Earlier this year we took some time to assess the challenges in bringing SEL into common practice in the out-of-school time space. We spoke with program and field leaders, funders, practitioners and youth. We learned about challenges and opportunities related to measurement, professional development, equity, and demonstrating what good SEL practice actually looks like.

In response, SCE’s new round of grantmaking focuses on building the capacity of organizations to develop and implement the formal structures and processes needed to effectively implement high-quality social and emotional learning.

SCE is pleased to announce partnerships with four leading out-of-school time program providers focused on delivering high-quality SEL programs and practices. They include After-School All-Stars, BellXcel, Wings for Kids, and Wyman. Each of these organizations is uniquely positioned to deepen or enhance their own SEL efforts while also engaging other youth-serving organizations and systems across the U.S. in positively impacting social and emotional development in children and youth.

You can learn more about each partnership here.

Out-of-school settings offer great opportunities for social and emotional learning, and we continue to hear demand from practitioners for resources that specifically help to build empathy and regulate emotions. SCE is pleased to support two new free resources for building empathy and emotion regulation created by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.

The guides are based on the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence’s RULER approach which is designed to teach emotional intelligence to people of all ages, with the goal of creating a healthier, more equitable, innovative, and compassionate society. The approach includes the development of five essential skills including recognizing emotions in oneself and others; understanding the causes and consequences of emotions; labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary; expressing emotions in accordance to cultural norms and social context; and regulating emotions with helpful strategies.

Each new resource offers an overview of each skill as well as strategies for adults to focus on their own development of empathy and emotion regulation and approaches for working with youth to develop these skills.

Click below to learn more and access each resource:

Empathy Guide – Empathy is the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling from that person’s perspective. It can motivate us to be more compassionate towards others.  For today’s youth, empathy and compassion are more important than ever. This guide provides insight on how to help youth in out-of-school time settings increase empathy.

Emotion Regulation Guide – Emotion regulation skills help adolescents improve relationships, achieve long-term physical and mental well-being, and perform better in school. Learn more about how we can help youth regulate their emotions and behavior in a positive way in this helpful guide.

EdSurge featured two of our Reclaiming Digital Futures partners Digital Harbor Foundation (DHF) and Dream Yard in a new article about how youth are developing cutting edge skills to prepare them for future employment opportunities. While both organizations are leveraging technology, youth are learning far more than anything that requires them to plug in.

When facilitators at Digital Harbor Foundation’s Maker Foundations program give a group of students an electric toothbrush, a plastic cup, a few markers and some rubber bands, then tell them: Build a robot that draws… without any additional guidance, they are teaching youth that they can teach themselves new skills. Afterall, they have Google and each other. Basic robotics and effective Google research are just the tip of the iceberg; students learn problem solving, collaboration, innovation, project management, and much, much more.  The goal of this approach to digital learning is to prepare youth for the jobs of the future and for the ones we can’t even yet imagine. With the skills to take on new challenges and learn how to be successful, youth will be prepared for any digital or analog opportunity that arises.

DHF also regularly uses client work as pedagogy. Youth in their programs learn by doing real work for real paying clients, not observing.

Dream Yard allows students to connect artistic endeavors, social justice and digital savvy. Through developing online learning portfolios, they are not only documenting their artistic processes, they are also presenting their work in a manner that helps them create opportunities for themselves, from applying to arts schools to participating in online and analog arts communities.

Read the full EdSurge article here.

The New York Times reported on findings released by social and data scientist in the journal Human-Computer Interaction. The researchers say that the phrase, or even the  concept of what we think of as “screen time”, is both so broadly used and narrowly interpreted that it misses the mark. They tell us that our digital experiences are not mere habit, but part of our everyday life experience. Is it time to rethink the common conversations about screens for kids and all of us?
Read the full article here.

What if coaches were measured not by wins and losses, but by the personal growth of their athletes?

SCE is pleased to launch new resources that explore the role youth sports can play in developing young people’s social and emotional skills. Through a partnership with The Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program and National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development and guidance from a strategic advisory group of researchers, program providers, coaches, and athletes including young people, we commissioned the EASEL Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to produce a white paper, Coaching Social and Emotional Skills in Youth Sports, which explains the evidence behind effective strategies youth coaches can use to build these skills in their young athletes.

Calls for Coaches: Coaching Social and Emotional Skills in Youth Sports translates the white paper into actionable calls for coaches to implement in after-school and community-based sports leagues. The brief’s goals are to:

• Help coaches understand why youth sports is a great venue for developing social, emotional and cognitive skills.
• Provide strategies and best practices for coaches to name, model and create environments for youth athletes to develop and practice these skills.

View a recording of the Calls for Coaches release event here.

Digital life is a deeply personal and highly complex experience for young people. But when it comes to making digital spaces more welcoming or community-oriented, youth state that they remain largely on their own. They feel unable to act, lack the proper resources to do so, or—at worst—are left out of the conversation entirely.

As part of our new Tech and Society program, the Susan Crown Exchange is launching a Challenge: “Youth Voice in the Digital Age.” We are seeking to support programs, initiatives or campaigns that respond to the following question: How can young people inspire their peers to use technology in healthy ways and make digital spaces better for everyone?

Do you think that you or your organization might have a response to this Challenge? Click here to learn more about this funding opportunity!

 

Project FIRE, ArtReach Chicago

Interview with Marine Tempels, Development Director, ArtReach Chicago

---

Organization Name
ArtReach Chicago
Organization Website
artreachchicago.org
Organization Location
Chicago, IL
Founding Year 
1990
Organization Mission
ArtReach Chicago’s mission is to empower and connect people through the practice of visual arts. ArtReach is proud to offer glassblowing and ceramics, two media that are not only hard to access, but by their very nature elicit healing and build community.
Population Served
ArtReach primarily serves populations that have been impacted by collective or individual trauma, including violently injured youth, veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, undocumented populations, and Chicago Public School students on the South and West sides.
Please describe the problem your organization is working to solve and the ways in which your organization’s approach to this work is new or unique.
ArtReach works towards equity among Chicagoans by addressing barriers to accessing the arts, mental health resources, and employment. Our participants have told us that they’re looking for opportunities to connect with others who’ve experienced trauma, legitimate ways to earn money, and safe, positive relationships with mentors and adults. Project FIRE participants, who have been violently injured, face an additional challenge– their violence-related trauma places them at high risk for further violence (2014, Baskin & Sommers, 2). Project FIRE works to break this cycle of violence by supporting trauma recovery through intensive case management, employment, mentoring, healing through glassblowing and psychoeducation to individuals experiencing violence related trauma. Through Project FIRE, ArtReach has found trauma-informed arts programming to be a powerful tool for healing and building trust among participants. Therefore, ArtReach is currently working to expand this approach to other existing and future programs.
Combining glassblowing and ceramics with a trauma-informed approach is unique to ArtReach Chicago. Glassblowing, by nature, requires teamwork as it is very difficult to create a piece alone. Therefore it demands that individuals learn collaboration and build trust. Ceramics offers a different kind of healing, its meditative and tactile qualities offers respite, and creates a space for dialogue among community members. Glassblowing and ceramics combined with psychoeducation creates cycles of support that aid in trauma recovery and can interrupt cycles of violence.
What are some key accomplishments your organization has achieved.
In the past few years, ArtReach has nearly quadrupled its operating budget, more than doubled grant and individual donor revenue, and provided more professional development and resources to teaching artists to improve program quality.
Since its inception in 2015, Project FIRE has quadrupled its number of participants. Four participants moved into leadership and mentorship positions, of whom one is now a Teaching Artist for the program and ArtReach at large. Each year, several of our youth participate in national glass programs including Expanding Horizons in Corning, NY, as well as participating in conferences and lectures across the country. In 2017, Project FIRE was featured on NBC Nightly News and the Washington Post. The documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation titled PTSD: Beyond Trauma, which features Project FIRE, was presented at the UChicago Trauma Conference. Here is what CBC lmmakers Patrick Reed and Andrea Schmidt had to say about the program, “ It is truly a safe space, where people not only can learn skills, but also rediscover themselves, and their city; a place to craft new affiliations, new friendships, and new lives.”
Most recently, ArtReach Chicago collaborated with Pop Up X to offer a glassblowing event aimed a destigmatize mental health through art. The event was supported by Dwyane Wade’s foundation. At the first workshop, Project FIRE participants, as the experts, taught NBA star, Dwyane Wade, how to make a paperweight. It was a powerful and empowering day of people working with and learning from each other.
Although not specifically designed as an advocacy campaign, one of the greatest victories of the program is that it has created an outlet for youth to share their full stories with a national and international audience, as well as important stakeholders in legislation reform such as Senator Dick Durbin. In this way, the program has impacted not only Project FIRE participants, but all young black men in Chicago who face challenges due to widespread false narratives about themselves and the root causes of violence and racism.
What obstacles (either expected or unexpected) has your organization faced and how have you addressed them?
Our participants face challenges in their lives that create obstacles for the implementation of the program. These challenges include personal and familial struggles that make it hard for them to show up to work on time, trauma that causes fight or flight responses and inhibit functions in their frontal cortex, making learning challenging, and transportation issues related to safety concerns. ArtReach works in very close partnership with HHP-C to provide services to participants and help overcome these challenges, including guidance on family struggles and finding a safe transportation routine, psychoeducation to assist with trauma recovery, bus cards and full meals to help meet basic needs, and financial literacy to help participants understand how to manage their paychecks.
What current and future trends have you identified in your field?
The use of ceramics as a tool for respite and healing appears to be growing among arts & culture organizations. Arts & Culture organizations have identified a need for spaces where niches of people, such as violently injured youth, undocumented individuals, Muslim women, veterans, etc., can meet privately and take ownership of a space. Arts programming, and especially ceramics, has the power to meet that need.
What advice do you have for others interested in contributing to positive changes in your field?
It’s been said many times, but speaking directly with those you wish to support before offering help is so important. To ensure that resources are distributed appropriately and no harm is done, one must gain a deep understanding of the problem. Listen first, then support appropriately.
For those in the field–include participant involvement in every stage of a program, including planning and evaluation. ArtReach has learned the importance of working with mentors or alumni of the program when creating pre and post surveys. They have helped us identify questions that may not have been appropriate and created other more compelling questions.
How can funders and supporters best help your organization accomplish its goals?
Invest in all parts of the organization including overhead costs, capacity building and personnel.
Pro bono professional support in various fields has proven to be extremely beneficial for the growth of our organization.
Opportunities for our participants to share their stories, sell their work or fulfill commissions are also very helpful.

---

Selected Media Mentions
 
WGN TV, Faces of Chicago, “How Victims of Gun Violence Find Healing in the Flames of Glass Art”
NBC Nightly News, “These Chicago Teens Are Fighting the City’s Gunfire With Fire”
Chicago Reader,  “Project Fire Offers Peace Forged in the Flame”
Greenexchange,  “On Shannon Downey’s community craftivism project for Project FIRE”
 

My Block, My Hood, My City

Interview with Jahmal Cole, CEO My Block, My Hood, My City 

---

Organization Name:
My Block, My Hood, My City
Organization Website:
formyblock.org
Organization Location:
Chicago, IL
Founding Year:
2015
Organization Mission:
My Block, My Hood, My City provides underprivileged youth with an awareness of the world and opportunities beyond their neighborhoods. We take students on explorations focused on STEM, arts & culture, citizenship & volunteerism, health, community development, culinary arts, and entrepreneurism.
Population Served
Underprivileged youth (ages 14-18) from Chicago’s Englewood, North Lawndale, Roseland, and South Shore communities, 120 teens directly served to date.
Please describe the problem your organization is working to solve and the ways in which your organization’s approach to this work is new or unique.
We want to help teenagers overcome poverty and isolation they face, boosting [their] educational attainment and opening them to opportunities that make a difference in their lives.
What are some key accomplishments your organization has achieved.
To be honest, just being able to provide (120) teens with numerous safe explorations with no incidents has been a blessing. I started this program out of my jeep, with kids from the barbershop. Now we’re in seven schools. I’m also proud that we’re driving our first cohort of students to college this year. Ninety-five percent of our students know someone personally who’s been shot, but only 30 percent of our students know someone personally who’s been to college.
What obstacles (either expected or unexpected) has your organization faced and how have you addressed them?
I’ve learned that there’s a fundamental difference between the appeal of a practical organization and the appeal of a mass movement. Practical organizations offer people self advancement, but movements like My Block, My Hood, My City are about self-renunciation and self-sacrifice. I’ve learned that people can volunteer and have great enthusiasm, but after a year of working with kids in the hood, their passion for this work can become satisfied. If there’s no [personal] upward mobility [gained], then people get frustrated quicker. I basically have learned to recalibrate my expectations. Some people only with me for a season.
What current and future trends have you identified in your field?
I’m better when I play to my strengths. Instead of thinking about [broad] programs, I just stay around the kids and identify [specific] needs [and interests]. I will definitely do more podcasting with youth, actually teaching them how to produce their own podcasts, and more social media videos.
What advice do you have for others interested in contributing to positive changes in your field?
Know your goals and the risks associated with achieving them.
How can funders and supporters best help your organization accomplish its goals?
If you wake up wanting to do something about all this violence in Chicago, but don’t know what to do, listen up. My Explorers Program is a solution! If you show teens better, they do better. Exposure is key! Make a donation. We just need money, that’s all. I’m telling you, there’s plenty of money [readily available] when a corporation walks into a [local] elected official’s office and says, “Pay me or I’m leaving [the community],” but when it comes to investing in programs in poor communities, they’re like, “What have they done to really deserve it? How can we make sure they won’t abuse the system?” Come on, man. We just need money. This is the change you’re hoping for. Support this work. Help stop violence.

---

More from Jahmal Cole on My Block, My Hood, My City and  “Active Citizenship”

 
Press on My Block, My Hood, My City
 
SWHelper, My Block, My City, My Hood is Combining Social Justice With Service Learning