Nurturing Young People over the Long Term: Horizons Middle to High School Transition Guide

Nurturing Young People Over the Long Term: Middle to High School Transition Guide

Table of Contents Nurturing Young People Over the Long Term: A Horizons guide to developmentally-aligned high school transition

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Navigating Rough Waters: What research says About Young Adolescents and the 8th to 9th Grade Transition

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Transition-Supportive Competencies

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Focus on Responsible Decision Making/Agency

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Make Room for Failure: Finding Opportunities to Turn Mistakes into Aha! Moments

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The Power of the New: Novel Experiences and Increased Choice

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Everyday Agency: Getting Creative with Your Curriculum

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Resources: Decision Making and Agency

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Focus on Effective Communication/Self-Advocacy

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It’s All in Your Mind: Developing the Right Mindset and Communication Skills

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Complementary Learning: Infusing Project-Based Learning with SEL

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Resources: Effective Communication and Advocating for Self

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Horizons’ High School Transition Support Approaches

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Focus on Self-Actualization and a Long-term Vision

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Focus on High School Exposure and Concrete Skill Development

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No Unknown to Fear: High School Exposure Strategies

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Smart Choices and Hard Skills: High School Selection and Preparedness

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Eyes on the Prize: Post-Secondary Awareness and Planning

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Resources: High School Transition

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Conclusion 24 Citations 24 Bibliography 25

Nurturing Young People Over the Long Term:

A Horizons guide to developmentally-aligned high school transition

For several years, Horizons National has been strengthening our 8th to 9th grade transition programming through a generous grant from the New York Life Foundation. Within our network, we’ve looked at research-aligned practices that support a successful transition and we’ve created this guide to help you assist middle school students as they move through 6th-8th grade into high school.

1. Horizons at New Canaan Country School New Canaan, CT 2. Horizons Atlanta at Georgia Tech Atlanta, GA

Far from being prescriptive, this guide is meant to demonstrate the flexibility of research-backed practices, and inspire our educators to be creative and intentional when it comes to employing those practices.

3. Horizons Atlanta at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School Atlanta, GA

With our long-term academic support and engagement model garnering outcomes like increased school attendance, improved confidence and self-esteem, and consistent math and reading gains, we looked at the practices our teachers use that specifically support students as they approach 9th grade. This guide does so with an emphasis on the developmental needs and strengths of early adolescents, plus a focus on how the Horizons Network is supporting social and emotional learning through active/project-based learning. We’ve also looked at how different Horizons sites are approaching the task of preparing their 8th graders for high school.

6. Horizons at Greens Farms Academy Westport, CT

This guide has two primary goals: 1. Identify a range of practices within the Horizons Network that highlight the many ways our model nurtures the social and emotional competencies necessary for high school success 2. Outline specific high school transition activities that are successfully employed within the Network

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To better understand how different sites approach this topic and support students, we interviewed educators at eight Horizons programs throughout the country:

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4. Horizons at Colorado Academy Denver, CO 5. Horizons at St. Richard’s Episcopal School Indianapolis, IN

7. Horizons Hampton Roads Norfolk, VA 8. Horizons at the Harley School Rochester, NY We chose these programs because they represent varying levels of maturation and a good cross-section of program design. Each of these programs received New York Life Foundation funding designed to enhance and expand middle school programming, and together they demonstrate what programs in very different parts of the country are doing. While these are all strong middle school programs, they’re also engaged in continuous improvement – they’re always asking, “How do we change and grow?”.

The curricular approaches may vary, but there is significant agreement among Horizons educators on the important competencies for middle school students to develop – as well as the practices and activities that can help strengthen those competencies.

Each program takes a different tack for helping students develop supportive competencies and prepare for high school. Some programs use formal curricula, some develop their own, and some take a hybrid approach, blending curricula with improvisation and site-specific activities. At the end of each section,

we’ve included a variety of resources themed to the strategies we’ve highlighted – including those developed by Horizons teachers – that you can use in your own program. We’ve prioritized free resources and activity guides that can be easily incorporated into most programs.

My favorite grade is 8th grade. Because they’re learning self-efficacy; they’re learning what their world is; they’re feeling out a new space where they’re advocating for themselves and they can feel empowered. It’s an amazing age.

– Rhonda Hudson, Horizons Atlanta at the Georgia Institute of Technology

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Navigating Rough Waters:

What research says about young adolescents and the 8th to 9th grade transition Major life transitions are difficult for anyone at any age, but the transition from 8th to 9th grade can be an especially harrowing time. For adolescents moving from middle to high school, “the challenges of new relationships, academic rigor, negotiating the physical plant, and fitting in all can... make a very natural part of life’s course seem too daunting, and feelings of isolation, rejection, and alienation can arise” (Cooper and Markoe-Hayes 2). For adults trying to support adolescents as they enter this nerve-wracking time, it helps to understand the complexity of factors that affect a young person’s transition to high school and their long-term success in college and adult life.

In the past 15 years, researchers have worked to help schools and educators better understand the complex system of developmental and academic needs that can go unmet during middle school.

Understanding how to keep early adolescents engaged in learning, coming to school, and succeeding academically begins with understanding how middle school students need to learn and why.

That story doesn’t begin in the classroom, it begins in the brains of early adolescents.

The middle years are a time of intense physical, emotional, and social change for young people.

Students in their early adolescence have very specific needs that are directly tied to their brain development – during this time, students’ brains are developing at a rate second only to when we learn to walk and talk.

The neurological picture of early adolescence is one in which the limbic system, or “emotional brain,” is significantly more developed than the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that controls executive functions like inhibition of impulses, reflection, and planning (Armstrong). And as social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister explains, learning is already an emotional process for all of us. Suzanne E. Hidi further notes (cited by Halpern et al.): Emotion mediates availability to learn and drives motivation. It finds expression in confidence, excitement, anxiety, and fear of learning. Good learning is sensitive to the role of emotion, and its critical mediating role. It seeks ways to create positive emotional connections, and a personal commitment, to the learning tasks and materials (qtd. in Halpern et al. 14).

With a developed limbic system and underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, middle school students are even more sensitive than the rest of us to the presence or absence of emotion in their learning experiences. If they’re required to learn in classrooms that are largely

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didactic, their own motivation is likely to wane. For example, in one study middle school students reported that active learning motivated them more often than lecture, overhead, or textbook learning (Armstrong).

These are also the years in which young people start to form their identities by asking life’s “big questions” – How does the world really work? What principles drive it? How do I fit in? Do I fit in at all? What matters to me?

(Halpern et al. 8). Rapid-fire growth during the prepuberty years gives middle schoolers’ brains enormous potential and the capacity to be skilled in many different areas. This capacity, along with early adolescents exploring answers to those big questions, results in a sort of smorgasbord of perceived possibilities. In the middle years, curiosity and a desire to experiment bloom – early adolescents want and need to explore many interests, some of which will become key to their identity development and long-term selves.

As young people move from early to middle adolescence (roughly 8th and 9th grade) their brains begin a process that neuroscientist Jay Giedd calls “pruning”: The cells and connections that are used will survive and flourish. Those cells and connections that are not used will wither and die. So if a teen is doing music or sports or academics, those are the cells and connections that will be hard-wired. If they’re lying on the couch or playing video games or watching MTV, those are the cells and connections that are going [to] survive (Giedd).

Adolescents also start to engage in multilevel thinking: differentiating evidence from fact, analyzing their experiences, and considering the role of multiple actions and reactions. As a result, older middle school youth become more aware of their larger communities and the world in which they live. They start to understand the complex dynamics – and contradictions – of adult institutions and systems.

And so, despite the turbulence, anxiety, and challenges, middle school is actually an ideal time for adults to connect with students and guide them on their paths to becoming their future selves. This is the perfect time to help them identify and articulate their core values,

set goals, and nurture the positive habits that underpin long-term academic achievement and life success – self-regulation, long-term planning, confidence, and positive relationship development. The 2015 report, Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework, outlines the definition of young adult success around three key factors: 1. Agency 2. Integrated Identity 3. Competencies According to the report, “these factors capture how a young adult poised for success interacts with the world (agency), the internal compass that a young adult uses to make decisions consistent with her values, beliefs, and goals (integrated identity), and how she is able to be effective in different tasks (competencies)”

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If academic supports integrate a sophisticated developmental approach that takes into account the specific social and emotional competencies that early and middle adolescents need to develop, the outcomes will follow.

(Nagaoka et al. 2).

While the framework established in Foundations for Young Adult Success notes the emergence of selfregulatory skills as a key developmental growth area in early childhood, self-regulation remains a major growth area for teens. This is especially true within the context of social decision making.

Perhaps more importantly, the ability to intentionally shift focus away from environmental cues that cause reactive or negative emotional responses, or to choose to be in environments already free from these cues, is a powerful step toward transcendence of contexts that limit potential. When adolescents use self-regulatory powers to ignore distractions or choose environments that have higher developmental potential, they are often referred to as having agency. SEL skills are action skills for navigating and negotiating complicated real-world situations (Smith et al. 11).

In short, although schools tend to focus on grades, test scores, and attendance, the biggest need for young adolescents in middle school isn’t actually getting higher test scores (though that is an important part of the academic success picture). Instead, it’s to figure out how to direct their new emotional impulses and emerging metacognitive abilities into productive channels – all while navigating the difficulties of identity formation (Armstrong).

This is where out-of-school time programs like Horizons come in. According to the RAND Corporation, out-

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of-school time programs that “included at least some element of programming directed at developing social and emotional skills or that provided staff professional development around social and emotional skills,” have been found to positively impact social behaviors and self-perceptions among young people, including significantly reducing problem behaviors (McCombs et al. 11). This is critical, because behavior, habits, and attitudes – especially in the classroom, with regard to academic habits, and thoughts about the future – directly affect academic success. Developmentally supportive out-of-school time programming should take into account the major needs of middle schoolers, as well as the opportunities those needs present: • Early and middle adolescent brains run on emotion, not planning or reflection. Learning environments for this age group should embrace, rather than fight, this developmental reality by avoiding lecture- style educational models. Instead, find ways to make learning dynamic, hands-on, and social.

• Middle school students are asking the big questions that help them form their identities. As part of this, they like and need to explore and experiment with many different activities. It’s important for educators to provide safe and healthy environments for them to do so, along with opportunities for them to feel a sense of agency.

• As middle school youth move into 8th and 9th grade, their identities and habits become more cemented.

At this age, adults can work with them to help identify and embrace core values, develop positive habits, and set long-term goals aligned with their values.

As we spoke with our own Horizons educators throughout the country, we kept these needs and opportunities in mind within the context of helping our own middle school students prepare for high school. We were particularly focused on learning about how our educators’ summer programs incorporate social and emotional learning into project-based learning and other academic support activities; how they have seen Horizons contribute to long-term academic success of participants; what they view as the most important competencies for 8th graders to

develop as they approach high school; and what kind of high school readiness activities they have incorporated into their program design. Nearly every teacher we spoke with identified two key social and emotional areas that can propel students toward high school success: 1. Learning how to make informed, responsible decisions 2. Learning how to constructively communicate and self-advocate

things like study skills, grades, and attendance, but they’re the social and emotional foundation on which a successful transition to high school must be built.

This guide focuses on these supportive competencies, and highlights approaches Horizons educators are using to develop and strengthen them among their students. The second part of the guide focuses on more concrete high school transition strategies.

Similarly, that section highlights some stand-out approaches being used at different Horizons sites.

In this guide, we’ve called these “transition-supportive competencies.” They may not be as “concrete” as

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Transition-Supportive Competencies Focus on Responsible Decision Making/Agency Responsible decision making and agency can be thought of as two different things – the first as a competency, and the second as a developmental need.

But the two are intimately connected, and as we spoke with our educators, it became clear they work with Horizons students to develop both in tandem. Each of the program sites tackle the issue of gradually giving students more agency as they move through middle school a little bit differently, but in all cases, they start by helping students develop their decision making skills. After all, a sense of agency requires making more and more decisions independently, without adult instruction. For educators to trust that students can handle that newfound agency, they need to know that students can make responsible decisions.

When we asked our teachers what they felt were the most important skills 8th graders needed as they move into 9th grade, responsible decision making was at the

root of all of their answers. Young people need to know how to: • Build positive peer groups • Manage their course loads and balance extracurriculars • Make choices that propel them forward on their long-term paths • Understand how to instill good habits within themselves (studying, staying on track to meet goals, following through, and communicating) Feeling confident in their ability to make the right decisions for themselves translates into an empowered sense of agency that can carry students through their high school careers and beyond. As we spoke with our educators, three primary approaches to helping students build decision-making skills arose again and again.

1) Make Room for Failure: Finding Opportunities to Turn Mistakes into Aha! Moments Interestingly, many teachers we interviewed note that for middle school students, agency and responsible decision making can start in an unlikely place: failure.

Failure is one of life’s greatest teachers, but within the traditional school day there isn’t much room to embrace its lessons. In supportive out-of-school time programs like ours, providing the space for young people to make a decision, try it, and fail safely helps them strengthen their decision making muscles, which is key to developing a sense of agency in positive ways.

Beth Ruekberg of Horizons at the Harley School program says, “showing [young people] that you believe in them, letting them take risks, and supporting them”

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I tell them that nothing is written in stone. A lot of kids don’t come from a place where being wrong is celebrated as a place to grow. Being vulnerable and saying ‘I don’t know’ is ok. It’s not a weakness.

– Sabine Januski, Horizons at Greens Farms Academy

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how your decision will affect others, and assessing the results of your decision and your decision making process. Beth walks them through this process using the challenge as the framework. In doing so, she creates a safe space for them to both succeed and fail, as well as engage in a process of critical reflection.

is at the core of her approach to mutual trust building, which is necessary to helping middle school youth learn to make responsible decisions.

Beth’s first activity with her students involves the paper cup challenge, https://www.instructables.com/id/ How-To-Make-A-Paper-Cup-3/. She gives them a piece of paper and tells them to make her a cup without telling them the goal is for their cups to hold liquid.

The students all make different designs, but they never accomplish the goal because they inevitably don’t ask her for more details, such as what she wants the cups for. Within this challenge is an important lesson: the students “fail” because they don’t pause to gather more information before making their design decisions. Likewise, they don’t stop to ask Beth why she wants the cups – they make their decisions before taking the time to understand the needs of the person requesting the cup. As such, a fun, handson design activity built around failure demonstrates the foundation for all good decision making: taking time to gather all necessary information, considering

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Nick Stewart, from Horizons at St. Richard’s in Indiana, emphasizes how they use responsive classroom behavior management techniques to turn mistakes into teachable moments; a behavioral “failure” is treated as an opportunity for growth and reflection, www.responsiveclassroom.org. Within this frame, failure actually doesn’t exist – instead, it’s transformed into an iterative behavioral process. For example, if a student acts out or speaks out of turn, Horizons educators at St. Richard’s will sit down with the student and ask them reflective questions meant to show how their behavioral decisions affected others. They might ask, “Did you think about how your behavior would have an impact? When you spoke out in class, you interrupted, distracted other students, and slowed down their learning. Is that the kind of impact you wanted to have?”. This process helps young people learn from what worked and didn’t work about their own decisions – a process that more closely resembles design thinking than punitive models of yesteryear.

This approach inspires young people to want to change on their own by helping them build an understanding of how their decisions and actions may affect others.

It also shows them how these decisions and actions have an impact on themselves, too, both in how they’re seen by others, and in whether or not the outcome matched their intention.

Elaine Lyons from Horizons Hampton Roads also emphasizes the importance of teachers verbally reinforcing failure as a positive thing for students.

Students with the Hampton Roads program have many years with educators who say, “Failure is just another opportunity to try again.” This mantra helps young people remember they can work through difficult problems and daunting tasks, that failure doesn’t mean giving up. The responsible decision is for students to persevere through difficult challenges – a superpower when it comes to high school success.

[Students at this age] really need an increased ability to make choices and support in making good decisions. Doing that in a controlled environment where they gradually have more freedom to experiment and try new things – and not give up if something doesn’t work – is important.

– Elaine Lyons, Horizons Hampton Roads

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2) The Power of the New: Novel Experiences and Increased Choice Again and again, Horizons teachers see the importance of gradually increasing student agency through novel experiences within controlled environments. This satisfies middle school students’ developmental craving to experiment and try new things, but within healthy areas where they can safely experience failure. As Elaine Lyons notes, this approach makes it possible for youth to gradually have more freedom to fail “and then move in a new direction if the choice they made wasn’t a good idea.”

Programs can do this in many ways.

Horizons at Colorado Academy’s program designhas centered the “novel experience” approach to building agency using overnight field trips. They take a scaffolded approach to agency.

Beginning in 5th grade when students spend the night camping on the Colorado Academy campus. This enables early adolescents on the youngest end of the spectrum to gain exposure to a safe amount of independence within an environment where they’re already comfortable.

• In 6th grade, they get a little bit more independence; sixth graders spend the night at a YMCA in the Rocky Mountains, where they engage in activities like roller

skating, tubing, and swimming in the pool. During this overnight, they’re in the care of chaperones, which requires that students be more responsible about their time management and choices.

• 7th graders take a trip to Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center. For that trip, the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center team totally organizes the trip. Challenge and trust exercises are integrated into canoeing, hiking, climbing, and other water activities. These are significant experiences for an overnight stay, and while there is little independence, the Horizons students are for the first time introduced to external vendors whom they have to trust.

The Horizons team members who accompany them on this trip act as observers or actively participate in the activities themselves. This trip is considered a “bridge” trip between the familiarity and creature comforts of the 5th and 6th grade camping overnights.

• 8th graders go to Jackson, which requires a lot of trust and responsible independence from students. That 8th grade trip is a four-night stay where the students are led by a vendor team, and the activities themselves level up from the familiar to the adventurous – 6th and 7th grade’s roller skating and swimming give way to activities like horseback riding in 8th grade – which pushes students out of their comfort zones at varying levels of intensity.

This trip is a pre-high school Horizons “coming of age” trip, where middle adolescents can feel a lot more grown up, feel they are taking bigger risks, and in turn are more responsible for themselves.

Being so far from home in the care of chaperones also signals that the adults in their lives trust them to be independent because they trust them to make good decisions. Colorado Academy also has a high school component to the Horizons program, and the overnights continue in age-appropriate ways with overnights on the college campus of their choice.

On the other side of the country, the Horizons Hampton Roads program has three sites across three different cities in Virginia. Over the course of the summer, students in the program go on a total of 60 different field trips, all organized by age cohort. Fifth graders go on more traditional field trips to farmers markets,

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museums, a water science-focused learning barge, etc. On these trips, they get a chance to learn about their communities and different cultures, as well as engage in structured new activities, like kite-making.

In 6th grade, the field trips become more dynamic and align with their summer project focus. In 2018, it was computer design and 3D printing, so students visited local minority-owned tech companies, where they could learn about long-term career paths connected to what they were studying, ask questions, and gain an understanding of the decisions professional adults made to get to where they are.

Hampton Roads 6th graders alternate trips to Washington D.C. to meet with Horizons Greater Washington, and trips where Greater Washington comes to Virginia for an overnight camping trip at the beach. Seventh graders are granted more independence and implicit responsibility through a long, full-day trip to Richmond, where they tour the State holocaust museum and the State science museum. By 8th grade, students have engaged in a variety of experiences and been exposed to many different environments with varying levels of independence. Through a partnership with a local TV and radio station, Hampton Roads 8th graders learn video production and editing; the creative concept

and production strategy choices are entirely up to the students. At the end of the project, they go to the station to do the final edits on their project using station equipment.

Of course, you don’t have to be nestled in the Rocky Mountains or near a major metropolitan area to build agency-nurturing novel experiences into your program.

The trick is to gradually build more choice into your program design, while also tapping whatever unique resources your community has to offer; it’s about being creative and making connections, not your location.

3) Everyday Agency: Getting Creative with Your Curriculum While case studies highlight how local, communitybased partnerships can provide young people with novel experiences infused with increasing levels of choice, many of the programs we spoke with also find everyday ways to build choice and agency into their strategies.

Horizons at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School incorporates a globally-focused curriculum to align with their host school’s Global Academy.

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The curriculum begins in kindergarten, scaffolding toward a middle school deep dive into human rights.

From kindergarten through 2nd grade, students study hunger; 3rd-4th graders study water; and the 5th grade class studies an introduction to human rights.

Once in middle school, students delve into human rights in a more complex way by focusing on one of the thirty articles from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Over the course of the 2018 summer, 6th-8th graders studied the right to democracy. The curriculum consisted of three crucial components: 1. Inviting expert speakers to address the students, which the Holy Innocents’ program has found to be an effective hands-on approach to learning 2. Field trips related to the right to democracy, which ensures students get out of the classroom for experiential learning

As part of the elections, students put together a student government. Sixth to 8th grade students could run for President, Vice President, and Secretary. Students who wanted to run for these positions had to apply, campaign, and give a speech in front of their peers.

After the election took place, the student leaders held town hall meetings with their peers and reported concerns and desired changes regarding the program to the Site Director and Academic Director. Within this framework, students got to choose who they wanted to work with, what their platform was, and how they wanted to campaign. They were responsible for meeting key deadlines, like filing their candidacy applications and having speeches ready by specific dates. They were also free to choose the primary aspects of their campaign, knowing their decisions could make or break their campaign success.

3. Student elections, which satisfies middle school students’ desire for agency

Resources: Decision Making and Agency 1. Making Good Decisions Interactive Modules, by the Good Project at Project Zero, http://thegoodproject.org/modules/dilemmasdecisions/#/home 2. Responsible Decision Making, by ACT for Youth, http://actforyouth.net/youth_development/professionals/sel/decision_making.cfm 3. Making Better Choices, by ACES, http://www.aces.edu/teens/pdf/mod7.pdf 4. Participatory Evaluation with Young People, by Youth.gov, http://archive.ssw.umich.edu/public/currentProjects/youthAndCommunity/pubs/youthbook.pdf 5. Youth Voice, by the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, http://www.cypq.org/sites/cypq.org/files/Youth_Voice_GuidebookSample.pdf 6. iCivics, an open-source civics curriculum with a combination of student-driven, decision-making activities and guided lessons on a variety of civics topics, https://www.icivics.org/teachers 7. Human Rights Lessons 6-8, by The Advocates for Human Rights; students research specific human rights topics, build arguments with concrete evidence, and take action in their communities, https://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/6-8.html 8. Middle School Project-Based Learning Plan, by Holy Innocents’, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ekG7LzvinYS3FSNG1kMTNUa2o4SUZpS3ZlVm1kX0FTU2pZ/view 9. Middle School Human Rights Curriculum Description, by Holy Innocents’

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The beauty of Horizons is that we work really hard at creating a fun learning experience. Whether it’s a STEM lesson where students build bridges and do experiments, field trips, or student government, we encourage teachers to be as creative as they possibly can be.

– Tiffany Churchwell, Horizons at Holy Innocents’

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Focus on Effective Communication/Self-Advocacy Navigating relationships is one of life’s recurring themes, but for high school students trying to do so with their teachers and guidance counselors, the power dynamic can feel daunting. And yet, as Horizons Educator Kelonda Maull points out, having constructive conversations with teachers is critically important for students: “Before their teacher calls home, they should be able to have a conversation with the child, and kids need to know how to have those conversations.”

Kelonda also notes that students need to know when and how to ask for help if they feel overwhelmed.

To some adults, having those conversations might sound pretty straightforward, but in fact they require developing a number of complex skills and competencies. First, they require being able to calmly identify feelings of being overwhelmed, frustrated, and stressed – without being reactive. Next, a young person needs to be able to assess the kind of support they need and to effectively communicate their needs.

This requires a sense of what the student’s long-term goals are based on and the vision they have for their future – in short, “this is who I want to be and how I want to get there, I’m having a hard time right now, but this is how you can help me get there.” Effective communication and self-advocacy are a lot to manage!

But if adults focus on nurturing a positive growth mindset for early and middle adolescents, by high school, students will have a solid understanding of how to meet their own potential.

1) It’s All in Your Mind: Developing the Right Mindset and Communication Skills In helping middle schoolers develop positive mindsets, one particular activity arose multiple times throughout our interviews with sites: mindfulness.

At Horizons at the Harley School, Beth Ruekberg says everything they do is rooted in social and emotional learning because that’s what helps students build positive mindsets, constructive communication, and healthy relationships. This practice gives students time to take pause and get centered, which helps them assess their feelings and state of mind, and in turn helps them communicate Each day, they begin with a centering exercise (mindfulness), about their needs. Doing so followed by a sharing circle, where students, teachers, and staff all demonstrates how they’re feeling check in with each other using five degrees of how they’re feeling. to their teacher, but it also helps The Centering Activity on page seven of Harley’s SEL activities lays their peers practice empathy and out a step-by-step guide for 7th and 8th graders to start their day become more aware of how others with mindfulness, and it’s followed with a step-by-step guide to are doing, which influences their walking meditation. Both activities can be easily incorporated into interactions. Horizons at Harley any environment and schedule. has developed a multi-faceted

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For middle school, [mindfulness] really helps [young people] be proactive and be agents for their lives – not just reactive. Their lives, high school, testing... is all stressful, so mindfulness is also great for managing that stress.

– Elaine Lyons, Horizons Hampton Roads

series of SEL activities, including conversation cards that help students articulate their feelings, thinking processes, and internal responses.

Elaine Lyons at Hampton Roads also sees mindfulness as a critical foundation for communication. Their site incorporates a mindfulness activity each morning, and Elaine emphasizes that learning how to take time to pause helps 7th and 8th graders, especially, learn how to be proactive instead of reactive – an important step toward true agency. Given the high-stress environments that come with adolescence in the 21st Century – testing, social media, post-secondary planning, challenges associated with poverty – Elaine sees mindfulness as a way for students to combat that stress as it arises in real time, to take charge of their environment by changing the way they react to it. More than that, she spoke with a school coach who believes that for low-income boys of color, learning mindfulness can be life-saving: “If I can get them to pause before reacting when a teacher tells them to pull their pants up, that can

be the difference between graduating or not. Or it can mean life or death in interactions with police officers.”

While mindfulness helps provide the calm and quiet foundation Horizons at Harley and Hampton Roads students need to observe their own mindsets, 8th grade teacher Sabine Januski, with the Greens Farms Academy program, explains how middle schoolers in their program participate in a variety of activities designed to get them actively thinking about mindsets, while also boosting their communication skills.

This includes role playing; on a weekly basis, students at Horizons at Greens Farms Academy watch media where a mindset-dependent scenario plays out, analyze that media, then do a role playing exercise focused on reframing the demonstrated mindset (e.g., “What’s the mindset this person is having and how can we reframe in a more positive way to get different results?”).

Every afternoon, they also practice team building, which requires both an awareness of one’s own mindset and the mindsets of others while

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gave a presentation about what the Horizons program meant to her. She talked about how it supported her, helped her shift her mindset, and made her feel she can accomplish anything she puts her mind to. That outlook will serve her well in 9th grade and beyond.

2) Complementary Learning: Infusing Project-Based Learning with SEL

simultaneously requiring good communication among team members. To further develop their communication skills, Greens Farms Academy organizes a weekly “Community Talk Back.” This gives middle school students a dedicated time and place to discuss any issues or challenges they’re having in the program or their lives and to brainstorm with their peers and teachers about how to solve those problems and overcome those challenges. Sabine remarks that this is an especially helpful activity for 8th graders, because “once they shut down, it’s hard for them to change their mindset or see other solutions by themselves.”

Community Talk Backs give them a chance to ask for help from trusted peers and adults. It also normalizes asking for help, ingraining a good habit.

As students enter high school, the ability to pause and notice their mindset, and learn how to communicate effectively, combine to create a powerful foundation for self-advocacy. It shows them they can be in control of themselves and their experiences, and ensures they can see multiple ways to meet any of their goals. Sabine recounts a moment during the 2018 program when an 8th grader at Horizons at Greens Farms Academy

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Social and emotional learning comes in very handy because our academic curriculum is active and written around having conversations.

[Students have to be able to ask], ‘Can I hear the corrective feedback someone gave me on my draft; How do I respond to and incorporate feedback; Can I empathize; Can I actively listen; Can I express myself clearly?’ SEL helps them stop and think, not just be reactive.

– Sabine Januski, Horizons at Greens Farms Academy

In keeping with the research that shows how middle school students learn best, many of the program sites we spoke with had moved in an active learning direction with their programs. Because active, or project-based, learning often requires students to work in groups, think through problems, and incorporate independent decision making, it’s also a great platform for strengthening many of the social and emotional competencies – especially communication, decision making, and teamwork – that support high school success.

St. Richard’s started incorporating project-based learning into their program curriculum three years ago.

For the summer 2018 program, they transitioned into a fully project-based program, where math and reading skills are interwoven with scaffolded, developmentally appropriate, project-based learning “themes” aligned to an area of social good.

In 2018, the theme for St. Richard’s 6th graders was “Sustainable Business Practices.” As part of this, they read about sustainability and sustainable economies; talked to local businesses about their models; wrote about the business ideas that they had; and finally put it all into a “TED Talk” where they pitched an idea to a business. Their pitch had to demonstrate how the business could improve their profits by being more sustainable – math, reading, and social emotional skills were all necessary.

Each year, the St. Richard’s projects get more complex and demand more autonomous work on the part of students. By 8th grade, students have to design an entire nonprofit business model. They’re in complete charge of this project, which includes writing a mission and

vision statement, creating an organizational budget, and developing a plan to use volunteers. The project culminates in a presentation in front of a panel of local nonprofit leaders who judge "They feel incredibly the viability of their business empowered and plan. Beyond helping ready to join the adult them develop some pretty community. [The project] massive skills like public gives them a vision for speaking, critical thinking, their adult selves.” and complex math, reading, and writing skills, Horizons teacher Nick Stewart emphasizes the biggest takeaway: “They’re told and understand that they’re part of a larger community.”

He goes on to say this is important because it demonstrates to them that, “They have agency and that they need to take control of their lives."

Resources: Effective Communication and Advocating for Self Calm Kids, a free bundle of resources to incorporate age-appropriate mindfulness exercises into your classroom, by the Calm School Initiative, https://www.calm.com/schools Mindful Mantras for Kids, by Left Brain Buddha, https://leftbrainbuddha.com/mindful-mantras-for-kids Mindful Teachers, a hub for online mindfulness training for teachers, http://www.mindfulteachers.org/p/ organization-links.html Entrepreneurship for Middle School, by Venturelab, https://venturelab.org/middle-school-curriculum Design for Change, used by the Harley School Horizons program, uses Design Thinking as a process of creating new and innovative ideas to solve a problem, https://designforchange.us/dfcusa-web/pages/ getstarted SMART Goal Setting with Your Students, by Maurice J. Elias, Professor, Psychology Department, Rutgers University, Director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional Learning Lab, and Academic Director of The Collaborative, Rutgers’ Center for Community-Based Research and Service, https://www.edutopia.org/ blog/smart-goal-setting-with-students-maurice-elias Role Play Debate, by Education World, https://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/03/lp304-02.shtml Inner/Outer Circle Debate Strategy, by Education World, https://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/03/ lp304-05.shtml The Leader in Me, used by Horizons Hampton Roads, teaches 21st century leadership and life skills to students and creates a culture of student empowerment based on the idea that every child can be a leader, https://www.leaderinme.org/start-your-journey-gate/

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Horizons’ High School Transition Support Approaches Focus on Self-Actualization and a Long-term Vision As Jackie Roberson, Dean of Students at the Horizons at New Canaan Country School program, notes, 8th grade especially “is a stage where peer pressure has a huge impact on your life. If you get caught up in the wrong crowd, it can throw you off track.” At Horizons, she teaches a class called “Transitioning to High School From 8th Grade.” Among a variety of concrete high school preparedness skills, like developing good study habits, she also focuses her class on helping 8th graders learn how to be themselves and not allowing other people to dictate how they live their lives. Given the developmental importance of peer groups and social acceptance at this age, Jackie talks forthrightly about the negative and positive aspects of peer relationships as they relate to each student’s core values and goals. Her students develop a personal mantra they can go to when they’re tempted to get off track – because of negative peer relationships, feelings of

discouragement, or any challenge life throws at them.

Jackie makes sure her 8th graders are ready for their success by getting them to think about what their longterm goals are based on their middle school interests, dreams, passions, and vision for their adult selves. By thinking about their values and who they want to be as grown-ups, they begin to make connections – to see pathways and priorities. Then they’re ready for her to help them lay out the concrete steps to get there.

At the Horizons at Georgia Tech program, they prepare students for high school, but their whole philosophy is grounded in giving 8th graders a vision for their adult lives, helping them see long-term possibilities for themselves, and ensuring that vision propels them through high school. To do that, the program takes place on the Georgia Tech campus, and students visit other college campuses, visit classes and labs on the Georgia Tech campus, and speak with professors. This gets them comfortable in a college environment, gives them a sense of belonging at a university, and ingrains a sense of high expectations with raised aspirations.

According to Horizons teacher Rhonda Hudson, it also “provides context for everything they learned in Horizons in middle school, creating clear, long-range relevance for their social and emotional skills, their academics, and their personal interests.” She adds that, “We want our students who started out struggling to feel inspired to know that they, too, will be on the Georgia Tech campus one day.”

Focus on High School Exposure and Concrete Skill Development In addition to knowing how to advocate for themselves, creating a long-term vision, and navigating relationships using core values as a north star, students also need exposure to the actual nuts and bolts of high school. At Horizons, that spans a number of strategies, from high school exposure nights to learning how to calculate grade point averages (GPAs).

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1) No Unknown to Fear: High School Exposure Strategies

Some of our teachers use high school mini-lessons just to expose older kids to what they’ll encounter in high school.

So 8th graders might do a high school chemistry experiment, but the point is to have fun with it – those mini-lessons remove a lot of the anxiety around high school work.

– Elaine Lyons, Horizons Hampton Roads

At St. Richard’s, Horizons alumni come back as middle school program interns, which gives 8th graders an older peer they can come to with casual and serious

questions about high school. And although they can’t do high school tours with their 8th graders, the St. Richard’s program does offer High School Readiness Nights, where high school administration staff present about all the different options at their schools. Similarly, 8th graders in the Horizons at Greens Farms Academy program participate in a high school round table, where high school and college Horizons alumni come back to talk about what it was like to transition to high school and then college, as well as answer questions the 8th graders may have.

Tiffany Churchwell, at the Horizons at Holy Innocents’ program, reinforces the importance of connecting middle and high school students. At the Holy Innocents’ program, they use high school juniors and seniors as classroom and swim instruction volunteers. She says the high schoolers serve as mentors for the middle school students, who “are more apt to take the high school

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students’ advice than advice from adults.” Their student volunteers return year after year, fostering strong nearpeer relationships in which the older students address the kinds of 9th grade challenges that can arise. Tiffany also notes that the pool setting seems to encourage different kinds of conversations than a more structured or traditional environment does. There, students talk about “how to function socially in high school, their fears, plans, and the kinds of classes that exist,” she says. The high school students give first-hand advice to the middle school students about what they need to do to have a smooth transition to 9th grade. Some of the middle school students end up at the same high school as the volunteers, which also helps create a safe social “bridge,” and provides the freshmen with in-school role models who can help guide them.

Juniors and seniors are also talking about going to college, which Tiffany points out is important. “Just having middle school students being around those conversations... it can change their perspective about what they can do after high school.” She adds that, “Some [Horizons] kids haven’t even moved outside of their apartment building. To hear a volunteer talking about expansive college options is a big deal. They trust the volunteers and they believe that what they say is true and will follow their advice.”

2) Smart Choices and Hard Skills: High School Selection and Preparedness

I have my students take a lot of selfassessments and quizzes to find out what kind of learners they are. We talk about emotional intelligences and how they can build on those to become the most successful versions of themselves that they can.

– Jackie Roberson, Horizons at New Canaan Country School

St. Richard’s teachers also meet with their 7th graders to help them learn how to get into magnet schools, private schools, and charter schools – something that’s applicable to any program site. The goal is

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to leave Horizons with their top three high school choices, and everything they need to apply. Rhonda Hudson also focuses on helping her Georgia Tech 8th graders develop “hard skills,” like study skills and an understanding of how their GPA affects their college options, http://rhudsonreading.weebly.com/helpfulresources.html. That starts with going over what a GPA is and how it’s calculated using a GPA Cheat Sheet, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ekG7LzvinYRy1 VSHB2NmdHZUIwUW1wUjctcUJsWDZ5Y2hR/view.

Rhonda’s approach also ties into Jackie’s methods at New Canaan Country School, which includes working with students to identify the kind of learners they are and then developing study habits and plans tailored to their learning type, https://www.how-tostudy.com/learning-style-assessment/.

3) Eyes on the Prize: Post-Secondary Awareness and Planning

Our program focuses on giving 8th graders a vision for their adult lives, an understanding of long-term possibilities, and the motivation to propel them through high school.

It’s about raising aspirations and creating a culture of high expectations.

– Rhonda Hudson, Horizons at Georgia Tech

When it comes to thinking about college options, teachers in the St. Richard’s program also make sure to get all of their students signed up for Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars Program. Through that program, students who meet three requirements every year of high school receive a $40,000 scholarship towards public college.

Nick Stewart says many non-Horizons students sign up, but never qualify for the scholarship because they don’t stay the course in high school, which not only involves meeting requirements beginning in 9th grade, but recording evidence that they met them.

St. Richard’s gives every student a folder with each

year’s requirements and the timeline for meeting them, as well as reminders to record that they’ve been met.

Next year, they’ll begin helping their 8th graders start knocking out some of the requirements early to get them into the habit of meeting and recording them.

Although the 21st Century Scholars Program is unique to Indiana, the Colorado Academy Horizons program has developed its own scholarship incentive. They award a $1,000 scholarship towards college costs to any student who completes 8th grade. Awardees can only redeem the scholarship when they complete high school.

At the Georgia Tech program, post-secondary preparation comes in the form of direct exposure.

The Horizons program operates on the Georgia Tech campus from K-12th grade. In eighth grade, students work with a Georgia Tech mentor and draft personal statements for college. They also shadow college classes, visit the labs on campus, participate in a career exposure day in which they shadow executives to learn about different career paths, and perform community

service. These immersive experiences expose them to college-level coursework, like robotics and physics, while also acclimating middle school students to a university environment.

The common factor among the sites that intentionally focus on high school transition is long-term thinking.

Whether it’s making sure there are opportunities for students to connect with high school and college students, buildings, and/or staff; getting them oriented to the kind of work they’ll be doing in high school; or getting them equipped with the study skills and GPA understanding they need – everyone approaches high school preparedness with an eye towards college and career. That helps give long-term meaning to high school success, while grounding it in each student’s interests, strengths, and passions.

Resources: High School Transition City Strategies to Engage Older Youth in Afterschool Programs, p. 22, by National League of Cities and Institute for Youth, Education & Families College Scholarships, Website includes college scholarships and other student resources, such as a GPA calculator Goal Setting Worksheets for Middle School Students, by Enhanced Learning Educational Services Choices and Values, a guided activity and worksheets to help students decide what they value and how their values affect their choices in everyday living, adapted from the Ethics and Compliance Initiative.

GPA Conversion Worksheet, used by Georgia Tech Horizons How to Take Notes in Class and How to Annotate a Text, courtesy of Rhonda Hudson’s website Learning Style Assessment, by How to Study Career Clusters Activity, by Education Planner Study Skills for Students, a collection of study skill guides for any academic scenario, from listening skills to time management and test taking, by Education Corner Ninth Grade Counts, by the U.S. Department of Education St. Richard’s Transition Folder Materials The Family Engagement for High School Success Toolkit, by Ready by 21

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Conclusion For young people from low-income communities, we know Horizons student outcomes outpace national averages.

By starting with us as kindergarteners and staying with us through 8th grade and, sometimes well beyond, our students have multiple years to develop positive relationships with their peers and our educators. We get to know them and their families over a long period of time, which builds trust and understanding. Most importantly, it means we get many opportunities to engage with them academically, emotionally, and also in those moments when they need a non-parent adult to talk to. This multi-year, slow growth approach sets us apart from students’ school year experiences, and from most out-of-school time programs.

The recently released Horizons Retrospective Study by Concentric Research & Evaluation bears this out, especially for middle school students. Read more about the study here https://www.horizonsnational.org/transform/research.

We hope this guide will inspire educators to incorporate intentional high school transition activities and supports into their programming. When done well, it can make an important difference for our students as they make the critical transition to 9th grade.

Citations: Thomas Armstrong, “Middle Schools: Social, Emotional, and Metacognitive Growth,” Chapter 5. The Best Schools, 2006.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/106044/chapters/MiddleSchools@-Social,-Emotional,-and-Metacognitive-Growth.aspx Dr. Robert Cooper, Markoe-Hayes, S. Improving the Educational Possibilities of Urban High School Students as They Transition from 8th to 9th Grade, 2005, p. 2. UCLA, https://ucaccord.gseis.ucla.edu/publications/pdf/pb-013-0905.pdf

“Inside the Teenage Brain, an Interview with Jay Giedd.” Frontline, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/interviews/giedd.html

Robert Halpern, Ph.D., Paul Heckman, Ph.D., Reed Larson, Ph.D. Realizing the Potential of Learning in Middle Adolescence, 2013, p. 14. Realizing Learning, http://www.realizinglearning.org/rlwp/

McCombs, Jennifer Sloan, Anamarie Whitaker, and Paul Youngmin Yoo. The Value of Out-of-School Time Programs, 2017, p.

The RAND Corporation, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE267.html

Jenny Nagaoka, Camille A. Farrington, Stacy B. Ehrlich, and Ryan D. Heath with David W. Johnson, Sarah Dickson, Ashley Cureton Turner, Ashley Mayo, and Kathleen Hayes. Foundations for Young Adult Success A Developmental Framework, 2015.

University of Chicago, https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Foundations%20for%20Yo ung%20AdultJun2015-Consortium.pdf

Charles Smith, Gina McGovern, Stephen C. Peck, Reed Larson, Leanne Roy. Preparing Youth to Thrive. Methodology and Findings from the Social and Emotional Learning Challenge, p. 11. SEL Practices, https://www.selpractices.org/resource/ preparing-youth-to-thrive-methodology-and-findings-from-the-sel-challenge

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Bibliography: 6 Tips to Help Students Develop a Growth Mindset in the Classroom: https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/6-tips-help-students-develop-growth-mindset-classroom Calm Kids: https://www.calm.com/schools

Career Clusters Activity: http://www.educationplanner.org/students/career-planning/find-careers/career-clusters.shtml

Choices and Values Student Worksheet: https://www.nwabr.org/sites/default/files/ValuesActivities.pdf

City Strategies to Engage Older Youth in Afterschool Programs, p. 22: https://www.nlc.org/sites/default/files/2016-12/city-strategies-to-engage-older-youth-in-afterschool-programs-oct-12.pdf

College Scholarships Search and GPA Calculator: http://www.college-scholarships.com/free-scholarship-searches.htm

Design for Change: http://www.designforchange.us/pages/getstarted

Entrepreneurship for Middle School: https://venturelab.org/middle-school-curriculum/

The Family Engagement for High School Success Toolkit: http://www.readyby21.org/resources/guide/family-engagement-high-school-success-toolkit-planning-and-implementing-initiative

Goal Setting Worksheets for Students: http://www.enhanced-learning.net/doc/samples/GSWMsamplepages.pdf

GPA Cheat Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ekG7LzvinYRy1VSHB2NmdHZUIwUW1wUjctcUJsWDZ5Y2hR/view

Harley School Horizons Conversation Cards: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JldLZ2rZCq_hEaVsTbOQ-HaWNVIUIOMcmrMHqKBWaoM/edit

Harley School Horizons SEL Activities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_xI8I99Hkm_N5PLiOO7I6Z0-FR4Z1tmGlIYG-JtZePw/edit

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Holy Innocents’ Horizons Middle School Human Rights Curriculum Description: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GAXiJLVesZ5Ke-wRyVwY2Ne1mwGLly3JYWg0sJKwur0

Holy Innocents’ Horizons Middle School Project-Based Learning Plan: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0ekG7LzvinYS3FSNG1kMTNUa2o4SUZpS3ZlVm1kX0FTU2pZ

How to Annotate a Text, How to Take Notes, and Elements of Classical Rhetoric: http://rhudsonreading.weebly.com/helpful-resources.html

Human Rights Lessons 6-8: https://www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/6-8.html

iCivics: https://www.icivics.org/teachers

Inner/Outer Circle Debate Strategy: https://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/03/lp304-05.shtml

The Leader in Me: https://www.theleaderinme.org/resources/student-activity-guides

Learning Style Assessment for Students: https://www.how-to-study.com/learning-style-assessment/

Making Better Choices: http://www.aces.edu/teens/pdf/mod7.pdf

Making Good Decisions Interactive Modules: http://thegoodproject.org/modules/dilemmasdecisions/#/home

Mindful Mantras for Kids: http://leftbrainbuddha.com/mindful-mantras-for-kids/

Mindful Teachers: http://www.mindfulteachers.org/p/organization-links.html

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Ninth Grade Counts: https://www2.ed.gov/programs/slcp/ninthgradecounts/ninthgradecountssummerbridgeguide.pdf

Paper Cup Challenge: https://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-A-Paper-Cup-3/

Participatory Evaluation with Young People: http://archive.ssw.umich.edu/public/currentProjects/youthAndCommunity/pubs/youthbook.pdf

Responsible Decision Making: http://actforyouth.net/youth_development/professionals/sel/decision_making.cfm

Responsive Classroom Behavior Management: https://www.responsiveclassroom.org

Role Play Debate: https://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/03/lp304-02.shtml

SMART Goal Setting with Your Students: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/smart-goal-setting-with-students-maurice-elias

St. Richard’s Transition Folder Materials: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yAvj98UFD4QphrXDnXEAucnfWDUD2cGe

Study Skills for Students: https://www.educationcorner.com/study-skills.html#general

Youth Voice: http://www.cypq.org/sites/cypq.org/files/Youth_Voice_GuidebookSample.pdf

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