SCE is pleased to announce YOUmedia as a 2016 Venture Grant partner! Venture Grants proactively target thought leaders and creative organizations on the leading edge of the field. Through this initiative, we build partnerships with innovative groups working to solve key challenges aligned to our strategy.

YOUmedia is a dynamic 21st century teen learning lab located in 12 Chicago Public Library branches across Chicago—and also serves as a national model that has informed the work of similar spaces in more than 30 libraries and other public spaces throughout the country. Drawing on the Connected Learning approach—which emphasizes youth-driven, project-based learning led by mentors—the program empowers teens to create digital media, music, literature, fashion, and art that opens new pathways to college, career, and civic engagement.

Check out this video or visit the YOUmedia website to learn more.

In 2015 SCE partnered with Games for Change and the Institute of Play to support the assessment of the NYC Games for Change Student Challenge. Middle and high school students in 12 NYC public schools were challenged to create original games that addressed social issues in their own neighborhoods. There were 500 students who enrolled in game design courses. Three hundred of those students completed the course and there were 95 students who submitted 61 games. In a ceremony in June 2016, 26 winners were awarded prizes. Check out this great video on the challenge.

The goal of the assessment was to measure 21st century skill growth among the students who designed and developed games for the Challenge. Using a pre/post-test, teachers evaluated the following key skills in their students:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Tenacity
• Agency
• Empathy
• Adaptability
• Socio-Emotional

Researchers found that of the students who participated in the challenge grew most in communications (12%), collaboration (16%), creativity (12%), and socio-emotional (10%) skills, but all areas showed an improvement. This led the researchers to conclude that game design does have a positive impact on 21st century skills in the population evaluated. This assessment is a great step in evaluating the link between game design and the development of 21st century skills and we hope to see more research that evaluates this connection.

Important to the success of the program was the focus on professional development and student meet-ups/network building. Prior to the start of the challenge, there were three days of training for the 20 teachers participating in the challenge. Here the teachers learned how to implement a structured game design curriculum and the basics of game design. Teachers and students were supported by professional game designers to who visited the classes at least once a month to provide creative feedback, play test the students’ games, help the students integrate theme content into their games and share insights about the game design industry. Additionally, students joined meet-ups at partner locations like the NYTimes and the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation that helped bridge their in-class work to real world scenarios.

SCE was a proud partner of the G4C Student Challenge and look forward to their continued success as they expand to Pittsburgh and Dallas in the 2016 school year. For more information about the challenge, please visit the website.

In 2015, SCE partnered with the the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and First Book on a year-long study that explored ways of improving access to digital media among low-income communities. The findings provide a research-based context to help the field better understand how to develop high quality, sustainable, marketable tools for underserved youth. Read the full report here.

This blog series features stories from SCE’s SEL Challenge partners. 

Building Best Practices from Cedar and Oak

By Brett Hart, Executive Director from Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory

I like to think of the wood as kind of like my life; they are both hard, but I am trying to shape them into something. – Enrique Diaz, Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory Program graduate

Our work with vulnerable youth at Philadelphia Wooden Boat Factory (PWBF) has never been just about building boats, crafting sails or having a positive impact on our watershed environment. We have always been committed to shaping lives. That is why Enrique’s quote is meaningful to us. As Enrique came to learn about wood and acclimate to the tools needed to transform it into something functional and meaningful, he came also to understand that he could build his own foundation and that he had the capacity to shape the direction of his life. Our job is to provide the tools and the supportive adult relationships needed to enable youth to thrive not just as apprentices, but also in their lives.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) was not the name we first attached to this philosophical approach. In fact, the grounding of our work in this type of approach was instinctual first rather than guided by any research perspective that we consciously sought to adopt. Our founder believed that experiential learning would provide tools youth needed, at multiple levels. He also firmly believed that individual agency would take root when youth were inspired to approach and meet the demands of challenging work, in a medium where outputs clearly matched inputs, and the results had meaning, functionality and beauty.

Over time however, we also came to understand that instincts alone are not enough – that we had to become intentional in our work and that those intentions needed to be grounded in research and best practices. As a father, I’ve come to believe that the mistakes parents make are almost always made with the best intentions. I discovered the same as an organizational leader. I have always had the best of intentions with respect to the youth we serve. But those intensions have sometimes failed me as well as them.

The grounding of our work in a research perspective first occurred in a robust way when PWBF began to integrate the work of Dr. Kenneth Ginsberg and his Reaching Teens curriculum into the fabric of our program. We were introduced to the strength-based model, and developed a new set of approaches that were founded in connection and the recognition that youth are the experts in their own lives. The practices that now anchor our program, and that are featured within the Field Guide, are informed by Dr. Ginsburg’s work, our 18-month collaboration with our SEL partners, the research of the Forum for Youth Investment and the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, and a constant effort to learn more and examine the truths we believe.

The collaborative work with the 7 other groups within the Susan Crown Exchange’s (SCE) Social and Emotional Learning Challenge helped us establish a language that both described and informed our work. SCE is a Chicago-based foundation invested in shaping an ecosystem of anytime, anywhere learning that prepares youth to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing and highly connected world. SCE launched its Challenge to identify and partner with organizations, like ours, who are working to equip future generations with the social and emotional skills they need to thrive.

Studies have shown that out-of-school programs that intentionally weave social and emotional learning practices into their approach have positive impacts on youth that far exceed the impact of programs with no explicit focus on SEL, and that theses ‘non-cognitive’ SEL skills are the true predictor of post-secondary success. Our 8 groups wanted to connect to the research informed practices that existed in the field, and bring our own insight and ingenuity to the conversation. Our goal in doing so was to help inform a more universal awareness of practices that nurture these life skills.

The lessons and our narratives have been coalesced by the Weikart Center into the SEL Field Guide, which not only clearly articulates the value of SEL – namely that success in life and work depends not solely on traditional training and intellectual skills but also upon mastering the particular characteristics that we’ve come to call social and emotional learning – but also outlines six domains for skill-building among youth – emotion management, empathy, teamwork, responsibility, initiative, problem solving – and provides tools and resources for fostering them.

Of course SEL ‘Curriculums’ have many different looks. My son’s small, Quaker school for example, spent ten years honing and developing a year-round curriculum that emphasizes concepts like ‘double-dip feelings’ and fosters common language around social-emotional interactions, like “is your problem a pebble a rock or a boulder”? Their sixty+ staff members have been trained. They not only share a vernacular and can foster SEL in the moment, but they also have a formal and robust curriculum where SEL is the content of the lesson itself.

In contrast our program chooses not provide directed lessons on SEL as an adjunct to what we already do. There is value to that approach, but not in our setting. Someone said to me not long ago, that they were excited to hear how we had integrated SEL into boatbuilding. I struggled with how to respond because I wanted to make clear that, at PWBF, we aren’t separating SEL from our craftwork. We are not interrupting our apprenticeship activities to implement something extra or abstract. Rather we are developing SEL skills among our youth through intentionality on the part of our staff interventions and interactions.

This intentionality is not instinctive, but practiced. We have come a long way from the instincts that shaped our founding in the process. The field of out-of-school time, or extended learning, has fantastic potential to advance ideas and innovate because we have the flexibility to iterate. In contrast to our school-based partners, we are not beholden to a Common Core, or the bureaucracies of State and regionally managed and funded institutions. The second edge to the proverbial sword however is that, outside of criminal clearances, there are few accepted standard and shared practices for those working in this field. The paths I traveled could have more directly led to the results I sought, had I knowledge of, and access to resources earlier. We are thrilled to have been a part of this cohort, and hope that Field Guide can help advance our collective conversation about the field of positive youth development.

Last week, SCE Chairwoman, Susan Crown along with other top educators, technologists, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and investors participated in a task-force to discuss technology in education reform. The group prioritized the following four draft recommendations of what is needed in order for technology to accelerate learning:

1) Ensure that all public school students have high-speed internet access, devices, and tech support at school and at home
2) Start a national campaign to showcase and expand excellence in learning innovation
3) Radically re-imagine the classroom to enable personalized learning
4) Teach computer science (broadly defined mat every grade level, starting in kindergarten).

Watch a discussion of the results, as presented by Aspen Institute Chairman Walter Issacson and Barbara Jenkins, Superintendent of Orange County (FL) Public Schools. For more information, check out the Fortune and EdSurge coverage.

Recent research on digital media use points to two important gaps in educational opportunity for low-income families with young children. First, there is an access gap. Second, there is what scholars refer to as a participation gap, in which digital resources are not well guided or supported to ensure educational progress. Despite these barriers, many low-income families are using media and new technologies in creative ways to support their children’s pathways to success and to strengthen family relationships. In this Joan Ganz Cooney Center report, media and policy expert Victoria Rideout and Rutgers University scholar Vikki Katz explore the current uses of digital technologies to help promote educational opportunities for all through a national survey of nearly 1,200 low-income parents of school-age children and in-person interviews with lower-income, Hispanic families in three communities located in Arizona, California, and Colorado.

Download the full report here.

iCivics exists to transform civic learning through inventive and interactive resources. Founded in 2009 by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the group creates free educational materials – print-and-go lesson plans, digital literacy tools, and award-winning video games – to ensure all students receive a high-quality and engaging civic education. And their games work. Students step into the shoes of the President, a Supreme Court Judge, or even a county-level activist, and do the jobs they do. iCivics makes learning relevant to kids, and allows them to play a part and change the outcome. Their philosophy is simple: you learn best by doing.

Today, iCivics is a thriving network of educators, students, and active supporters. iCivics is used by 125,000 teachers across all 50 states. And over 4 million students benefit from their resources each year. iCivics is the largest provider of digital civics curriculum in the nation. SCE has partnered with iCivics to support their ambitious agenda: expanding the curriculum into high school, and modernizing their most popular games for greater user-access. With iCivics, young people – by the millions – will learn to become knowledgeable, curious, and engaged in civic life.