Like a Mountain: Performing Collaborative Research with Youth in Rural Appalachia

"I don't want to say that," Billy announced without elaboration. "Okay," Linda responded, not sure how to proceed. "Would anyone else like to do that part?" she asked. No response-just some nervous chuckling and horsing around as Jordon gave Wesley a friendly shove and Ronnie tossed a small beanbag across the room where Anthony and Billy started struggling with each other to get it. "That's enough," scolded Greg, trying to settle the boys down and refocus them on the task at hand. Sensing that the ball was in her court, Linda said, "Okay, maybe we'll take that line out. Billy, just skip over that and go on to the next part." Apparently finding that solution agreeable, Billy read on.

Such was the nature of some of our collaborations between high school students, local community adults who work with youth, and a professor and graduate students from a state university working primarily in the field of education. The scenario described took place as we rehearsed for a public presentation of our research. The objectionable words, "I am an outcast who doesn't belong to any group," were in a poem we wrote about students' experiences with school consolidation. Billy's expression of resistance, and most likely of his emotional and social vulnerability, illustrates a lesson we learned from our collaboration on this project-that young people appreciate the challenge of high expectations, whether social, academic, or physical, but only if those expectations are experienced in the context of caring, supportive, respectful relationships with adults and peers.

More recently some of us also realized that collaborative research and performance can themselves be forms of positive youth development. Our research presentation was the culmination of the year-long collaborative experiences of seventeen high school students, four university-based researchers, and five adults who worked with a rural youth development program. As a public, performative event, it became a driving force for our work together on the project. As we worked throughout the year the fact that we would be publicly presenting our research was always in the back of our minds.

The presentation itself-especially in the sense that it was a performance-became a central feature of our collaboration and, as will be evident later in the essay, of the youth development work as well. In the act of speaking aloud, first to each other in practice sessions and then to a larger live audience during the university presentation, the young people engaged in what Luttrell (2003) calls "showing and telling" their stories. Just as the pregnant girls Luttrell studied were drawn to performing scenes from their life experiences, the young people in our project, while eager to participate in other activities, were especially enthused about being on stage to speak publicly. Perhaps as important as speaking about their lives and viewpoints, the presentation enabled the youth to experience others listening and responding to what they had to say. Like the girls Luttrell studied, our youth used the presentation preparation and performance to make connections with, and seek recognition and support from, others.

This essay about our year-long collaboration features excerpts from the public presentation we made at Marshall University in the spring of 2007, titled "Like a Mountain: Youth Development in Rural America."¹ The excerpts present the voices of individuals from the Marshall University- based part of the research team, including a professor and two graduate students; the voices of adults affiliated with the Appalachian Women's Leadership Project (AWLP)-a former board member as well as the organization's founder and past director; and the voices of high school students who were participants in the AWLP's youth resiliency programs.

Also in this essay we draw on post-presentation reflections to explore what we learned from and about the collaborative research. In the reflections, we wrote-individually-about our perceptions and experiences. We frankly addressed satisfactions and successes as well as disappointments and concerns about the research-including...