Tag Archive for: Incarceration

How mentors can help students navigate another complicated school year

By Jean Rhodes As schools across the country close for the beginning of the new year, youth mentoring programs have a vital role to play in mitigating student struggles. Learning slides are already expected to be steepest for low-income, Black and Hispanic students, who typically live in more crowded homes and have less access to […]

The terrible toll of COVID-19 on youth mental health

By Dr. Stephanie McGencey, American Youth Policy Forum The COVID-19 pandemic is taking a terrible toll on the health and well-being of youth and young adults. Already alarming rates of depression, suicide, and anxiety are exacerbated by the isolation, contact restrictions, and economic challenges brought on by the pandemic. Black, Indigenous, and other youth of color (BIYOC); youth involved in the […]

“Trauma-Sensitive” Schools: A new framework for reaching troubled students

By LAURA PAPPANO (Harvard Education Letter) The most artfully devised curriculum means little to a student whose mind is fixed on last night’s shooting outside or the scary, violent fight between parents that broke out in the kitchen. Brilliant teaching often can’t compete with the sudden loss of a parent or friend. Yet incidents like these […]

Psychology Today Book Review: How Youth Mentoring Programs Can Become More Effective

This post is a review in Psychology Today of the book, Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century by Glenn C. Altschuler Before Odysseus departed to fight the Trojan War, Homer tells us, he asked Mentor, his friend, to watch over his household and Telemachus, his son. Centuries later, the […]

How Youth Mentoring Programs Can Become More Effective

By Glenn C. Altschuler, Psychology Today This post is a review of the book, Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Youth Mentoring in the 21st Century. Before Odysseus departed to fight the Trojan War, Homer tells us, he asked Mentor, his friend, to watch over his household and Telemachus, his son. Centuries later, the term “mentor” […]

Sneak preview: An excerpt from Older and Wiser!

By Jean Rhodes Yesterday my new book, “Older and Wiser: New Ideas for Mentoring in the 21st Century,” hit the stands – the culmination of 30 years of research and several years of writing and reflection. Today, I’m thrilled to share with you the introduction. If you’d like to order copies for your staff, please […]

Finding a silver lining: COVID-19 is shedding new light onto childhood poverty

By Jean Rhodes Young people who are referred to mentoring programs face dramatically more challenges than most other youth. For example, an analysis of the two million young people aged six through eighteen that Big Brothers Big Sisters of America has served over the past decade revealed that the majority were from low-income families (78 […]

Black College Student Mental Health Needs Attention Now

By Chandra White-Cummings, Ourselves Black It’s always a time of great celebration when a student graduates from college. At a 2014 college graduation ceremony at North Carolina Central University, the longest laughs and applause came when one of the officiating faculty talked about the intense struggles and doubt of making it through the course work […]

What’s lost when black children are socialized into a white world

Dani McClain, The Atlantic  I interviewed dozens of black mothers about how they help their kids navigate schools where they might be perceived as threats or made to feel unwelcome. Jessica Black is a Pittsburg, California, mother of two black teenagers, both of whom have been disciplined multiple times at their middle and high schools. […]

Now is the time to offer solidarity and support to young people of color

by Jean Rhodes and Cherrelle Jones (clinical psychology doctoral student, UMass Boston) As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and thousands of protestors gather in the streets day after day, we are viscerally witnessing the many ways that racism, and other systems of oppression, negatively impact the lives, the health, and the mental health of racial […]