Adolescents are a force for good. This is the last and most important of the principles of adolescent development summarized by the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent. For decades, I’ve sought to reinforce an assets-based approach through messages like “problem-free isn’t fully prepared.” However, it is a both/and message. While adolescence is a time of opportunity, it is also a time of vulnerability.
“Adolescence,” the new Netflix series by British screenwriter Jack Thorne, is about a 13-year-old boy suspected of killing a female schoolmate after being exposed to misogynist ideas online. The show explores the vulnerability of boys and young men to toxic social media. The series hit the “most watched” list in dozens of countries, including the U.S. The New York Times reported that, in Britain, the show has “reignited discussion about whether the government should restrict children’s access to smartphones.” Thorne is using the show’s popularity to encourage British lawmakers “to pass a law to ban young people’s access to social media until they are 16.”
Legislators, educators and parents should continue to find ways to limit young people’s access to harmful products, places and content online and in the real world. But this is no easy task, as school systems and youth organizations across the country are learning.
[Related: It’s a beautiful day in the ecosystem]
Nature abhors a vacuum. The best way to reduce the potential impact of harmful products and content on adolescents is to reduce their influence. We can do this by filling the void, increasing structured opportunities for young people to explore their interests with people and in places that matter to them. But to really have an impact, we need to make better use of the structured time we already have with adolescents in school and in youth development and community organizations.
The UChicago Consortium on School Research describes three primary tasks of adolescence as building competencies, forging an integrated identity and building a strong sense of agency
. These tasks are the developmental mandate that drives adolescents to take risks, find purpose and seek respect in their search for new experiences. Experiences can be positive or negative, memorable or quickly forgettable. By mid-adolescence, most experiences are unstructured. Many are unsupervised. And while lots of learning — much positive — happens in these moments, we need to be even more intentional about maximizing the structured time we have with young people so that it really counts.
An important starting point is the combined, systematic work done by XQ Institute and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to create learner outcomes that span cognitive, social, emotional and academic domains, specify the competencies and competency progressions embodied in each and define the universal criteria of powerful learning experiences.
XQ and Carnegie were and remain focused on transforming high school classroom experiences, but their commitment to help high schools forge connections to more powerful learning experiences has grown to include translating academic standards into academic competencies that blend foundational subject matter knowledge and mastery of functional literacies in ways that allow them to be combined to create powerful learning experiences.
Toward this end, XQ has developed a full suite of tools and resources to support the advancement of competency-based education in XQ high schools across the country — from starter kits to engage the whole community in whole school redesign to an interactive navigator site to help educators plan and execute more powerful learning experiences. These tools have helped XQ schools incorporate competency-based practices, find new partners within and outside of the school to engage in learning journeys with their students and adopt new ways of assessing progress to supplement state and local requirements. This work has also set the stage for use of these tools and resources in community youth development organizations that embrace the same goals.
XQ Carnegie LX Design Brief: XQ Learner Outcome Areas Checklist.
Whatever the learning goal, there are always payoffs to creating room for adolescents to explore and fail and to engage adolescents in candid, reflective discussions about how to use the lessons to make decisions in their less structured time alone, with peers and in their personal ecosystem.
[Related: When youth thrive, we all thrive]
The XQ tools and resources are now being made available to schools and youth development organizations free of charge. Now is the time to take full advantage of this exciting opportunity to identify the common denominators that help school and community educators co-design learning experiences with young people. Together, we can help adolescents build the competencies, identity and agency needed to be powerful forces for good.
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In her columns, Karen Pittman is exploring the research behind the statement, “When Youth Thrive, We All Thrive.”
