Spotlights

Working harder, getting smarter: Academic Youth Development kickoff at Bowie High School

Dana Center director (and professor of mathematics) Uri Treisman joined Algebra I students, math teachers, and parents at Bowie High School in Austin, Texas on October 21 to celebrate the academic-year kickoff of the Academic Youth Development (AYD) program.

AYD combines an intensive summer bridge program with strategically timed school-year experiences to:

• build students’ algebra-readiness skills,
• shape how students think of themselves as learners,
• encourage persistence in achieving academic goals, and
• create a classroom culture in which learning is encouraged and valued by all students.

In summer 2008, the Austin Independent School District launched its implementation of AYD at Akins, Anderson, and Travis high schools. In summer 2009, AISD expanded the AYD program to four more schools—Bowie, Crockett, Lanier, and Reagan.

Nationwide, 6,000 students participated in AYD in summer 2009. AYD staff estimate that the program will grow to serve 10,000 students in 2010 and 25,000 in 2011.

At the Bowie event, students who participated in the 2009 summer bridge program testified to the program’s effectiveness. Ninth-grader Ariel Johnson commented that, "AYD helped me meet new friends, not feel nervous on the first day of school—and showed me how to help my friends with their homework.”

Professor Treisman spoke at the event and compared mathematics to gymnastics— success in both activities requires practice, practice, and more practice. "If math isn't challenging to you,” said Treisman, “then you're not working on hard enough problems."

AYD was developed by the Dana Center in partnership with researchers in developmental and social psychology, classroom teachers, education leaders in school districts around the country, and education publisher Agile Mind .

For more information on AYD, see also Agile Mind’s AYD website.

Portions of this spotlight are borrowed, with permission, from the October 2009 edition of Graduate Ready! eNews, the electronic newsletter of the Office of Redesign in the Austin Independent School District..