Social and emotional learning (SEL) is essential for young people to navigate the ever-increasing challenges of today's world. While many SEL programs and much of the research to date have focused on elementary school-aged children, more recent research shows that middle and high school-aged youth can also show substantial benefits from explicit opportunities for social and emotional development.

Introducing the Organizational Quality Assessment (OQA), a tool designed to assess policies, structures, and practices governing site-level implementation decisions.

Recently, the Forum's Katherine Plog Martinez spoke with Sergio Garcia, Senior Manager of Learning Systems at Big Thought Dallas, to learn more about how they have built a coordinated network focused on summer and how their learning from the summer space has supported their work to integrate other focus areas, most recently social emotional learning, into their organization and network. Below please find highlights of the conversation.

Broadband. What is it really, and why do broadband access and equity matter for young people, families, and communities? This blog accompanies the Forum’s primer to help policymakers, young people, and advocates understand the issues and recent developments, and strengthen equitable digital access for all young people.

Blog by Mishaela Durán, President & CEO
This piece is featured in the 1/24 The 74 Newsletter

When I first saw West Side Story, one moment brought me back to my high school principal’s office. The Jets were singing, “We ain’t no delinquents, we’re misunderstood. Deep down inside us there is good!”

I could have said the same thing when my principal was suspending me for truancy. He told me I would never amount to anything.

“Wow,” my young colleague said, his voice echoing off the high marble walls in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. “I didn’t know what to expect when I came here, but now that I have done it, I realize this is what I have wanted to do my whole life: share my story with people who can make a difference.”

I live for these moments, working in partnership with Opportunity Youth United to help Opportunity Youth—young people ages 16 to 24 who are not connected to school or the workforce—meet with their elected officials. Of all the advocacy activities we do, these are the most likely to change hearts, minds, and policies, and have been the most important driver of the Reconnecting Youth Campaign’s greatest successes: securing a cumulative $195 million additional federal funding for Opportunity Youth programs over two years; securing $518 million in the COVID recovery packages; and potentially billions more in the Build Back Better Act making its way through Congress.