In response to growing concerns about what young teens in Asheville were doing in the out of school hours, Mayor Terry Bellamy enlisted the support of the Asheville City Schools Foundation and community volunteers to “listen to the teens” and then develop a community-wide response with out-of-school programming. Asheville is one of several communities around the country that are realizing the importance of providing opportunities for this population of young people; they are also among those that are responding with a call for public/private collaboration across the community.
Middle school students have aged out of most of the after school and special summer programs and, under current laws, they are too young to work. This leaves them potentially vulnerable and bored. The number of hours they may be without constructive activity over the course of their middle school life (from 3:30 – 6 PM five days a week and 2 ½ months in the summer for three years), is 10,000 hours! (It is ironic that this is the total number of hours that Malcolm Gladwell found were necessary to create mastery in any given area.) Left on their own, without affordable, healthy options, these curious and independent kids are often drawn into drugs, violence, and other risky behavior (not exactly what we want them mastering!).
What Asheville discovered in it’s 85 interviews with a cross section of the school’s student population is that young teens, age 12 – 14, are full of a sense of maturity, independence, and competence. They have great ideas about how they can serve their community and support younger children and 60% of them would like meaningful opportunities for service after school and in the summer. This is the age when children pass into young adulthood and their sense of who they are and how they can contribute to their families and community changes significantly. They hold great promise for most communities—if we can find meaningful ways to engage them.
In Asheville, a team of volunteers interviewed a cross-section of 85 youth in the middle school, facilitated focus groups with 5th and 9th graders, interviewed parents and facilitated parent focus groups. This was followed by a 1½ day Appreciative Inquiry summit. Cheri Torres of Collaborative by Design worked with the Asheville City Schools to design a process that would ensured the following:
- voices of youth were heard
- best practices and strengths found their way into the conversations
- participants collaborated
- shared outcomes and a vision were generated
- collaborative future action was taken
More than 80 community members, including parents, students, service providers, government and school officials, police officers, and business members attended the summit. In just a day and a half, they generated a vision, a commitment to a community collaboration, and formed four Action Teams for moving forward in creating out-of-school programming for middle school youth. Here is the Listening to Our Teens Network (LTOT Network) vision:
The Listening to Our Teens Network delivers a coordinated menu
of highly experiential and relevant after-school and summer programs
designed and evaluated with student/young teen input. These
programs are made possible by a collaboration of individuals,
community organizations, businesses, and government pooling
their resources so all middle school youth are empowered by
opportunities to find their voice and realize their potential.
The hallmarks of every LTOT Network program are:
- Fun
- Creativity
- Enrichment
- Service
- Access
The actions team spent the last part of the morning on the second day developing a plan of action for the upcoming month and a follow up meeting was scheduled. The action teams hard at work this summer are:
- Network Communication and Coordination
- Engaged Community Leadership
- Research for Development
- Mapping Our Current Resources
For those of you interested in the LTOT Network progress, updates on this community collaboration will be posted as they emerge. As we learn more from our research, we will share it with others.
For further information about the LTOT Network, contact Kate Pett or Hanna Woody at the Asheville City Schools Foundation or Cheri Torres.
For information about how Providence RI has responded to the same need in their community, you can find out about the Providence After School Alliance. You can also view a number of videos about their program at Edutopia.
Another exceptional program that surfaced in our research was Citizen Schools, an apprenticeship program for middle school students.
Collaborative by Design is hoping to surface public/private partnerships from around the world as well as service provider collaborations that offer new and more sustainable practices for serving young people. Please add to this conversation if you are aware of other collaborative community efforts to create meaningful opportunities and programming for middle school youth.
