Lessons in Adolescence Podcast

Lessons in Adolescence Podcasts

• Episode 6: Lessons with Dr. Kent Pekel

  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
• Episode 5: Lessons with Ashley Leonard and Jen Ciok

  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
• Episode 4: Lessons with Chris Balme

  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
• Episode 3: Lessons with Dr. Robert J. Jagers

  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 
• Episode 2: Lessons with Laura Ross

  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
• Episode 1: Lessons with Dr. Joanna Lee Williams

  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.