All posts filed under: Teaching

Who are “Opportunity Youth”?

The term “Opportunity Youth” often gets flung around in education and other youth-serving spaces, but it is often misunderstood or conflated with “At-Promise Youth”. While At-Promise Youth broadly refers to under-resourced young people in danger of dropping out, Opportunity Youth are more specifically young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who have already disengaged from school, and who are not participating in the labor market. There are currently 4.6 million Opportunity Youth in the United States. This is 11.7% of all youth between the ages of 16 and 24. The proportion is higher in historically underserved and minority communities. For example, 17.2% of all Black youth between the ages of 16 and 24 are considered Opportunity Youth. Unfortunately, the current economic situation will likely inflate these figures, and amplify their inherent inequity. According to the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, “Nearly 40 percent of our young people between the ages of 16 and 24 are weakly attached or unattached to school and work at some point during that formative stretch of their …

The Overarching Importance of Communication and Basic Digital Literacy

As millions of educators and students around the world shifted to distance learning over the past few weeks, all sorts of incredible virtual tools have popped up. Companies have generously offered free accounts and product trials to teachers, and I’ve already familiarized myself with a few that I plan on using next year: Screencastify, Flipgrid, Esri StoryMaps, and Doodly. I am sure this list will grow. The plethora of tools and services are useless, however, if we are unable to locate and communicate with students. Once again, like most challenges related to our social infrastructure, the problem of broken channels of communication disproportionately affects those who are already disadvantaged. I read a local news story the other day about how the pandemic is revealing just how many households in Southern California lack internet access. I am sure this trend can be extrapolated to communities nationwide. We can huddle all we want as school leaders, and devise and roll out new learning plans, but what is our sustainable strategy as a community of changemakers to address …

The Disproportionate Effects of Uncertainty

For the past few days, like many Americans, I have watched my nest egg get tumbled along a path of peril and uncertainty. Needless to say, it has some new cracks, and I have suffered. I consider myself young, but I’m old enough to remember what happened in 2008. My friends and I were wee babes who had just entered the workforce after graduating college. I was working my dream job at a global hospitality company in Las Vegas, and my sister was wrapping up law school to move to Manhattan. Then suddenly, everything changed. I lost my job and came home. I planned to take refuge in graduate school, and my sister mentored me from afar. Our family business had taken a hit, but we were still prodding along. My resourceful parents and the relationships they had built in the community kept our company alive. That is something I remember distinctly – leaders within tight ecosystems rising to the occasion and helping one another. I was fortunate enough to work in that business for …