Lessons in Adolescence: Recent Episodes

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This episode features a conversation with three of the principal developers of the recently released Portrait of a Thriving Youth. Priscilla Little, Winsome Waite, and Shereen El Mallah were part of a design team formed by Youth-Nex: The University of Virginia Center for Effective Youth Development and the producer of the Lessons in Adolescence podcast, to craft a document akin to the growing number of Portraits of a Graduate being used in school systems around the country. The Portrait of a Thriving Youth extends this model beyond just the educational realm to encompass a range of assets and capacities that adults in multiple venues can help young people develop.

In part one of their conversation, Priscilla, Winsome, Shereen, and Jason talk about the reasons and motivations behind developing the Portrait of a Thriving Youth and it’s connection with other Portrait efforts in school systems and communities throughout the country, the process of developing the portrait through a cross-disciplinary design team and the ways the design team worked to capture youth input and feedback, and how the design team approached defining foundational terms like Youth and Thriving as well as why the team focused on adolescence.

In part two, they talk about the influences of relationships, environments, and systems on all the factors of development during this time period. They then dive into the six specific domains within the Portrait, the components of each of those domains, the features that cut across different domains, and the tools and resources attached to the Portrait that help educators, youth workers, and other adults create the environments to help youth thrive. They also discuss the potential benefit of the Portrait for the education and youth spaces over time.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Portrait of a Thriving Youth
  • Portrait Resource for Educators
  • Portrait Self-Assessment
• Youth-Nex: The University of Virginia Center for Effective Youth Development
  • Youth Advisory Council
• Science of Learning & Development Alliance
  • Planning Tool for Developing a System for Thriving and Learning
• “The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Youth,” National Academies for Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Consensus Study Report, 2019.
• The Portrait Model: Building Coherence in School and Systems Redesign, Getting Smart

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This episode features a conversation with Jessica Greenawalt, Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Arthur Project, a New York City-based nonprofit mentoring program focused on students in middle school. The Arthur Project taps into the professional pipeline of social workers to provide middle schoolers with professional, not volunteer, mentors.

In part one of their conversation, Jessica and Jason talk about how The Arthur Project got started, why it chose to focus on middle school-aged youth, the types of communities and schools the organization works in, the background of the students engaged in the program and how they come to participate in it, how and why clinical social workers-in-training are drawn to and sign up to be a mentor in the program, the additional training The Arthur Project provides them in positive youth development, and how the organization is both impacting students now and building a workforce pipeline of talented social workers dedicated to youth and community empowerment in the future.

In part two, they dive into the design of the Arthur Project’s therapeutic mentoring program, including how the mentors and students get matched, and how the programming evolved from individual mentoring relationships to also include group sessions with youth afterschool, and community service, recreational and cultural activities on weekends. They also discuss the results The Arthur Project is seeing, including the powerful concept of mattering and some of the advantages The Arthur Project sees with shorter-term relationships between mentor and mentees with intentional pass-offs. They then talk about the Arthur Project’s future plans to strategically scale its model in multiple ways.

Additional Readings and Resources

• The Arthur Project
  • Mentoring programming
  • Bachelor and Master of Social Work students as mentors
  • “Mattering”
  • Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray
• New York City Community Schools
• “The Mentoring Effect”

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This episode features a conversation with Dr. Kathryn Mills, associate professor at the University of Oregon and Director of the Developing Brain in Context Lab. Kate and her colleagues examine how social environments influence the development of social cognition during the transition into adolescence using a blend of methods, including behavioral observation and magnetic resonance imaging of the brain.

In part one of their conversation, Kate and Jason talk about the Developing Brain in Context Lab at the University of Oregon, what it does, the people who work there, and its evolving research interests, the concept of co-created developmental science - the engagement of community partners directly in the research process - the unique features of brain development during adolescence versus other periods of human development, and how the brain is both getting more efficient and stronger during this time period.

In part two, they talk about what’s happening in the brain when educators and youth workers and parents witness some of the hallmark developmental behaviors in adolescents like identity formation and agency, what kinds of learning approaches and environments are necessary to best foster positive brain development among youth, the considerable variability of changes in the developing brains in adolescents and the intersection of those changes in the brain with all of the changes that are happening in educational and youth development settings at the same time, the current research on the effects of technology and social media on adolescent brain development as well as the connection of developing social cognition and mental health, and the specific research interests of the Lab going forward.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Developing Brain in Context Lab
  • Published research
  • Current research projects
• “BrainAGE as a Measure of Maturation During Early Adolescence,” Lucy Whitmore, Sarah Weston, and Kathryn Mills, Imaging Neuroscience (2023) 1: 1–21
• “Co-Creating Developmental Science,” Lucy Whitmore and Kathryn Mills, Infant and Child Development, October 26, 2021.
• Equity-Centered Community Design (ECCD)™️, Creative Reaction Lab
• The Blakemore Lab
• Center for Open Science
• Oxford Internet Institute

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This episode features a conversation with Jason Sacks, President of Positive Coaching Alliance. For more than 25 years, PCA has worked to instill research and best practice in positive youth development into youth sports. There are more than 30 million young people participating in youth sports in the United States, although there are significant differences in access across communities, which is why a big part of PCA’s work is to advocate for greater equity in youth sports. PCA also offers training and resources to coaches, officials, parents, and youth to overcome the significant gaps in knowledge and capacity around positive youth development in youth sports.

In part one of their conversation, Jason and Jason talk about the origins of PCA and its founder, Jim Thompson, who began the program out of Stanford University more than 25 years ago, the state of youth sports today for more than 30 million young people, including issues of equitable access, the pressures of winning cultures on youth and adults alike, the gap in training for coaches and the evidence-based workshops and resources PCA has developed and delivers to build knowledge and capacity of coaches in positive youth development.

In part two, they talk about the range of content PCA offers in its training and resources for a variety of audiences, including not just coaches but also officials, parents, and youth athletes themselves, the work PCA is doing to assess and provide solutions for local communities to provide greater access to positive youth sports experiences, articularly in under-resourced communities, the partnerships PCA engages in - from community organizations, to school districts, to large, national youth sports associations, the results PCA is seeing in changes in behavior among adults, the sense of confidence and self-worth among youth, and for communities, how many young people stick with positive youth sports programs over time. They also talk about connecting positive youth sports experiences to other important outcomes we care about for youth, such as engagement in school, attendance, and even academic performance. And they discuss PCA’s plan to scale to reach seven million coaches over the next five years through advocacy, technology, and more partnerships.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Positive Coaching Alliance
  • Jim Thompson
  • Training & Workshops
  • Partnerships
  • Results & Impact
• Good Morning America segment: “Parenting playbook on how to handle bullying”
• Northwestern University Masters of Sports Administration Program

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This episode features a conversation with Susan Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. Through programs and partnerships, iThrive uses gaming and game design to promote social and emotional learning and positive youth development.

In part one of their conversation, Susan and Jason talk about the founding of iThrive games, the aspects of gaming and game design that directly impact the learning and development of young people, the importance and utility of play in adolescent development, and how schools, especially middle schools, don’t make enough time and space for it, and iThrive’s core co-design approach that undergirds all of its program offerings that enable adolescents to be full participants in the game design process.

In part two, they talk about the large suite of game-based curriculum products that iThrive offers for free that weave together social and emotional learning and youth development and how these offerings can help teachers tap into the developmental needs of adolescents to engage them in learning core academic content. They talk about how iThrive connects the game development experience with social issues that young people care about, how iThrive works with a variety of partners to bring the co-design process into their own offerings for young people, and the impact that iThrive is seeing among youth. Susan also shares how iThrive deals with concerns and push back from educators, parents and others on the impact of technology and gaming on young people, and what iThrive is planning to work on in the future with new partners and in new communities.

Additional Readings and Resources

• iThrive Games
  • Co-Design Approach
  • Curriculum
  • Game Design Studio Toolkit
  • Disaster Mind
• Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
  • Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goldman
• Social Psychology
• Cadence Ford
• History Co:Lab

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This episode features a conversation with Jean Eddy, CEO and President of American Student Assistance®. ASA is a national nonprofit changing the way kids learn about careers and prepare for their futures through equitable access to career readiness information and experiences. ASA helps middle and high school students to know themselves—their strengths and their interests—and understand their education and career options so that they can make informed decisions. The organization fulfills its mission – in schools and beyond the classroom—by providing free digital experiences directly to millions of students, and through advocacy, impact investing, thought leadership, and philanthropic support for educators, intermediaries, and others. ASA fosters a generation of confident, crisis-proof young people who are ready for whatever path comes next after high school.

Jean is also the author of the new book, Crisis-Proofing Today’s Learners: Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World. It’s a post-pandemic take on teaching and learning, advocating for approaches that build adaptive skills from a broader array of educational choices.

In part one, Jean and Jason talk about how the current world in which youth are living influenced her thinking and reasons for writing the book, the people and partners she relied upon to share knowledge on what’s effective in career education for adolescents, the importance of helping young people develop the skill of adaptability given the ever-changing world and marketplace of careers, examples from around the world where education is centered on self-discovery, and what employers, educators, parents can do to help young people develop their own pathways to career.

In part two they talk about how to ensure the time young people are already dedicating to the digital space is maximized for their long-term benefit, the interest in skills-based hiring among employers, the interest among Gen Z youth in pathways to employment outside the typical higher education experience, and the challenges for both of them to make alternative pathways more mainstream. They look at where career education fits within the school day, what ASA is doing to directly help young people gain skills and experiences to identify and forge their pathways, and to influence systems across the country that can better institutionalize career education for all young people, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds and with special needs.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Crisis-Proofing Today's Learners: Reimagining Career Education to Prepare Kids for Tomorrow's World
• American Student Assistance
• AMLE/ ASA Career Exploration Resource Center Exploration Lab at district in Massachusetts
• Launch Pad, Cajon Valley Union School District
• Rethinking Middle Grades initiative in Delaware
• Ender
• Episode 26: Lessons with Julie Lammers & Dr. Rahul Choudaha
• Nancy Deutsch, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Linda K. Bunker Professor of Education Director, Youth-Nex, University of Virginia
• Lisette Nieves, Distinguished Clinical Professor, New York University

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This episode features a conversation with Stephanie Malia Krauss, author of the youth development-focused books Making It and her most recent release Whole Child, Whole Life. Stephanie has broad experience as an educator, school leader, youth worker, researcher, writer, and advocate. Having had a challenging educational experience herself as a young person, including dropping out of school after the eighth grade, Stephanie works to help adults who educate, develop and care for adolescents to better understand the array of factors that drive their growth and behavior so that adults can best prepare and support them along their developmental journey.

In part one of our conversation, Stephanie and Jason talk about her motivations for writing her book, her approach to capturing and translating the volumes of research on adolescent learning and development in an accessible way for all readers while keeping true to the rigor of the research, and how youth are nestled within demographic and determinant profiles that help define who they are and can help adults best understand and support them.

In part two, they talk about the meat of the book, namely the ten practices that adults do for kids to help them thrive, importantly starting with mental health, and including such factors as embracing culture and identities, nurturing social health through relationships and nudging social wealth through community support. They also talk about the centrality of belonging and what thriving actually looks like when you see it. And we learn about what Stephanie is doing now to get this knowledge out to those who need it.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Stephanie Malia Krauss
  • Wholechildwholelife.com
  • Whole Child, Whole Life: 10 Ways to Help Kids Live, Learn, and Thrive
  • Making It: What Today's Kids Need for Tomorrow's World
• Teach for America
• Opportunity Youth
• Forum for Youth Investment
• Jobs for the Future
• Social and emotional learning
• Episode 1: Lessons with Dr. Joanna Lee Williams
• Search Institute
• CERES Institute for Children and Youth
  • Professor Jonathan Zaff

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The Season 4 opener features a conversation with Dr. Alaina Johnson, a clinical psychologist and a mother of three creatively-driven boys. Alaina is the author of the book Parenting Talent: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Understanding and Supporting Creatively-Driven Teens and Tweens and she is the head of a practice by the same name specializing in coaching others and speaking and advising on the topic. The combination of Alaina’s professional background in psychology and personal experience with her three, creatively-driven boys, has enabled her to connect the dots between the science of adolescent development and the experience of young adolescents with certain creative talents, which, importantly, are not just innate traits that, some kids have just been lucky to be born with.

In part one of their conversation, Alaina and Jason talk about her inspirations for writing the book, which include her own creatively-driven boys as well as a noticeable gap in information for parents like her to know how to understand and support them, what talent really means and the level of effort it requires among youth to actualize it, how the developmental changes in early adolescence affect youth in the creative arts in specific ways, including the development of identity and dealing with the many emotions that stem from vulnerability, and the evolution of young people’s awareness of their own ability to affect the world and their place in it.

In part two, they talk about how parents and families can engage with creative teens and tweens in the most supportive and effective ways, including when and how to communicate, keeping pace with their rapid development to be in sync with what they need at their age and stage of development, and some of the particular issues the current generation of youth are faced with. We also talk about Alaina’s next steps in helping others understand and support their own creative teens and tweens at home.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Parenting Talent: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Understanding and Supporting Creatively-Driven Teens and Tweens
  • Parenting Talent
• Haimovitz, Kyla, and Carol S. Dweck. “What Predicts Children’s Fixed and Growth Intelligence Mind-Sets?Not Their Parents’ Views of Intelligence but Their Parents’ Views of Failure.” Psychological Science 27, no. 6 (2016): 859–869.
• Jensen, Frances E. The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2016.
• Center for Parent and Teen Communication
  • Episode 29: Lessons with Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg and Dr. Jillian Baker

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This episode features a conversation with Barbara Sipe, Jeanine Turner, and Amir Elsayed from the Richmond, Virginia-based nonprofit NextUp RVA. Barbara is President & CEO of NextUp, an organization that partners with schools, the district, the city, and the community to connect middle schoolers with quality out-of-school-time opportunities across the city of Richmond, as well as provide capacity-building and support for providers of expanded learning programs. Jeanine is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Programs for NextUp, and Amir is Senior Manager of Program Services. The level of effort in infrastructure and relationship-building required to provide equitable access to quality out-of-school time programs at a large scale is complex and intensive, and also essential to drive learning and development outcomes for young adolescents.

In Part two of their conversation, Barbara, Jeanine, Amir and Jason talk about how NextUp tracks data to ensure quality of programming at scale, the impact that the organization is seeing among the students it serves, including early cohorts that are now graduating from high school, how NextUp and its partners have worked to be responsive to student needs in this moment in time, and what the organization is planning next to expand its value to the young and families of the city of Richmond.

Additional Readings and Resources

• NextUpRVA
  • Network of program providers
  • Provider professional development offerings
  • Richmond middle school partners
  • Youth Program Finder
  • Program outcomes
• Richmond Public Schools
• Wallace Foundation Afterschool resources
• CitySpan
• David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality

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This episode features a conversation with Barbara Sipe, Jeanine Turner, and Amir Elsayed from the Richmond, Virginia-based nonprofit NextUp RVA. Barbara is President & CEO of NextUp, an organization that partners with schools, the district, the city, and the community to connect middle schoolers with quality out-of-school-time opportunities across the city of Richmond, as well as provide capacity-building and support for providers of expanded learning programs. Jeanine is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Programs for NextUp and Amir is Senior Manager of Program Services. The level of effort in infrastructure and relationship-building required to provide equitable access to quality out-of-school time programs at a large scale is complex and intensive, and also essential to drive learning and development outcomes for young adolescents.

In part one of their conversation, Barbara, Jeanine, Amir and Jason talk about the origins and evolution of NextUpRVA and why middle school has been their focus from the very start, the array of partners the organization organizes and coordinates to make out-of-school opportunities available to students, the mechanisms to help young people make good choices in engaging in programs that are a good fit for their interests and needs, and the support NextUp offers to program providers to boost their capacity to serve young people.

Additional Readings and Resources

• NextUpRVA
  • Network of program providers
  • Provider professional development offerings
  • Richmond middle school partners
  • Youth Program Finder
  • Program outcomes
• Richmond Public Schools
• Wallace Foundation Afterschool resources
• CitySpan
• David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality

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This episode features a conversation with David Strahan and Madison Sides White, coauthors of the recently released book “Teaching Well with Adolescent Learners.” David is Distinguished Professor emeritus at Western Carolina University having spent 50 years in education, largely focused on the development and preparation of teachers entering middle grade classrooms. Madison is a secondary English teacher in North Carolina. With a heavy use of narrative examples, their book attempts to bring together the research base in adolescent development and effective teaching in the middle grades, a combination that highlights how essential it is that teachers and students continuously build relationships of trust to foster positive social and academic development.

In Part two of their conversation, David, Madison, and Jason talk about strategies for better linking academic and social learning, the importance of self-worth and efficacy and how showcases of learning can bolster those assets, approaches to engage the current Generation Z adolescents, plus the need for teachers to be responsive in their teaching, the current socio-political challenges in doing that, and what we can learn from that to better the teaching and learning process going forward. 

Additional Readings and Resources

• Teaching Well with Adolescent Learners: Responding to Developmental Changes in Middle School and High School
• Association for Middle Level Education
• Western Carolina University
• Rowan-Salisbury School District

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This episode features a conversation with David Strahan and Madison Sides White, coauthors of the recently released book “Teaching Well with Adolescent Learners.” David is Distinguished Professor emeritus at Western Carolina University having spent 50 years in education, largely focused on the development and preparation of teachers entering middle grade classrooms. Madison is a secondary English teacher in North Carolina. With a heavy use of narrative examples, their book attempts to bring together the research base in adolescent development and effective teaching in the middle grades, a combination that highlights how essential it is that teachers and students continuously build relationships of trust to foster positive social and academic development.

In part one of their conversation, David, Madison, and Jason talk about how their book came about and how the current fragmented state of teacher education and preparation was a prime motivator for writing it, the ways in which the book brings together the latest research on adolescent learning and development and narratives that showcase teacher practice in their own voice, and why and how building a foundation of trusting relationships becomes a thriving environment of teaching and learning.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Teaching Well with Adolescent Learners: Responding to Developmental Changes in Middle School and High School
• Association for Middle Level Education
• Western Carolina University
• Rowan-Salisbury School District

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This episode features a conversation with three professionals from Education Opens Doors, a Dallas-based nonprofit that works with Middle Schools, providing curriculum, professional learning and resources to help young adolescents be more informed about opportunities and choices for their future in high school, in college, and in careers. Kristen Pereira is Senior Curriculum Specialist, Kelsey Martin is Manager of Creative Projects, and Nia Cottonham is Implementation Manager. Together, they share how early adolescence is an ideal time to help young people explore their interests and learn practical skills and approaches to decision-making for turning those interests into their future learning, livelihood and life.

In Part two of their conversation, Kristen, Kelsey, Nia, and Jason drill deeper into the aspects of the program and how it is implemented. They talk about the ways Education Opens Doors leverages technology to challenge students in fun and engaging ways, the ways the programming prepares students for their next steps in high school and their opportunities for exploration and building self awareness and social capital, the program’s impact, especially in student engagement in learning, the ways the organization provides professional development and support and resources for teachers to implement the program, and the resources and supports for parents and families. They also reflect on how Education Opens Doors works to meet the unique circumstances and demands of this moment in time and what the organization is planning for its future growth and impact.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Education Opens Doors
  • Program model
  • Dallas Independent School District Customized Program Sample:
    • PPT: Lesson 10 - Writing My High School Plan
    • Experience: Lesson 10 - Writing My High School Plan
  • EOD Foundations Edition Program Sample:
    • PPT: Unit 4 Lesson 2 - Career Research & You
    • Experience: Unit 4 Lesson 2 - Career Research & You
  • NextGen Mentorship
    • Sample: Identifying My Character Strengths
    • Partnership - Video Testimonial
  • Parent programming samples
    • M1: Social & Emotional Well-Being of a Student
    • M2: Supporting Strong Study Habits
    • M3: Building a High School Plan
    • M4: Exploring Post-Secondary Education
    • M5: Proactively Planning for the Future
  • Program impact
  • Professional learning
• Spark Program

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This episode features a conversation with three professionals from Education Opens Doors, a Dallas-based nonprofit that works with Middle Schools, providing curriculum, professional learning and resources to help young adolescents be more informed about opportunities and choices for their future in high school, in college, and in careers. Kristen Pereira is Senior Curriculum Specialist, Kelsey Martin is Manager of Creative Projects, and Nia Cottonham is Implementation Manager. Together, they share how early adolescence is an ideal time to help young people explore their interests and learn practical skills and approaches to decision-making for turning those interests into their future learning, livelihood and life.

In part one of their conversation, Kristen, Kelsey, Nia, and Jason talk about the origins of Education Opens Doors, the program model, focused on helping students develop practical, success skills as well as find and unlock their interests and motivations as they think about and map out their futures, how the curriculum fits this particular generation of young adolescents in this particular social context, and the types of social and community impact they are particularly drawn to.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Education Opens Doors
  • Program model
  • Dallas Independent School District Customized 16-Week Program Sample:
    • In-Class PPT: Lesson 10 - Writing My High School Plan
    • Rise Exploration Experience: Lesson 10 - Writing My High School Plan
  • EOD Foundations 1 - 11th Edition Program Sample:
    • In-Class PPT: Unit 4 Lesson 2 - Career Research & You
    • Rise Exploration Experience: Unit 4 Lesson 2 - Career Research & You
  • NextGen Mentorship
    • Program Sample: Identifying My Character Strengths
    • Program Partnership - Video Testimonial
  • Parent programming samples
    • Module 1: Social & Emotional Well-Being of a Student
    • Module 2: Supporting Strong Study Habits
    • Module 3: Building a High School Plan
    • Module 4: Exploring Post-Secondary Education
    • Module 5: Proactively Planning for the Future
  • Program impact
  • Professional learning
• Teach for America
• Spark Program

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This episode features a conversation with Rob Winstead and Maria Bninski from VMDO, a 45-year-old architectural firm headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rob is Principal and K12 Studio Leader for VMDO, and Maria an associate architect. VMDO has built a long track record of leading edge design in learning spaces - K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and community recreational buildings. The firm stands out in its use of research science to create learning spaces that are attuned to the learning and development of students. Physical space can be an especially powerful influencer of educational engagement and performance, as well as positive development for young adolescents in the middle grades.

In Part 2 of their conversation, Rob, Maria and Jason talk about how VMDO works in partnership with educators, students and communities to design learning spaces, what financial resources are required for these projects and how to think about managing those costs over time, and,how VMDO engages in research collaborations to contribute to the overall knowledge base in this area overlapping architecture and education.

Additional Readings and Resources

• VMDO
• Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Department of Architecture
• University of Virginia School of Architecture
• Center for the Built Environment
• University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development
• Youth-Nex Center for Effective Youth Development
• Buford Middle School
• “Public School Facilities And Teaching: Washington, DC and Chicago,” Mark Schneider, State University of NewYork at Stony Brook, 2002.
• Plaza Life Revisited, SWA

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This episode features a conversation with Rob Winstead and Maria Bninski from VMDO, a 45-year-old architectural firm headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rob is Principal and K12 Studio Leader for VMDO, and Maria an associate architect. VMDO has built a long track record of leading edge design in learning spaces - K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and community recreational buildings. The firm stands out in its use of research science to create learning spaces that are attuned to the learning and development of students. Physical space can be an especially powerful influencer of educational engagement and performance, as well as positive development for young adolescents in the middle grades.

In Part 1 of their conversation, Rob, Maria and Jason talk about the beginnings of VMDO, the firm’s approach to designing physical space to support the learning and development, as well as the health and wellness of youth, and young adolescents in particular, using developmental science and extensive stakeholder engagement as foundational guides.

Additional Readings and Resources

• VMDO
• Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Department of Architecture
• University of Virginia School of Architecture
• Center for the Built Environment
• University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development
• Youth-Nex Center for Effective Youth Development
• Buford Middle School
• “Public School Facilities And Teaching: Washington, DC and Chicago,” Mark Schneider, State University of NewYork at Stony Brook, 2002.
• Plaza Life Revisited, SWA

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This episode features a conversation with Colleen Cicchetti and Caryn Curry from the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. Colleen is the founder and long-time Executive Director of the nearly 20-year-old Center, focused on providing access to high0-quality mental health services for children and adolescents. Caryn is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Mental Health Consultant for CCR. A 30-year veteran in the field, Caryn provides training, consultation and expertise for schools and school systems as well as out-of-school community and youth-serving organizations to build the capacity of adult educators and care-givers around trauma-informed and healing centered systems and practices, a capacity that ultimately underpins effective teaching and learning and positive youth development. 

In Part 2 of their conversation, Colleen, Caryn and Jason talk about the work that CCR does in both the in-school and out-of-school spaces, including helping schools establish comprehensive Behavioral Health Teams; and we talk about the widespread and long lasting impacts of trauma and the work of CCR to build capacity to implement trauma-informed practices.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Center for Childhood Resilience
  • Behavioral Health Team Model
  • Trauma training
  • Trauma-Responsive Schools
• Resilience Education to Advance Community Healing (REACH) Statewide Initiative
• Lurie Children’s Hospital
• Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning
• Illinois Social and Emotional Learning Standards
• Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership
• Boys and Girls Club of Chicago
• DePaul Community Health Centers
• Girls Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana

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This episode features a conversation with Colleen Cicchetti and Caryn Curry from the Center for Childhood Resilience at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. Colleen is the founder and long-time Executive Director of the nearly 20-year-old Center, focused on providing access to high0-quality mental health services for children and adolescents. Caryn is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Mental Health Consultant for CCR. A 30-year veteran in the field, Caryn provides training, consultation and expertise for schools and school systems as well as out-of-school community and youth-serving organizations to build the capacity of adult educators and care-givers around trauma-informed and healing centered systems and practices, a capacity that ultimately underpins effective teaching and learning and positive youth development.

In Part 1 of their conversation, Colleen, Caryn and Jason talk about the state of mental health among young people today, including the many societal forces affecting it, the origins of the Center for Childhood Resilience and the reasons for taking on the role of adult capacity building rather than direct student mental health services, and some of the the aspects of mental health specific to young adolescents.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Center for Childhood Resilience
  • Behavioral Health Team Model
  • Trauma training
  • Trauma-Responsive Schools
• Resilience Education to Advance Community Healing (REACH) Statewide Initiative
• Lurie Children’s Hospital
• Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning
• Illinois Social and Emotional Learning Standards
• Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership
• Boys and Girls Club of Chicago
• DePaul Community Health Centers
• Girls Scouts of Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana

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This episode features a conversation with Ron Berger, long-time educator and program developer and now Senior Advisor, Teaching and Learning for EL Education. Beginning more than 30 years ago, EL Education was born out of the Outward Bound model of experiential learning that centers around young people, and adults, building strong bonds with each other and exploring and influencing the world together rather than alone, an approach to education that has particular resonance for young adolescents.

In Part 2 of their conversation, Ron and Jason talk about EL’s open-source and highly rated and regarded English Language Arts curriculum and how it anchors experiential learning with rigorous, and standards-aligned content; they talk about EL’s newer foray into social and emotional learning with its advisory program, Crew; and they address the state of education today, how to meet the moment for young people given the impacts of the pandemic on learning and for teachers amid the backlashes around addressing issues of equity.

Additional Readings and Resources

• EL Education
  • K-8 ELA curriculum
  • Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture and Belonging
  • Kurt Hahn
• “To Improve Students’ Mental Health, Schools Take a Team Approach,” by Laura van Straaten, The New York Times, October 7, 2022.
• Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Outward Bound
  • Outward Bound Middle School Expeditions
• New American Schools Development Corporation
  • New American Schools’ Concept of Break the Mold Designs: How Designs Evolved and Why, by Susan J. Bodilly, RAND Corporation, 2001.
  • Facing the Challenges of Whole-School Reform: New American Schools After a Decade, by Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly, and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, RAND Corporation, 2002.
• A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, a report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education, January 1, 1983.

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This episode features a conversation with Ron Berger, long-time educator and program developer and now Senior Advisor, Teaching and Learning for EL Education. Beginning more than 30 years ago, EL Education was born out of the Outward Bound model of experiential learning that centers around young people, and adults, building strong bonds with each other and exploring and influencing the world together rather than alone, an approach to education that has particular resonance for young adolescents.

In Part 1 of their conversation, Ron and Jason talk about the genesis of EL Education, the core features of its educational programs that appeal to young adolescent learning and development, like hands-on, real-world group learning expeditions and student-led assessment, plus examples from its partner schools on how these concepts of learning come to life.

Additional Readings and Resources

• EL Education
  • K-8 ELA curriculum
  • Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture and Belonging
  • Kurt Hahn
• “To Improve Students’ Mental Health, Schools Take a Team Approach,” by Laura van Straaten, The New York Times, October 7, 2022.
• Harvard Graduate School of Education
• Outward Bound
  • Outward Bound Middle School Expeditions
• New American Schools Development Corporation
  • New American Schools’ Concept of Break the Mold Designs: How Designs Evolved and Why, by Susan J. Bodilly, RAND Corporation, 2001.
  • Facing the Challenges of Whole-School Reform: New American Schools After a Decade, by Mark Berends, Susan J. Bodilly, and Sheila Nataraj Kirby, RAND Corporation, 2002.
• A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, a report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education, January 1, 1983.

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This episode features a conversation with Alex Usher and Alex Seeskin from the University of Chicago. Alex Usher is Associate Director for Data Research at the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project and Senior Research Analyst for the UChicago Consortium on School Research. Alex Seeskin is Director of The To&Through Project, which is housed at the UChicago Urban Education Institute. UChicago’s Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project have been at the forefront of research into data that can determine whether students in elementary, middle and high school are on-track for on-time graduation and successfully transitioning into postsecondary options.

In Part 2 of the conversation, Alex Usher, Alex Seeskin and Jason talk about the power of on-track indicators to show real-time trajectories of students; the two most critical thresholds across student grades and attendance that drive those trajectories; how educators can use these data to influence big picture school wide educational issues as well as interventions for individual students or specific groups of students; how think about moving the needle on student trajectories; and, what are some new research interests for the middle grades on the horizon.

Additional Readings and Resources

• University of Chicago To&Through Project
  • Milestones Data Tool
  • Middle Grades Network
  • “Elementary On-Track: Elementary School Students’ Grades, Attendance, and Future Outcomes,” Alex Seeskin, Thomas Massion, and Alexandra Usher, University of Chicago Research Report, October 2022.
  • Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework, Jenny Nagayoka, et al., University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, June 2015.
  • “The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation,” Elaine Allensworth and John Q. Easton, University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, 2005.
• Consortium on Chicago School Research
• Network for College Success
• Chicago Public Schools

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This episode features a conversation with Alex Usher and Alex Seeskin from the University of Chicago. Alex Usher is Associate Director for Data Research at the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project and Senior Research Analyst for the UChicago Consortium on School Research. Alex Seeskin is Director of The To&Through Project, which is housed at the UChicago Urban Education Institute. UChicago’s Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project have been at the forefront of research into data that can determine whether students in elementary, middle and high school are on-track for on-time graduation and successfully transitioning into postsecondary options.

In Part 1 of the conversation, Alex Usher, Alex Seeskin and Jason talk about the To&Through Project and its unique partnership with Chicago Public Schools to access and analyze student data to understand performance, achievement and the educational experience; the underlying research behind on-track and early warning indicators; and, a new report from the University of Chicago that offers a research-based tool for middle grades educators to group students according to key factors that influence their long-term educational trajectories.

Additional Readings and Resources

• University of Chicago To&Through Project
  • Milestones Data Tool
  • Middle Grades Network
  • “Elementary On-Track: Elementary School Students’ Grades, Attendance, and Future Outcomes,” Alex Seeskin, Thomas Massion, and Alexandra Usher, University of Chicago Research Report, October 2022.
  • Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework, Jenny Nagayoka, et al., University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, June 2015.
  • “The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation,” Elaine Allensworth and John Q. Easton, University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, 2005.
• Consortium on Chicago School Research
• Network for College Success
• Chicago Public Schools

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This episode features a conversation with Dr. Johari Harris, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at Kennesaw State University. Johari is also the director of Educating for Democracy, an initiative housed at the University of Virginia designed to combine the science of adolescent learning and development with the teaching of critical histories and supporting justice-oriented civic engagement.

In Part 2 of their conversation, Johari and Jason talk about the Educating for Democracy Project, the resources that teachers can use in their classrooms to expose students to the many narratives that make up American history and civic life, how young adolescents are absorbing current events around the state of democracy and how to inspire them to be engaged citizens to shape a more just future.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Educating for Democracy
  • Teacher Toolkit
  • Middle School Units
  • Profiles of Resistance
• Kennesaw State University
• Harlem Children's Zone
• Social and emotional learning
• Social Cognitive Domain Theory
• Larry Nucci, University of California at Berkeley
• “What Kind Of Citizen? The Politics Of Educating For Democracy,” Joel Westheimer, University of Ottawa and Joseph Kahne, Mills College, excerpted from “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy” American Educational Research Journal. Volume 41 No. 2, Summer 2004, 237-269.
• Joanna Lee Williams, Associate Professor, School Psychology, Rutgers University
  • Lessons in Adolescence, Episode One: Lessons with Dr. Joanna Lee Williams

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This episode features a conversation with Dr. Johari Harris, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at Kennesaw State University. Johari is also the director of Educating for Democracy, an initiative housed at the University of Virginia designed to combine the science of adolescent learning and development with the teaching of critical histories and supporting justice-oriented civic engagement.

In Part 1 of their conversation, Johari and Jason talk about her research on the impact of social identity and cultural values on the development of social and emotional competencies among young adolescents of color, and how to best partner with educators to support the teaching and learning process while producing research that is relevant and usable in classrooms, as well as how to teach effective anti-racist curriculum.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Educating for Democracy
  • Teacher Toolkit
  • Middle School Units
  • Profiles of Resistance
• Kennesaw State University
• Harlem Children's Zone
• Social and emotional learning
• Social Cognitive Domain Theory
• Larry Nucci, University of California at Berkeley
• “What Kind Of Citizen? The Politics Of Educating For Democracy,” Joel Westheimer, University of Ottawa and Joseph Kahne, Mills College, excerpted from “What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy” American Educational Research Journal. Volume 41 No. 2, Summer 2004, 237-269.
• Joanna Lee Williams, Associate Professor, School Psychology, Rutgers University
  • Lessons in Adolescence, Episode One: Lessons with Dr. Joanna Lee Williams

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The production of our third season is officially underway! Our first episode will be available for listening on your preferred podcast platform later in October. Season Three will be packed with new guests, more lessons, and fresh showcases of research, practice and advocacy all focused on young adolescent learning and development.

Before we dive into Season Three, let’s listen in on some of the conversations we had with educators, researchers, and advocates in the field during Season Two. This is the second of two recap episodes for Season Two. Timestamps with the names and associations of our Season Two guests you’ll be hearing, as well as the full episode they are featured in, are below. And to get a full listen of the content we covered last season, be sure to look out for Part One of our Season Two recap series.

• 1:44.19 - Dr. Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor from FrameWorks Institute - Episode 24
• 2:34.72 - Dr. Daren Graves from Simmons University - Episode 20
• 3:16.10 - Joyce Pae from The Chicago Academy - Episode 27
• 3:49.45 - Yolanda Luna-Mroz from High Jump - Episode 19
• 4:43.04 - Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg from The Center for Parent and Teen Communication - Episode 29
• 5:36.01 - Dr. Clark McKowan from xSEL Labs - Episode 25
• 6:48.02 - Oscar Newman from The Chicago Academy - Episode 27
• 7:36.12 - Dr. Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor
• 8:42.74 - Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg
• 10:22.58 - Dr. Nate Pietrini from High Jump - Episode 19
• 11:32.29 - Oscar Newman
• 12:06.45 - Dr. Clark McKowan
• 14:04.93 - Dr. Daren Graves
• 14:43.90 - Youth Participants from Mikva Challenge - Episode 21
• 17:44.88 - Dr. Nate Pietrini
• 18:57.08 - Yolanda Luna-Mroz
• 20:15.63 - Youth Participants from Mikva Challenge - Episode 21
• 23:00.73 - Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg
• 24:26.64 - Dr. Daren Graves
• 29:08.46 - Dr. Clark McKowan
• 30:11.57 - Dr. Jillian Baker from The Center for Parent and Teen Communication - Episode 29
• 32:06.53 - Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg
• 32:21.75 - Dr. Jillian Baker
• 32:38.37 - Yolanda Luna-Mroz
• 33:03.29 - Dr. Nate Pietrini
• 33:21.84 - Dr. Daren Graves
• 34:11.46 - Dr. Nathaniel Kendall-Taylor
• 34:25.49 - Shelby Hildreth from LiberatED Way - Episode 27
• 35:29.16 - Dr. Clark McKowan
• 36:12.44 - Joyce Pae

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The production of our third season is officially underway! Our first episode will be available for listening on your preferred podcast platform later in October. Season Three will be packed with new guests, more lessons, and fresh showcases of research, practice and advocacy all focused on young adolescent learning and development.

Before we dive into Season Three, let’s listen in on some of the conversations we had with educators, researchers, and advocates in the field during Season Two. This is the first of two recap episodes for Season Two. Timestamps with the names and associations of our Season Two guests you’ll be hearing, as well as the full episode they are featured in, are below. And to get a full listen of the content we covered last season, be sure to look out for Part Two of our Season Two recap series.

• 1:48 - Nyasha Rusununguko from Higher Achievement - Episode 16
• 2:28 - Joel Daniel Harris from TomTod - Episode 28
• 3:33 - Julie DiPilato from Barnstable Public Schools - Episode 22
• 4:23 - Ashley Hemmy from American Student Assistance - Episode 22
• 5:53 - Julie Lammer from American Student Assistance - Episode 26
• 6:56 - Nyasha Rusununguko from Higher Achievement - Episode 16
• 8:20 - Joel Daniel Harris from TomTod - Episode 28
• 9:23 - Nadia K Selby from Citizen Schools - Episode 18
• 10:49 - Dr. Christine Bae from Virginia Commonwealth University - Episode 17
• 12:30 - Michael Stange from Chesterfield County Public Schools - Episode 17
• 13:24 - Nadia K Selby from Citizen Schools - Episode 18
• 14:37 - Tracyee Hogans Foster from Richmond Public Schools - Episode 17
• 15:20 - Michael Stange from Chesterfield County Public Schools - Episode 17
• 16:59 - Nadia K Selby from Citizen Schools - Episode 18
• 17:27 - Tracyee Hogans Foster from Richmond Public Schools - Episode 17
• 19:20 - Joel Daniel Harris from TomTod - Episode 28
• 20:42 - Nyasha Rusununguko from Higher Achievement - Episode 16
• 21:35 - Joel Daniel Harris from TomTod - Episode 18
• 23:14 - Dr. Rahaul Choudaha from Morning Consult - Episode 26

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In the Lessons in Adolescence podcast we feature conversations with researchers, practitioners, program developers and advocates. Drawing content from our past two seasons of episodes, we are offering a series of Mini Lessons on important topics relating to positive early adolescent development and effective middle level education. This mini lesson is about Belonging.

Vital to the learning and development of adolescents is a sense of belonging. A positive personal identity can play a big role in how confident and comfortable students feel in an academic space. In this mini lesson, we dive into how to best cultivate this experience for middle school students. 

Featuring excerpts with Rob Jagers, Vice President for research at CASEL from episode 3, and Chris Balme, Founder of Spark, Millennium School and Argonaut from episode 4.

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In the Lessons in Adolescence podcast we feature conversations with researchers, practitioners, program developers and advocates. Drawing content from our past two seasons of episodes, we are offering a series of Mini Lessons on important topics relating to positive early adolescent development and effective middle level education. This mini lesson is about Career Exploration.

Research has shown that middle school is the best time to introduce career exploration programs. The key to this experience is curating real-world experiences and interactions for students in the learning space. In this mini lesson we explore the wide variety of career exploration opportunities that are being made increasingly available for middle school students.

Featuring excerpts with Ashley Hemmy, manager of program engagement at Boston-based American Student Assistance from episode 22, Nadia Selby, Vice President of Programs at Citizen Schools from episode 18, Daquan Oliver, Founder and CEO of WeThrive from episode 23, and Julie Lammers, Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Corporate Social Responsibility for American Student Assistance from episode 26.

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In the Lessons in Adolescence podcast we feature conversations with researchers, practitioners, program developers and advocates. Drawing content from our past two seasons of episodes, we are offering a series of Mini Lessons on important topics relating to positive early adolescent development and effective middle level education. This mini lesson is about Out-of-School-Time.

When looking at the adolescent years, there’s often an emphasis on in-school academics. But a huge part of student growth also involves what happens outside of school. We spoke with various leaders of innovative after school programs to learn more about the large impact out of school time has on adolescent development.

Featuring excerpts with Jodi Grant, Executive Director of the Afterschool Alliance from episode 8, Elizabeth Micci, a Managing Director at Citizen Schools from episode 18, and Nyasha Rusununguko, the former Director of Program Operations at Higher Achievement from episode 16.

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In the Lessons in Adolescence podcast we feature conversations with researchers, practitioners, program developers and advocates. Drawing content from our past two seasons of episodes, we are offering a series of Mini Lessons on important topics relating to positive early adolescent development and effective middle level education. This mini lesson is about Racial Identity.

Issues of institutionalized racism and discrimination are roadblocks that school systems nationwide are continuously working through. As young people, middle schoolers can be extremely susceptible to trauma and demonstrations of violence involving race relations. In this mini lesson, we explore how crucial it is to provide students with the accurate language and context to inform their conversations.

Featuring excerpts with Rob Jagers, Vice President for research at CASEL from episode 3, Dr. Joanna Lee Williams, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University from episode 1, and Dr. Daren Graves, an Associate Professor of Education and Social Work at Simmons University from episode 20.

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In the Lessons in Adolescence podcast we feature conversations with researchers, practitioners, program developers and advocates. Drawing content from our past two seasons of episodes, we are offering a series of Mini Lessons on important topics relating to positive early adolescent development and effective middle level education. This mini lesson is about Relationships.

Relationships are undoubtedly a vital part of any student’s growth. But how do we begin building these relationships, or rather, what should they look like? We spoke to researchers in the academic field along with students involved in mentoring programs to determine how to best combine knowledge and practice — aiming to produce the best results for middle school students.

Featuring excerpts with Dr. Kent Pekel, former CEO of Search Institute from episode 6, Dr. Elizabeth Santiago, the former Chief Program Officer of MENTOR from episode 7, and Kiana Dixon and Janikaa Jackson, students at Brooklyn College and consultants with the Center for Supportive Schools from episode 15.

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In the Lessons in Adolescence podcast we feature conversations with researchers, practitioners, program developers and advocates. Drawing content from our past two seasons of episodes, we are offering a series of Mini Lessons on important topics relating to positive early adolescent development and effective middle level education. This Mini Lesson is about Summer Learning.

Engaging youth in summer learning programs is essential to closing educational gaps and supporting students as they navigate new identities. Research shows that there is demonstrable proof that these programs produce substantial results for middle grade students. In this mini lesson, we explore how summer learning will continue to be an influential tool in guiding youth development and inspiring positive change in student’s communities. 

Featuring excerpts with Jennifer Macombs, a senior policy researcher and director of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences Department for the RAND corporation from episode 13, Aaron Dworkin, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association from episode 11, Alec Lee, co-founder of Aim High from episode 12, Terrance Riley, Vice President of Programs of Aim High from episode 12, and Nancy Deutsch, a professor of Education at the University of Virginia and a director of UVA’s Youth-Nex Center from episode 13.

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This episode features a conversation with Dr. Ken Ginsburg and Dr. Jillian Baker from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). Ken is a physician in the Division of Adolescent Medicine and Founder and Director of Programs at the Center for Parent and Teen Communication (CPTC) at CHOP. Jill is a public health expert and Executive Director of the CPTC. CPTC develops and disseminates a range of tools and resources for parents, family members, caregivers, and adolescents, on a range of issues central to strengthening family relationships. These relationships remain core to healthy adolescent development, despite common perceptions of teens pulling away from their parents and other adults in favor of their peers.

Ken, Jill and Jason talk about the origins of the Center, the scope of its work, which involves resources and tools for both adults and teens and aspects of research, policy and advocacy, how the current mental health crisis among adolescents is shaping some of the Center’s work, the broad range of issues the Center covers, including racism, reframing adolescence, and the importance of character development in our young people, and some of the future ambitions of the Center and the field.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Center for Parent and Teen Communication
  • Growth and Development
  • Communication Strategies
  • Building Character
  • Health & Prevention
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
• Drexel University Community Health and Prevention Department
• Office of the U.S. Surgeon General
• American Society of Pediatrics
• “Identity Development for Teens of Color,” by CPTC faculty affiliate, Joanna Lee Williams

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This episode features a conversation with Joel Daniel Harris, Founder and “Executive Dreamer” of TomTod, a nearly ten-year-old youth development nonprofit based in Canton, Ohio that offers summer learning opportunities for middle school aged youth, as well as after school and in-school programming. TomTod provides a variety of community-based, immersive experiences for thousands of youth across northeast Ohio that are deeply influenced by adolescent development and rooted in community and relationships, focusing on what young adolescents are capable of here and now, and not just in the future, which can work to change what most people think of the middle school period. 

Joel Daniel and Jason talk about the genesis of TomTod, the attributes of summer learning that uniquely resonates with young adolescents, the core elements of the program, which runs throughout the year in and out of school and has a special concentration in the summer months in partnership with an array of community organizations, businesses and institutions. They then talk about the influences of Liberatory Design, positive youth development and social and emotional learning on the program, the complexities of measuring outcomes for programming directed to young adolescents, how TomTod is working to respond to the mental health crisis during this upcoming summer, and what the future holds for the organization in delivering programming as well as building capacity in schools and school systems.

Additional Readings and Resources

• TomTod
  • Camp What If
• Liberatory Design
• Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development
• Social and Emotional Learning
• Lean Canvas
• Remaking Middle School

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This episode features a conversation with three educators working to remake parts of the middle grades experience in a Chicago public school through a Liberatory Design process. Joyce Pae is principal of The Chicago Academy, or TCA, a preK through eighth grade school in the northwest side of the city. Oscar Newman is a National Board Certified science and math teacher at TCA. Shelby Hildreth is the Director of Program Design on the LiberatED Way team at AUSL, which is facilitating the Liberatory Design work at TCA. The process works to engage educators to reflect on teaching and learning and school environment and policy to advance equity in deep, specific and measurable ways.

Joyce, Oscar, Shelby and Jason talk about The Chicago Academy and the students and community it serves, some of the immediate challenges educators are facing this year as we continue to work through the pandemic, what the Liberatory Design process is, the way it’s being paired with adolescent development to focus on the middle grades, the application of the design process at TCA, the specific equity challenges that were identified and addressed through the process, the ways TCA worked to amplify youth voice and test new strategies that better aligned with adolescent developmental needs, and how educators across different contexts and environments can utilize Liberatory Design to address their own challenges.

Additional Readings and Resources

• The Chicago Academy
• AUSL
  • LiberatED Way
• Liberatory Design
  • Stanford D School
  • National Equity Project
• Remaking Middle School
• Lefkofsky Family Foundation

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This episode features a conversation with Julie Lammers and Rahul Choudaha. Julie is Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Corporate Social Responsibility for American Student Assistance, or ASA, an organization that invests in and advocates for greater career exposure and exploration for youth as early as the middle grades. Rahul is Managing Director, Higher Education at Morning Consult, a firm specializing in survey research and business intelligence. The conversation centers around a soon-to-be-released survey of employers and adolescents around alternative, non-traditional, or non-degree postsecondary education opportunities. 

Julie, Rahul and Jason talk about how the survey came about, how it was designed to capture both employer and youth perspectives, the partners involved in the effort, what we mean by multiple pathways in the postsecondary space, the perceptions of those pathways that the survey showed, and some of the delicate communication challenges that highlight the value of multiple pathways without setting different expectations for youth driven by certain biases. They then look further into the findings of the survey, specifically addressing the motivations for pursuing alternate pathways, such as the avoidance of debt and accelerating a path to employment, how to change the narrative to better legitimate multiple pathways such that they are not viewed by both employers and youth as riskier than traditional college, and what some of the structural changes that may be necessary are in the K-12 education system, federal policy around postsecondary education financing, and employer hiring practices in order to make multiple pathways more viable and perceived by both employers and youth as more valuable. 

Additional Readings and Resources

• American Student Assistance
• Jobs for the Future
• Morning Consult
• ASU+GSV Summit
• P-Tech High School Model
• Early College High School Model
• Delaware Pathways

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This episode features a conversation with Clark McKown, President and Founder of xSEL Labs and associate professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center. xSEL Labs conducts an array of research in the education and youth field specific to social and emotional learning, or SEL. Notably, xSEL labs also develops assessments for student social and emotional competencies, as well as school climate and SEL for adults. xSEL Labs is currently building a new set of SEL assessments for middle school aged students, which are being designed not only with middle school students in mind but with their direct input.

Clark and Jason talk about the history of xSEL Labs, the key differences of social and emotional learning for adolescents versus for younger children, and the evidence-based methods xSEL Labs uses to develop SEL measures as well as when and where and how in school environments the measures are administered. They then address important ways to factor racial and cultural inputs into SEL measures, Clark’s views on the current state of the SEL field and where it’s going, as well as emerging ways xSEL Labs is looking to provide more support to educators to implement SEL programming most effectively.

Additional Readings and Resources

• xSEL Labs
  • Research and evidence base for xSEL Labs assessments
• Rush Neurobehavioral Center
• “Social and Emotional Learning Programs for Adolescents,” by David Yeager, The Future of Children, Princeton University and Brookings Institution, Vol. 27, No. 1, Spring 2017
• CASEL Interactive Social and Emotional Learning Wheel
• Lessons in Adolescence Episode 3: Lessons with Dr. Robert Jagers

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with Nat Kendall-Taylor, CEO of FrameWorks Institute. FrameWorks plays a unique role in the social sector. It uses the science behind how human beings learn about and understand the world around them in order to position or frame social causes in ways that compel people to take positive action or change. For a number of years, FrameWorks has been developing strategies and resources to help educators and advocates reframe adolescence in ways that better call out aspects of exploration, discovery and openness, which balance out traditional messages of angst and risky behaviors.

Nat and Jason talk about how FrameWorks got its start and the role it plays in the social sector, the research-based process it uses to develop compelling narratives for important issues and topics, and how FrameWorks has used that process to reframe adolescence. They also talk about some of the ways FrameWorks supports organizations and the broader field to use the most effective language and channels of communication to showcase the opportunity of adolescence, how to help parents and families balance their understanding and impressions of their own adolescent children, the power of positive examples and stories of adolescents, the role of framing in bridging polarization and the cultural and political divides in education as well as other domains, and some of the new areas FrameWorks is looking to expand into or go deeper in.

Additional Readings and Resources

• FrameWorks Institute
  • Strategic Frame AnalysisⓇ
  • Toolkit on reframing adolescence and adolescent development
  • Reframing Adolescence Blog Series
• National Scientific Council on the Developing Child
• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kaheman, Random House, 2011

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with Daquan Oliver, Founder and CEO of WeThrive. Still in the first decade of his career, Daquan has earned prestigious professional fellowships in the social sector, with Ashoka and Echoing Green, and was featured as one of Forbes magazine’s thirty under thirty social entrepreneurs. WeThrive is the social enterprise Daquan founded in 2014. WeThrive offers middle and high school youth programming and seed money to develop real, revenue-generating businesses, bolstered by an array of skill-building curriculum and experiences around financial literacy, problem-solving and leadership, as well as opportunities to develop social capital through a network of mentors and advisors. WeThrive seeks to make entrepreneurship education and the opportunities it can bring equitably accessible, and in doing so really reframes how we even talk about and view youth, not as under-resourced, but rather, under-estimated.

Daquan and Jason talk about his own experience as a young adolescent and how it inspired him to make entrepreneurism and youth service the core mission of his work. They then discuss how WeThrive was created, the under-estimated youth it is designed to serve, and the core elements of the program from curriculum through the launch of student-developed micro-enterprises. They also address WeThrive’s effect on youth, how WeThrive builds not only practical skills but also senses of agency and self-worth, why and how students gravitate toward building businesses that solve social problems in their school, their community, and the world, and how Daquan thinks about scale and where WeThrive goes next within the evolving education and youth-serving landscape.

Additional Readings and Resources

• WeThrive
  • WeThrive school-based curriculum
  • WeThrive app
  • Student-build company: Buffalo Bully-Busters
• Ashoka Fellowship
• Echoing Green Fellowship
• Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneurs
• MENTOR
• Fossil

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with three authors of “Career Exploration in the Middle Grades: A Playbook for Educators,” which was developed in partnership between the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) and American Student Assistance (ASA). Stephanie Simpson is CEO of Columbus, Ohio-based AMLE, which represents tens of thousands of middle level educators across the country and offers a variety of resources, training and convenings for the field. Ashley Hemmy is manager of program engagement at Boston-based ASA, a 60 year-old national nonprofit and student loan guarantor organization which has expanded its mission to develop and invest in resources and tools to help students as early as middle school to explore their long-term career and educational goals. Julie DiPilato is a seventh grade science teacher in Barnstable, Massachusetts, where she developed an array of career exploration programming in her school. 

Stephanie, Ashley, Julie and Jason talk about the career exploration playbook, how it came about, why career exploration is a perfect match for young adolescents and where it fits within schools. They then paint a picture of what career exploration looks like in the middle grades, how educators can use it to enhance their teaching, the ways AMLE and ASA are promoting the larger scale adoption of this practice, and the opportunities for career exploration in the field of education long-term.

Additional Readings and Resources

• “Career Exploration in the Middle Grades: A Playbook for Educators”
• Career Exploration Resource Center
• Association for Middle Level Education
• American Student Assistance
  • Middle School Exploration Program
  • “Efficacy And Innovation In Middle School Career Exploration: Proven Models For Student Success”

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a series of comments and reflections and perspectives on the power of youth voice in helping young adolescents figure out what they care about and who they are, and the worth they see in themselves. First, we hear from Juleny Santa Cruz, Youth Council and Project Manager for Mikva Challenge, a Chicago-based organization that pioneered a type of experiential civics learning programming they call “action civics.” We also hear from researchers and program professionals from the University of Virginia’s Youth-Nex Center for Effective Youth Development: Abby Gillespie, Director of Strategy and Engagement, and postdoctoral research associates Faith Zabek and Ashlee Sjogren. Together, they share the core elements of the Mikva program as well as some of the broader research base on youth voice, calling out its importance in early adolescent development, the role of educators in making room for and amplifying youth voice, and setting up learning environments where youth voice can be elevated to authentic youth participation. We then mostly hear from young people. Ten young adolescents - Hailey, Da’una, Amya, Nelly, Liz, Honesty, Michelle, Xitlali, Luis, and Laurice - talk about their experiences participating in the Mikva Challenge program. They share how Mikva offers a venue for them to engage in issues important to them and their community, for fostering positive relationships, and for developing confidence and a positive self concept.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Mikva Challenge
  • Action Civics
  • Project Soapbox
  • Youth Councils
  • Elections and Campaign Experiences
• “Youth Voice in the Middle Grades."
• Ladder of Meaningful Youth Involvement.
• “Motivation, Engagement and Student Voice."
• "Measuring and Understanding Authentic Youth Engagement: The Youth-Adult Partnership Rubric."
• “Youth-adult partnerships: Entering new territory in community work and research."
• "Strengthening student voice initiatives in high schools: An examination of the supports Needed for school-based youth-adult partnerships."
• "The adoption of innovation in youth organizations: Creating the conditions for youth-adult Partnerships."
• “The psychology and practice of youth-adult partnership: Bridging generations for youth development and community change."

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with Daren Graves, Associate Professor of Education and Social Work at Simmons University and Adjunct Lecturer of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Daren’s work centers on racial identity development among youth. His most recent work is Schooling for Critical Consciousness, which shows “how schools can help Black and Latinx youth resist the negative effects of racial injustice and challenge its root causes,” a circumstance that has some particular relevance to Daren’s research focus on black boys.

Daren and Jason talk about the core features of racial identity development from the research literature, the concept of critical consciousness - plus what it means and does not mean in learning settings - the adultification of black boys and their resulting disproportionate representation in disciplinary incidents, how to best train pre-service teachers for a societal and educational landscape that is changing rapidly with respect to the racial composition of school-aged children, the intersection of racial identity development and social and emotional skill development, and the role of hip hop in the education of youth of color.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Simmons University.
• Harvard Graduate School of Education.
• Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Engaging Black and Latinx Youth in Analyzing, Navigating, and Challenging Racial Injustice, Scott Seider and Daren Graves, Harvard Education Press, 2020.
• American Educational Research Association Hip Hop Special Interest Group.
• Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement among African-American Students, Theresa Perry, Claude Steele and Asa Hilliard III, Beacon Press, 2003.
• Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South, Vanessa Sidle Walker, University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
• Lessons in Adolescence Episode 9: Lessons with Dr. Lisa Harrison.
• Lessons in Adolescence Episode 2: Lessons with Laura Ross.
• Paolo Friere's "Banking Concept of Education" from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Bloomsbury Academic, 1968.
• CASEL Social and Emotional Learning Framework.

Dr. Graves will be giving a Youth-Nex Talk on Friday March 18th at 11 AM ET on "Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Tools to help cultivate Youth Resilience and Agency." To attend in person or virtually, please visit the event website for more information as it becomes available.

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with Nate Pietrini and Yolanda Luna-Mroz from High Jump, a 30-year-old academic enrichment program offered to high achieving but under-resourced students in Chicago. Nate is a former teacher and principal, and now High Jump’s Executive Director. Yolanda is Chief Programs Officer, having also been an educator and school leader. Both are working to expand High Jump’s programming to more students in the middle grades to support their learning and development and better prepare them for the transition into high school, which a great many students find hard to do well.

Nate, Yolanda and Jason talk about the history and evolution of High Jump, how it blends academic enrichment and support with social and emotional skill development and self exploration, specific programming to help students prepare for the transition to high school, the various ways High Jump measures success, both near-term and long-term and both academic and social and emotional development, and the value programs like High Jump play in the emerging Covid-recovery and eventually post-Covid landscape.

Additional Readings and Resources

• High Jump
  • “What is High Jump?”
  • Community Scholars program
  • Virtual Tour
• Center for Urban Education Leadership, University of Illinois at Chicago
• Decatur Classical School
• Blue Ribbon
• “Free to Fail or On-Track to College: Why Grades Drop When Students Enter High School and What Adults Can Do About It,” Rosenkranz, et al., University of Chicago Consortium for Chicago School Research, April 2014

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with Nadia Selby and Elizabeth Micci from Citizen Schools, a 25-year-old Boston-based nonprofit that offers middle-school aged youth experiential learning opportunities through a blend of out-of-school time programming, in-school professional development, and community partnership. Nadia is a veteran of the organization, having worked there for some 14 years, and is currently Vice President of Programs. Elizabeth is Managing Director of Catalyst, Citizen Schools’ teacher development model. The driving force behind all of Citizen Schools’ work is embedding experiential learning opportunities into the educational experience, both in school and out of school, which is a powerful way to keep youth in the middle grades engaged and on-track.

Nadia, Elizabeth and Jason talk about the history of Citizen Schools and how it has evolved over time - including spanning both the out-of-school and in-school domains - the ways in which the organization establishes partnerships with educators, mentors, schools and companies to deliver real world experiential learning, how they develop high quality talent and mentors to serve as a “second shift” of educators, and how out-of-school time programming, people and resources can be leveraged to expand the capacity of schools.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Citizen Schools
  • Catalyst
  • Expanded Learning Time
  • Mentoring
  • National Teaching Fellowship
  • Makers + Mentors Network
• Mildred Avenue School, Boston

Remaking Middle School is launching a Middle School Listening Tour! If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, youth development professional, policy maker, or youth advocate of middle grade students, we would love to hear from you. Please visit http://RemakingMiddleSchool.org and click “Sign Up” for the Listening Tour.

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This episode features a conversation with Christine Bae of Virginia Commonwealth University, Tracyee Hogans Foster of Richmond Public Schools, and Michael Stange of Chesterfield County Public Schools. The three are engaged in a 5-year-long initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to examine student engagement in science instruction in the middle grades through a method called "authentic science discourse."

Christine, Tracyee, Mike and Jason talk about the research base around student motivation in learning, why science is a particularly good subject in which to study student motivation, what educators are experiencing this year in terms of student motivation in general after a year of long-term remote learning, and the practice of science discourse as a way to inspire and compel students to engage more with the content. They also talk about what science discourse looks like in virtual and in-person learning settings, how the practice can be sustained over time, and the value of research-practice partnerships - like the one they are participating in - to educators and to the field as a whole.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Discourse and Learning Lab
• National Science Foundation
  • Building on diverse students' funds of knowledge to promote scientific discourse and strengthen connections to science learning in urban classrooms
  • Faculty Early Career Development Program
• Virginia Commonwealth University
• Richmond Public Schools
• Chesterfield County Public Schools
• Flipgrid

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This episode features a conversation with Lynsey Wood Jeffries and Nyasha Rusununguko from Higher Achievement. Lynsey is CEO and Nyasha Director of Program Operations for the 45-year-old, Washington DC-based nonprofit serving middle-school age youth in the out-of-school-time space with a blend of academic enrichment, mentoring, and community-building, culminating in high school and ultimately college preparation. Higher Achievement serves students in communities in and around Washington, DC, Baltimore and Richmond. 

Lynsey, Nyasha and Jason talk about the history and program model of Higher Achievement, emphasizing literacy, social and emotional learning, and high school readiness. They look at the results the organization is seeing in terms of student academic and other outcomes. They delve into the ways Higher Achievement staff and mentors deliver a meaningful student experience, the changes they had to make during virtual programming amid the pandemic, and which of those they will keep. And they discuss what the pandemic showed about the essential role out-of-school-time programs have in education going forward.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Higher Achievement
  • Staying On Track: Testing Higher Achievement’s Long-Term Impact on Academic Outcomes and High School Choice
  • Aiming Higher: Assessing Higher Achievement’s Out-of-School Expansion Efforts, MDRC, 2000
• Achieve 3000 Literacy
• Social and Emotional Learning
• William T. Grant Foundation

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We're excited to announce that production on the second season of the "Lessons in Adolescence" podcast is officially underway! Our first episode will be available for listening on your preferred podcast platform Wednesday October 27th. Season two will be packed with new guests, more lessons, and fresh showcases of research, practice and advocacy all focused on young adolescent learning and development. 

Before we dive into season two, host Jason Cascarino shares some highlights from season one, including episodes that deal with issues of developing positive relationships, delivering effective youth programming during the pandemic, and helping young people navigate systemic racism and engage in racial justice. Highlighted conversations feature:

• Dr. Lisa Harrison, Associate Professor of teacher education at Ohio University
• Dr. Kent Pekel, former CEO of Search Institute
• Dr. Elizabeth Santiago, former Chief Program Officer of MENTOR
• Dr. Joanna Lee Williams, Associate Professor of school psychology, Rutgers University
• Breakthrough Collaborative CEO, Elissa Vanaver, Birmingham Executive Director, Mariohn Michele, and San Juan Capistrano Executive Director, Alex Serna
• Aim High CEO, Alec Lee and Vice President of Programs, Terrence Riley

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This episode features a conversation with Kiana Dixon and Janikaa Jackson. Kiana and Janikaa are students at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York and are alumni of the Peer Group Connection (PGC) program offered by the Center for Supportive Schools (CSS). PGC positions upper class-men and women in high school to mentor incoming 9th graders transitioning into high school from middle school. They are both now consultants with CSS, helping develop new programming and curriculum, and providing professional learning for educators on practices that incorporate authentic student voice.

Kiana, Janikaa and Jason talk about their own middle school years and their experience being bullied, their transition into high school and finding their own path, and details of their work as upper class women mentoring incoming freshmen and women and the impact having a mentor has on young adolescents transitioning from middle school. They also touch upon their experience as consultants with CSS, developing a youth advisory board to amplify youth voice, developing accessible programming during the pandemic, providing professional development to teachers and helping them make adjustments to their curriculum to align with student needs, and what they think works best to keep students engaged; plus, Kiana and Janikaa reveal what they see for their own futures.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Center for Supportive Schools
• Peer Group Connection - High School and Middle School
• CSS Youth Advisory Board
• Socratic Seminars
• Brooklyn College
• Urban Assembly School of Music and Art

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This episode features a conversation with three leaders of one of the largest and longest standing summer learning programs geared toward middle-school aged youth: Breakthrough Collaborative. Elissa Vanaver is Breakthrough’s CEO, who has led the organization through a new strategy that looks to codify its programming and solidify its large network of local affiliates across the country serving more than 10,000 students annually. Mariohn Michel and Alex Serna are two of Breakthrough’s local executive directors. Mariohn heads Breakthrough Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama and Alex heads Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano in Southern California.

Elissa, Mariohn, Alex and Jason talk about Breakthrough’s programming for middle schoolers and how that national model takes shape in various local contexts with individual needs, Breakthrough’s human capital strategy to bring talented college students in various fields into education and what effect they have on young adolescents, and vice versa, and Breakthrough’s approach to remote programming, including which elements might stick post-pandemic.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Breakthrough Collaborative
• Breakthrough Teaching Fellows
• “Inspiring Students, Developing Teachers: How A Corps Of College Students Closes Opportunity Gaps & Diversifies The Teacher Pipeline,” March 2021
• “Breaking Through The Distance: How Relationships Foster Online Learning,” October 2020
• Breakthrough Birmingham
• Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano
• “Whites Only: School Segregation is Back, from Birmingham to San Francisco,” by Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek, May 2, 2017.

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This episode features a conversation with Jennifer McCombs and Nancy Deutsch. Jennifer is a Senior Policy Researcher and Director of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences Department for the RAND Corporation, one of the world’s leading research institutes. She has been one of the main authors of several works building the knowledge base on summer learning, including a series funded by the Wallace Foundation. Nancy is a professor of education at the University of Virginia and Director of UVA’s Youth-Nex Center to Promote Effective Youth Development, a founding partner in the Remaking Middle School Initiative. Nancy’s research expertise is around adolescent development, particularly in out-of-school-time spaces.

Jennifer, Nancy and Jason talk about the reasons to study summer learning and what we want to learn from the research, specifically for young adolescents and their identity development; understanding the elements of structural inequities in summer learning and how that effects young adolescents; the best practices from research around the practical issues of implementing summer programs effectively; the reframing of summer learning from a time to make up gaps in learning to instead best capture the combination of academics and enrichment in a way that motivates and engages young adolescents, and the research interests for this upcoming summer and the next few summers to understand the potential of summertime to support the whole child, academically, socially and emotionally, psychologically, and otherwise.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Shaping Summertime Experiences: Opportunities to Promote Healthy Development and Well-Being for Children and Youth, National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, 2019
• “Getting to Work on Summer Learning: Recommended Practices for Success, 2nd Ed.,” by Heather L. Schwartz, Jennifer Sloan McCombs, Catherine H. Augustine, and Jennifer T. Leschitz, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018
• Wallace Foundation Knowledge Center
• National Summer Learning Knowledge Center
• Youth-Nex: UVA’s Center to Promote Effective Youth Development
• RAND Corporation
• Aim High

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This episode features a conversation with Alec Lee and Terrence Riley. Alec is co-founder and CEO of the 35-year-old Aim High summer learning program for middle school youth. Terrence is an alumnus of the program, and now Vice President of Programs for the organization. Aim High offers a mix of academic classes and interest-driven enrichment activities for middle school students during the summers leading into, during and transitioning out of the middle grades. Like other summer learning programs in the summer of 2020, Aim High needed to pivot from its traditional in-person model to a virtual one, called Aim High at Home, which had some advantages that the program intends to keep going forward even as they steadily transition back to in-person programming.

Alec, Terrence and Jason talk about the genesis of the Aim High program, the specific components of the experience, the types of students who participate, how the organization recruits and trains its staff, which includes local teachers-in-training and also alumni of the program, and the outcomes they are seeing across academic, social and emotional domains as well as the students’ transition into high school and even longer term. They then go into the pivot that Aim High had to make to deliver programming during the pandemic, creating Aim High at Home, how they shifted the levels of emphasis on different aspects of the programming to build belonging and community, and how they ramped up training for summer educators. They also address what they anticipate this upcoming summer will look like and its outsized importance given COVID recovery efforts, and what the future of summer learning looks like longer term.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Aim High
• Aim High At Home
• Aim High teacher programs
• “The Dynamic Effects of a Summer Learning Program on Behavioral Engagement in School,” Jaymes Pyne, Erica Messner and Thomas S. Dee., Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis, CEPA Working Paper No. 20-10, September 2020.
• “Aiming High for the Summer,” by Andrew Bauld, Harvard Graduate School of Education Centennial, 2020.
• Horizons-Upward Bound

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This episode features a conversation with Aaron Dworkin, CEO of the National Summer Learning Association, the nation’s leading champion, connector and supporter of summer learning programming. Aaron has a long history in youth service and has brought a new energy and ambition to the work of NSLA. This comes at a unique moment for the field of summer learning, as the global pandemic and worries about learning loss and mental health give heightened purpose to learning opportunities this particular summer. While that is true, it is also the case that summer learning plays a big role in the learning and development for youth in any circumstance, including creating valuable spaces and relationships specific to young adolescents in middle school.

Aaron and Jason talk about the genesis and work of NSLA, where summer learning fits within the broader ecosystem of education and youth, and more about the unique features of summer learning for young adolescents in middle school. They also address the future of summer learning - in the near-term, what summer learning is shaping up to be this year as our country looks to rebuild from the pandemic and address concerns of learning loss and mental health; in the long term, how summer learning can be better leveraged as a full partner in learning and what educators at the school and districts levels can do to forge those partnerships.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• National Summer Learning Association
• Summer Starts in September guide
• New Vision for Summer School
• Coro New York Leadership Center
• Gil Noam, Director, Institute for the Study of Resilience in Youth, McLean Hospital; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
• Values of the Game, Bill Bradley, Artisan Press, 1998.
• “Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap” by Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda Steffel, Olson American Psychological Review, Volume: 72 issue: 2, page(s): 167-180, April 1, 2007.
• Afterschool All-Stars
• Breakthrough Collaborative
• Generation Teach
• National Camp Association
• Boston Afterschool & Beyond
• Outward Bound Thompson Island
• Urban Libraries Council
• The 50 State Afterschool Network
• Teachers in the Parks

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This episode features a conversation with Rachel Graham, Director of Programs at the Lefkofsky Family Foundation in Chicago, founded by Liz and Eric Lefkofsky. The Foundation has made middle grades a singular focus for its education funding, important in a city where young adolescents have the opportunity to apply to enroll in one of many selective and specialty high schools outside their neighborhood. The Foundation’s Success Bound program helps Chicago K-8 elementary schools use developmental science to better prepare their middle grades students to be thoughtful and planful of their futures as they make consequential decisions in their choice of high school.

Jason and Rachel talk about why the Foundation chose to focus on middle grades, how the Success Bound program came to be, how the Foundation works with educators in communities of practice to integrate the programming schoolwide, what the Foundation is learning about changes in practices, behaviors and student outcomes tied to young adolescent development and the transition into high school, and how middle school can become more central to the national education agenda, and why philanthropy should see young adolescents in middle schools as an opportunity for investment.

*Note for transparency, the Lefkofksy Family Foundation is a funder of Remaking Middle School.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Success Bound
• Lefkofsky Family Foundation
• Science of Learning and Development Alliance
• A Nation At Hope: Recommendations from the National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development, The Aspen Institute
• Chicago Public Schools high school open enrollment
• The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation, University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research
• Gallup Student Poll
• The Opportunity Myth: What Students Can Show Us About How School Is Letting Them Down—and How to Fix It, TNTP, 2018.

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This episode features a conversation with Lisa Harrison, associate professor of middle childhood education at the Patton School of Education at Ohio University. Lisa is a teacher of teachers, preparing professionals for middle school classrooms. She is also a researcher, with a core area of focus on young adolescent black girls, a somewhat under-addressed topic in the research literature. She has examined the influences of social context on their identity development, including common negative images of black girls compared to their white young adolescent girl peers, as well as the experiences they have in school, often affected by adult perceptions of them that are embedded in some fundamental inequities.

Lisa and Jason talk about her research that extends into the inequitable experiences young adolescent black girls have with school discipline policies; how the national dialog around race over the past several months has impacted the way she thinks about preparing her teachers-in-training, including the importance for them to engage young adolescents in racial dialog more routinely, rather than just around big moments; the latest update of the position paper from the Association for Middle Level Education, or AMLE, called the Successful Middle School, which Lisa co-authored, that outlines core attributes and characteristics for middle schools; and how educators, as well as parents and families and other caring adults in the community can use the book to improve the learning and development experience for young adolescents.

Additional Readings and Resources

• The Successful Middle School: This We Believe, Penny A. Bishop and Lisa M. Harrison, Association for Middle Level Education, 2020.
• “Redefining Intersectionality Theory through the Lens of African American Young Adolescent Girls' Racialized Experiences,” by Lisa Harrison in Youth & Society, Volume 49, Number 8, Pages 1023-1039, November 2017.
• “Call Me Worthy: Utilizing Storytelling to Reclaim Narratives about Black Middle School Girls Experiencing Inequitable School Discipline,” by ThedaMarie D. Gibbs Grey & Lisa M. Harrison in Equity & Excellence in Education, Volume 53, Number 3, Pages 325-341, 2020.
• “Synthesizing Middle Grades Research on Cultural Responsiveness: The Importance of a Shared Conceptual Framework,” by Brianna L. Kennedy, Kathleen Brinegar, Ellis Hurd and Lisa Harrison in Middle Grades Review, Volume 2, Number 3, Article 2, December 2016.
• Push Out: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, by Monique W. Morris, The New Press, 2018.
• Association for Middle Level Education
• Patton School of Education at Ohio University

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This episode features a conversation with Jodi Grant, Executive Director of the Afterschool Alliance, the nation’s preeminent advocacy organization for afterschool programming. A veteran of public policy, Jodi has led the group for the last 15 years. In that time, the Afterschool Alliance has produced multiple updates of its “America After 3 PM” Report, the most comprehensive examination of the afterschool field, including a recent look at some of the specific challenges and opportunities of afterschool programs for middle school aged youth.

Jodi and Jason talk about how the demand for afterschool programming, which has never been higher, is not being met with adequate funding - especially for middle and high school aged youth - the inequities in afterschool that have been perpetuated by the COVID pandemic, how afterschool plays an essential supportive role as young adolescents explore opportunities for their futures as well as navigate the complexities of the current world, and an exciting new funding opportunity specifically for middle school afterschool programs being awarded in partnership between the Afterschool Alliance and the New York Life Foundation.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Afterschool Alliance
• America After 3PM
• America After 3 for Middle School Youth
• Lights On Afterschool
• New York Life Foundation
• Aim High grant program: Supporting Middle School Afterschool Programs Serving Middle School Youth
• 21st Century Community Learning Centers
• The Missing Middle –  Federal Funding by Grade Span, Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, Alliance for Excellent Education, April 2019.

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This episode features a conversation with Elizabeth Santiago, Chief Program Officer of MENTOR National, the Boston-based nonprofit that champions and advances the field of mentoring for youth. Liz’s personal experience as a young adolescent in middle school, and as a child of an under-resourced family who migrated from Puerto Rico to Boston, is a key driver in her professional work and showcases the potential that mentoring relationships can have in supporting young people who, like she once did, feel disconnected and disengaged and stop showing up.

Liz and Jason talk about the need young people have for representation of voices like their own, the gaps in mentoring opportunities for youth and ways MENTOR is addressing them, how the organization works with school systems and companies to set up and expand mentoring programs, and how to support mentors and mentees who hail from different backgrounds and communities from each other to engage in challenging conversations about our world, like racial inequity and political strife.

Additional Readings and Resources

• MENTOR National
  • “The Mentoring Effect: Young People’s Perspectives on the Outcomes and Availability of Mentoring,” a report for MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership by Civic Enterprises in association with Hart Research Associates, Mary Bruce and John Bridgeland, January 2014
  • “Social and Emotional Development in Early Adolescence: Tapping into the Power of Relationships and Mentoring Success Mentors,” Delia Hagan, Bernadette Sánchez, Jason Cascarino, Kilian White, 2019
  • Mentoring Amplifies: A New Campaign for the Mentoring Movement
  • National Mentoring Month
  • National Mentoring Summit
  • My Brother’s Keeper Success Mentors Initiative
  • Elements of Effective Mentoring
  • Black Youth Town Hall, a youth-led community dialogue aimed at supporting young people as they process recent events and the state of race relations, hosted by MENTOR and Youth Mentoring Action Network
• Reimagining Youth Work podcast, hosted by Dr. Torie Weiston-Serdan, Executive Director, Youth Mentoring Action Network
• Everyday Mentoring, The Mentoring Partnership of Southwestern PA
• National Mentoring Resource Center

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This episode features a conversation with Dr. Kent Pekel, CEO of Search Institute, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit research organization focused on studying the factors that drive youth success. Under Kent’s leadership, Search Institute has engaged in a singular focus on relationships, which he and the organization see as the foundational ingredient in the learning and development of young people.

Kent and Jason talk about how Search Institute conducts its research, working in partnership with youth organizations in schools and communities to learn while also making an impact, the five core elements of relationship-building derived from this research that structures Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships framework, and the types of approaches and practical activities that educators, youth workers and parents and families can use to intentionally develop and foster positive relationships.

Additional Readings and Resources

· Search Institute
· Search Institute’s Developmental Relationships Framework
· “Relationships First: Creating Connections that Help Young People Thrive,” Search Institute, 2017.
· The 4 S’s Interview
· “The Intersection of Developmental Relationships, Equitable Environments, and SEL” [Insights & Evidence Series], Search Institute, 2020.
· Developmental Assets Framework
· “Developmental Assets among U.S. Youth: 2018 Update,” Search Institute, 2018.
· Keep Connected, a Family Engagement Program by Search Institute

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This episode features a conversation with Ashley Leonard and Jen Ciok from the University of Chicago. Ashley is the associate director of the To&Through Project Middle Grades Network, an initiative within the University’s Urban Education Institute. Jen is a school coach, working with Ashley to offer middle grades educators in a cohort of Chicago public schools support in solving problems of practice specific to the middle grades, using the University’s extensive data and research resources.

Ashley, Jen and Jason talk about some of the specific research and tools the University of Chicago has produced around young adolescent learning and development that they are able to offer their partner schools, how they selected schools to participate in the project and what they are doing to set up educators to work within and across schools on problems of practice specific to middle grades, the challenges and opportunities their school partners are wrestling with, and what they are learning that could be helpful to the broader field.

Additional Readings and Resources

• University of Chicago To&Through Project
  • To&Through Data Tool
  • Middle Grades Network Pilot Cohort webpage
  • Middle Grades Network Op-ed
• University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research
  • On-Track Indicator
  • Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners, Camille A. Farrington, Melissa Roderick, Elaine Allensworth, Jenny Nagaoka, Tasha Seneca Keyes, David W. Johnson, and Nicole O. Beechum, June 2012
  • Looking Forward to High School and College: Middle Grade Indicators of Readiness in Chicago Public Schools, Elaine M. Allensworth, Julia A. Gwynne, Paul Moore, and Marisa de la Torre, November 2014.
  • Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework, Jenny Nagaoka, Camille A. Farrington, Stacy B. Ehrlich, and Ryan D. Heath with David W. Johnson, Sarah Dickson, Ashley Cureton Turner, Ashley Mayo, and Kathleen Hayes, June 2015.
  • Hidden Risk: Changes in GPA across the Transition to High School, Alex Seeskin, Jenny Nagaoka, and Shelby Mahaffie, October 2018.
  • Network for College Success

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This episode features a conversation with Chris Balme, Founder of Argonaut, a new live online community that offers young adolescents opportunities for hands-on experiences to develop wisdom, kindness and real-world skill. Chris has founded a handful of successful organizations, all centered on the learning and development of young adolescents, including the Spark Program and Millennium School. His drive to build new and different opportunities for middle schoolers comes in part from his own unhappy experience in those years, and a frustration he has with the low expectations commonly ascribed to middle school.

Chris and Jason talk about Chris's strong feeling that the middle school experience needs to be more relevant for young adolescents and cater to what young adolescents are “here to do,” the advantages of creating a laboratory school in the middle grades with freedom to experiment and then share things of use to the field, his approach to translating the science of learning and development into specific educational practices, and what fuels his unsatiated entrepreneurial proclivities.

Additional Readings and Resources

• chrisbalme.com and Chris's blog
• Argonaut advisory program for middle school, built around the Essential Experiences curriculum
• Millennium School and Millennium Forum
• "Talking in Circles: An In-School, Relationship-Centered Approach," a case study on Millennium Forum in Social and Emotional Learning in Early Adolescence: Tapping Into the Power of Relationships and Mentoring, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, 2019: pp. 24-28.
• A. P. Giannini Middle School, San Francisco Unified School District
• Spark Program
• Chris's Reading List:
  • Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence, by Laurence Steinberg, 2015
  • Permission to Feel, by Marc Brackett, PhD, 2019
  • How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, by Lisa Feldman Barrett

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This episode features a conversation with Rob Jagers, Vice President for Research at CASEL: The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, the leading resource for the knowledge, practice and policy around SEL. From the start of his career to his current position, Rob has had a particular interest in the role SEL plays in the learning and development of young people of color, and how it can best be seen as used as a resource to promote racial equity.

Rob and Jason talk about how young people receive SEL in different ways, and which ways are more constructive and effective than others, how focusing on SEL for adults is just as important as for youth, why the field of education as a whole needs a new paradigm for research, and why CASEL formulated guidance for schools reopening in fall 2020 - after being shut down or remote since the spring - on the foundation of relationships.

Note that Rob and Jason talked just before the start of the 2020-2021 school year, but the guidance on meaningfully using SEL is salient now and for the foreseeable future.

Additional Readings and Resources:

• Reunite, Renew, Thrive: Social and Emotional Roadmap (SEL) for Reopening School from CASEL
• A Nation At Hope: Recommendations from the National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development
• National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development: A Research Agenda for the Next Generation by Stephanie Jones, Camille A. Farrington, Robert Jagers, and Marc Brackett, with Jennifer Kahn
• The Impact of Enhancing Students' Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions by Joseph A. Dulak, Roger P. Weissberg, Allison B. Dymnicki, Rebecca D. Taylor, and Kriston B. Schellinger
• Transformative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL): Toward SEL in Service of Educational Equity and Excellence, by Robert J. Jagers, Deborah Rivas-Drake, & Brittney Williams

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This episode features a conversation with Laura Ross, a school counselor for Five Forks Middle School in the Gwinnett County Public School District in Georgia and the 2020 School Counselor of the Year. Laura has been touted for her work at Five Forks, particularly in the areas of discipline and restorative justice, and for creating what she calls a “connectedness culture.”

Laura and Jason talk about how her early experiences working with incarcerated adults motivated her to work with young people, how she and her colleagues have managed to engage their middle school students in a time of pandemic, remote learning and racial dialog, and how people’s unclear perceptions of the role of school counselors may be driving the current lack of investment in counseling as a whole, despite it being an essential support for youth in the early adolescent years.

Additional Readings and Resources

• Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond
• National School Counselor Association and the National School Counselor of the Year Award
• ADL's No place for Hate
• Beyond Differences' No one eats alone
• Gwinnett County Public Schools

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This episode features a conversation with Joanna Lee Williams, associate professor at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University.

Joanna and Jason cover how young adolescents are impacted by bias-motivated violence, why media surrounding events like Charlottesville amplify this type of violence, and how these events have a cumulative effect on young people, especially young people of color, in their formative years.

Professor Williams recently served on the academic committee to develop the Promise of Adolescence, a report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Math. She also recently released some of her own research on the reaction of young adolescents to the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and what it may tell us about engaging middle schoolers in conversations about race.

Additional Readings and Resources

“From Apathy To Vigilance: Middle School Students' Reactions To The 2017 Unite The Right Rally,” a presentation by Joanna Lee Williams, Ph.D., with co-authors Haley Johnson, Lauren Mims, Kimalee Dickerson, Andrea Negrete, & Miray Seward for the Center for Race and Public Education in the South, March 5, 2019.

The Promise of Adolescence: Realizing Opportunity for All Students, National Academies of Science, Engineering and Math, 2019.