Setting Up for Success

Our team has a series of evidence-based recommendations to facilitate our partners’ work with youth in recreational and classroom settings. Here, we have compiled a number of videos that review foundational strategies to support a positive rapport with students and promote engagement in programming.

Working with Adolescents – We know that working with children and teens can be challenging in unique ways, especially when students communicate difficulties they encounter outside of our programs and space. In this section, we present broad guidelines in working with youth and discuss how to facilitate conversations about difficult topics like mental health with student engagement in mind.

Building Community – Through our work, we have found that building a sense of community within a recreational or classroom environment promotes positive social connections, and can facilitate classroom management for teachers and staff. Here, we talk about strategies and activities that can help in building community in your space.

Maximizing Engagement, Minimizing Disruptions – In this first video, Dr. Stacy Frazier presents a range of strategies and concepts used to help keep youth engaged in academic and recreational activities. She also describes a number of ways to work towards reducing the number of disruptions in your space.

Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors – Much of our work and the recommendations you will find throughout this website is based on the Three Component Model, or the basic idea that thoughts, behaviors, and emotional and physical feelings all influence each other. This video gives a brief introduction to this concept, to create a foundation for more specific strategies, skills, and activities taught in the rest of our resources.