Lessons in Adolescence Podcast

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Episode 29 Quick Listen

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

Episode 28 Quick Listens

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

Episode 27 Quick Listens

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

Episode 26 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 25 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 24 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 23 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 22 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 21 Quick Listen

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.

Episode 20 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 19 Quick Listens

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.

Episode 18 Quick Listens

This episode features a conversation with Dr. 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

Episode 17 Quick Listens

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

Episode 16 Quick Listens

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 20th. 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

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 classmen and women in high school to mentor incoming 9^th 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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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 
•   21^st Century Community Learning Centers
•   The Missing Middle –  Federal Funding by Grade Span, Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, Alliance for Excellent Education, April 2019.

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

This episode features a conversation with 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

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

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

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 

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

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.