk to the point where he couldn’t maintain his own balance. My father would later die by the time I was seven and the last memory I have of him was identifying his body at the hospital with my grandmother. I saw all women growing up in my family. My mother brothers where around but they were either on drugs or alcoholics and had children that they did not raise neither did they take care of the children they had, leaving the mothers of their own children to be single moth...

“The only source of knowledge is experience...” - Albert Einstein Have you ever questioned who you are? How did you end up here?  Are you who you thought you would be? As a newborn baby, we are a blank page in the book of life. Every action we take thereafter fills in the pages. We are carefully crafting each chapter. Authors of our own destiny. Even as a delicate infant our hopes and dreams seem endless. Our minds are untainted by experiences of anguish, hurt, and trauma. We radiate joy and light which draws others near. With endless possibilities, we press forward full speed ahead. What freedom we experience as infants, unbothered by the cares of the world. Determined to achieve success, reach higher heights than those that came before us. However, our forward motion is brought to a screeching halt as we are faced with a foreign experience called pain. Pain is, in my opinion, the greatest teacher. Our senses heighten, our minds race trying to interpret this unfamiliar ...

Just Us 4 Youth has been a phenomenal experience. Coming from a dysfunctional , gang related, addictive and abusive family has made it easy for me to relate with the youth that we deal with on a daily basis. The majority of our students that we assist come from low income family and are first generation students who would go to college. I personally had a third obstacle to deal with, being undocumented. Growing up in the barrio I was surrounded by over 10 different gangs within a 3 mile radius. I lost a cousin and even some of my friends were getting sentenced to life in prison. I didn’t have much of an option but to overcome the statistics. The average low income latino/hispanic has a higher probability to get locked or lose their life instead of graduating from high school. Being the first person from my family to graduate high school made me want to pursue higher education. Not having that superman in my life made me decide to turn into one for all urban youth that dea...

ALTERING PERSPECTIVES | IDEAS ON RISK, LEADERSHIP AND MENTORING  All great leaders take risks. There is something about living in the tension of complete and utter failure and reaching the pinnacle of success. Living in this tension invites leaders to make difficult decisions, accelerating their learning and expertise due to lessons learned in pressure filled environments. At times, the fear of failing can motivate leaders to accomplish great feats or lead them to demise. We’ve seen these truths in the lives of many leaders today.  Naturally there are leaders who do not possess the courage to take risks, therefore they remain stagnant, paralyzed by the fear of “what if?” Think about the pastor who had dreams of leading a mega church, but is now relegated to preaching to a few congregants. He might have begun optimistically, but is now full of frustration due to his lack of “success.” Or the mom and pop store owners whose dreams of guiding a flourishing business ...

My name is Jay Cummings. Only 20 minutes away at Azusa Pacific University, I have spent these past three years studying in complete ignorance of the pain and suffering that some of the urban youth in Pomona experience on an everyday basis.   Where I grew up, “coming from a broken home” simply meant that a kid’s parents had been divorced and they had it hard at home. Unfortunately, some of the students that come to JU4Y come from places like these. I distinctly remember driving away from internship one day where a student was left crying in the middle of the parking lot because she was so scared to go back to the place that was supposed to be called home. I don’t know that she has ever known what a home is truly meant to be like. Many of us have been raised to believe that home is a place where we can find refuge, rest, and relationship. Over the course of these past few months, I have come to realize what a luxury this really is. I remember sobbing in my car out of ang...

Every day and on every campus we get to work with savant students. There is always one who dances to the beat of their own song. One who is moving to a rhythm that is foreign to the world around them. If you only look externally, you may miss the genius that is before you. You may become disillusioned by their lack of “proper social abilities” or “their apparent disinterest” in what you find to be important, but you must not blink or you’ll miss it, or not hear it, the sound of music that is playing. The young urban mind cultivates genius amidst the trauma that it endures. Surviving the misfortunes of the inner city isn’t easy. To avoid collapse, young minds take dissonant sounds created by unspeakable traumas and they orchestrate exquisite symphonies for only them to hear. This sound of music brings peace to the fractured world they live in, and it calms their soul and protects their mind from catastrophe.   As mentors, it is our privilege and our challenge t...

The Art of Mentoring There are millions of blogs and articles out there on mentoring. With a simple google search thousands of pages will pop up and stare you in the face. Even after 18 years of mentoring experience, I still hit major roadblocks in my mentoring process with challenging students. I call these youth, “heavy hitters” because every effort from others to connect to them fails. Their lives have been full of trauma, abandonment, poverty and pain. I am not a quitter, so over the years in times like these I get creative in my efforts, hoping to resource myself to find a way to breakthrough. Hearing their stories and circumstances may help you understand my predicament a bit more. Male 18, gang affiliated, drug addicted I’ve been mentoring this young man for 2 years, but the process stalled. I seemed to be getting nowhere as he continued to “put in work” for his neighborhood bringing drugs, violence and destruction everywhere he went. Female 16, gang affiliated, ...

The city owns you after dusk You sleep as one of its own The elephant in the room has No room to roam no trust or tusks Just skin and bones The scent of discontent of Continents adrift collide in the neap Tide of her tears inside What are we but walking trees? Seeking Roots to run deep Sesame Street has a dark side Count 1-2-3 we weep and weep Yet What are we but walking trees? Standing On every street corner While they throw shades and blades our arms stretch out In preservation Our roots run deep with hope Every playground is surrounded Laughter rides on the backs of butterflies 3 O Clock the trees stand in watch Backpacks carry our future home Written by John David McKellar John David McKellar has lived in Pomona for 14 years. His three daughters (and wife) are/were all PUSD students. Over the years his heart has been broken for our youth in the city. He served as a youth pastor for over 10 years and now serves as a Mentor Supervisor for Just Us 4 Youth. He has hope for our...