Reader reaction

A longtime friend sent me a reaction to some blog postings. He asked that I share it. It is copied below:

Empowering Youth is exactly the practical kind of book we are looking for involving our 9-12 students in activities that can be integrated across the curriculum. "Worksheets don't grow dendrites." These writers know how brains work. Active learners remember what they do. A veteran of 25 years of interactive teaching and learning in American literature and American history using the media, I highly recommend this text. These well planned activities lead to positive learning experiences in a positive school climate and positive messages for daily living. I am purchasing copies for all three high schools for immediate adoption consideration.

Michael W Bergen

Communicative Arts Emeritus

Appleton Area School District

Appleton, WI

mabergen@att.net

Seeking the return of school dropouts

Various media are talking again about high school dropouts especially in communities hit hard by the recession. Some of these communities like Las Vegas are seeking ways to get dropouts to return to school. How can this be done? Home visits might help. So also might new more motivating instructional models.

When dropouts believe in their ability to be successful, there is a real chance they will return to school and/or youth clubs for tutoring. The new book, "EMPOWERING YOUTH: Accessing Positive Peer Power" offers an interactive instructional model using enabling Socratic teaching/learning. The book highlights peer leadership training and critical thinking plus problem solving in small peer groups. Peers, at any age, are motivated naturally to participate in peer group interactions.

When motivated, dropouts can become successful and productive learners and citizens.

Interactive learning with technology and humans

Youth of today are avid interactive learners. Most youth have regular even daily access to smart phones and/or computers where they participate in active use of various interactive applications.

Schools, youth clubs, etc. need to catch up using both technology and human interactive learning options. "EMPOWERING YOUTH: Accessing Positive Peer Power" can help adults modernize motivating interactive instructional techniques by showing how to employ positive peer group problem solving and various interactions with enabling adults.

Positive Peer Power

EMPOWERING YOUTH: Accessing Positive Peer Power offers an opportunity for adults to grow as enablers of interactive teaching/learning for youth. This instructional strategy involves, for example, peers solving problems and thinking critically together.

Low-income pre-teens and teenagers as well as affluent pre-teens and teenagers increase their motivation to participate when they are interacting with peers. Motivation to participate is true for peers of any age who interact with other peers.

Leadership traits and skills

We need our youth of today, the leaders of tomorrow, to embrace understandings of leadership traits and to practice leadership skills working with peers. These traits and skills are available both to learn and to practice using our book, EMPOWERING YOUTH: Accessing Positive Peer Power.

Enabling youth to grow into understandings and practices of leadership traits and skills with peers would give us all more hope for a better tomorrow.

Using Interactive teaching/learning

Interactive teaching/learning as presented in EMPOWERING YOUTH: Accessing Positive Peer Power will put another tool into the instructional “toolbox” of any adult working to educate youth. Peers enjoy interacting with one another. Motivation to participate goes up.

Organizations or adults dedicated to educating youth can grow into interactive teaching/learning. Small peer group work, for example, might start with use once or twice a week. As skills grow doing small peer groups, the desire to increase its use also grows.

Interactive Teaching

Over many years, education reform efforts have done precious little to lift low achieving schools. This is especially true for students in low economic areas. In the main, schools continue to be controlling environments that put a premium on quiet classrooms and minimal student interactions. They are environments that feature mostly lecture and worksheets. Motivating youth to set high expectations and to participate fully remain at a low ebb.

Our book, EMPOWERING YOUTH: Accessing Positive Peer Power seeks to integrate interactive teaching/learning. Peers become active problem solvers with opportunities to work in small groups. Adults continue to teach but they also become enablers and guides who promote active student involvement.

Our book explains for adults the basic strategy for involving youth. what, why and how to integrate interactive teaching/learning with youth. It provides a rationale for why it is important to involve youth and demonstrates how to integrate interactive teaching/learning with youth. Youth then cease to become like sponges soaking up knowledge that is “poured” into them from mainly one-way teaching. Active youth involvement, especially working with peers, spurs motivation to participate and to learn. The result is higher achievement and performance gains for individuals and the organization.

It's All About the "Can Do"

“There is more to teaching than the curriculum - The more you know."  This quick hitter from the Emmy award winning series of television PSA's sponsored by NBC strikes at the heart of an issue that anyone dedicated to helping students learn can stand up and cheer about. 

Getting it done well means knowing the “What to,” the “How to,” and the “Can do.”

Almost all of us get the “what to.”  That is, we know what the message is, be it an academic lesson, a sales presentation, or whatever.  We  hone and polish and refine the “what to”until it is as tight and efficient as it can be.  Most of us also get the typical “how to.”  We design and develop our strategies, create our presentations, and assemble our attractively and neatly gathered materials.

But it is the “can do” where the process most often breaks down--developing and utilizing all the resources, especially the students, in a useful and skillful way.  Empowering Youth:Accessing Positive Peer Power  addresses the “can do.” It makes plain a process that can be used in any setting and guides the reader in a way that can open the door to effective learning.  It is, in fact, about using resources in a useful and skillful way.