Entries by Jean Rhodes

Facebook adds lifelines to prevent teen suicide

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Posted by Deborah Bach-UW on March 2, 2015. In addition to vacation photos and cat videos, people also share details about their personal lives and feelings on Facebook—including occasional posts about despair and even thoughts of suicide. As the world’s biggest social network, with more than 1.39 billion users, Facebook is uniquely able to provide online […]

In Robert Putnam’s new book he explores: When Did Poor Kids Stop Being ‘Our Kids’?

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  Editor’s Note: In Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Robert D. Putnam, a Harvard University public policy professor  explains how growing class differences are have given rise to dramatically unequal opportunities for our nation’s youth. Putnam describes how, in his hometown, families from different economic circumstances attended the same schools, played on the same teams, and provided a […]

You should sometimes talk politics and religion: Here’s why

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by Jean Rhodes I was presenting findings from my research on Hurricane Katrina to a group of college students when something very interesting happened. Many of the students were first generation Haitian immigrants, others the privileged sons and daughters of Boston’s elite. Still other were first generation college students from Southie and Dorchester, mixed income neighborhoods near […]

Professor Connie Flanagan: Discussing politics contributes to positive youth development.

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Editor’s note: We are delighted to have a guest commentary Professor Connie Flanagan. Professor Flannagan of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She is the author of the excellent new book, Teenage Citizens: The Political Theories of the Young (Harvard University Press).We asked her whether mentors and mentees should ever discuss politics.  It is very appropriate for mentors […]

Free community college for all, but completion for just a third?

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By Daniel Princiotta, consultant to Child Trends, principal research scientist at Bethesda Policy Research Reposted from Child Trends In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama called for free community college for all responsible students “so that two years of college becomes as free and universal in America as high school is today.” […]

Adult-youth relationships: The critical ingredient across interventions

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summarized by Laura Yoviene Li, J., & Julian, M. (2012). Developing relationships as the active ingredient: A unifying working hypothesis of “what works” across intervention settings.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 82 (2), 157-166. Background: Much research and vast resources  focus on pinpointing the critical component or active ingredient that is responsible for producing the outcomes of […]

Mentoring and social media: New research guides policy and practice

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summarized by Evan Cutler, Asst. Director, Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring Schwartz, S. E. O., Rhodes, J. E., Liang, B., Sánchez, B., Spencer, R., Kremer, S., & Kanchewa, S. (2014). Mentoring in the digital age: Social media use in adult-youth relationships. Children and Youth Services Review, 47, 205-213.   Introduction Digital communication (e.g. texting, emailing, Facebook, etc.) […]

Apply for a Jacob Foundation Research Fellowship

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A Global Fellowship Program for Research on Child and Youth Development The Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship Program is the only internationally open, competitive fellowship program for early and mid-career researchers focusing on child and youth development. Fellowships are awarded to the most highly talented and innovative young scholars and mid-career researchers working on child and […]

The two most important features of high-quality mentoring programs

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Editor’s Note: Here is the second installment of this important report, written by mentoring expert Dr. Carla Herrera, aimed at providing funders with guidance in determining which mentoring programs to support.   Through a series of posts, we present, “Making the Most of Youth Mentoring: A Guide for Funders” Last week, Carla covered the features of quality […]

Who in the world is Irvin Westheimer?

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Editor’s Note: If you’re like me, you have always assumed that Big Brothers Big Sisters of America–which forever shaped the modern mentoring movement–was founded by court clerk and child advocate Ernest Coulter in the early 1900’s. But a little research (o.k. procrastination) revealed another less sung hero in it’s origins. Irvin Westheimer, who lived for more […]