Youth Today
Posts By Peter Benson
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Guest Opinion Essay
What Profession Are We In?
Editor’s Note: Peter Benson, CEO of the Search Institute and an expert on youth development, passed away last month after a year-long...
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Guest Opinion Essay
Let’s Get Uncomfortable
It’s easy to get comfortable in youth work. We know our programs and our kids. We know the other players, the...
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Guest Opinion Essay
The Six Essential Questions
If there is one idea that dominates the youth work and positive youth development fields, it is that every kid needs...
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Guest Opinion Essay
A Shout Out to Michelle Obama
There is one goal that each of us in the youth “business” shares: to ensure that all children receive the full...
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Guest Opinion Essay
Put Me in Coach, I’m Ready to Play
As millions of youth workers and teachers reconnect this fall with our nation’s young people, now is a good time to...
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Guest Opinion Essay
Youth Development and the Common Good
Nothing rankles me more than poverty and our American tradition of ignoring it. For kids, poverty is the ultimate risk factor. While...
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Guest Opinion Essay
Youth Development and the Creative Life
Beauty is the only thing that can save the world. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky Many policymakers seem to think that all good things...
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Employment: Archives 2014 & Earlier
Help Your Youth Workers Succeed
What do your youth workers need to succeed? Search Institute and the National Collaboration for Youth recently surveyed more than 1,000 youth...
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Guest Opinion Essay
Promoting Developmental Supports: A Nation at Risk
For all of us who work in youth development, it’s good to keep our eyes on the ball. The ball is providing...
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Funding: Archives 2014 & Earlier
Help a Kid, Make a Buck
For years, social scientists of many stripes have tried to make the case for investing in the healthy development of our nation’s...
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Guest Opinion Essay
On a Path Toward Thriving
As caring adults in the lives of youth, many of us are privileged to witness young people discover an aspect of themselves...
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Guest Opinion Essay
What Part of Mediocre Don’t We Get?
We hear it all the time. We hear it from the podium and the pulpit, from policymakers and pundits: Children are...
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Employment: Archives 2014 & Earlier
Getting Out of Our Funk
I’m in a funk. I’ll bet you are, too. Those of us who value young people, who give our all in the...
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Guest Opinion Essay
A Topic That Frightens Youth Work
Let’s talk taboos. In the not-too-distant past, cancer was unmentionable, even if someone you loved was dying from the disease. We’ve come...
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Funding: Archives 2014 & Earlier
It’s Time to Rethink Youth Programs
America has too many youth programs. We have after-school programs, prevention programs, skill-building programs and character education programs. And we have built...
