If you haven’t read Paul Tough’s book, How
Children Succeed, I would like to encourage you to do so. Tough has taken a look at what he calls the
non-cognitive skills. He speaks of the
importance of grit and delayed gratification, perseverance, working well with
others, and young people making choices about the work they will do. Reinforcing these non-cognitive skills is one
of the things we in afterschool programs already do. Afterschool programs come from a mindset of
youth development, and youth development is about helping young people to
develop the resiliency they need to keep on keeping on.
Whether your youth development approach is based
on the 40 Developmental Assets identified by the Search Institute or the work
of Karen Pittman, or looking at the indicators from the California Healthy Kids
Survey or some other source, youth development focuses on youth holistically
and does not just weigh in on cognitive skills and academic performance. Youth development is about helping young
people find a way to be successful, emotionally, behaviorally, socially, and
cognitively while developing the resiliency and tenacity to never give up. It is about helping youth today prepare for a
future that will allow them to be successful.
More and more the evidence is demonstrating that
memorization of facts and the ability to take a multiple choice test really
doesn’t indicate how successful a young person will be. The evidence is increasingly clear that these
non-cognitive skills make a difference.
So take a look at Tough’s book and a look at the natural connections to
your program.
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