Experiential Education at
Youth Communication

[A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 1990 issue of Taking Turns, the newsletter of the Offsite Educational Services of the New York City Board of Education, a network of second-chance programs for students who had failed a their regular high schools.]

By Keith Hefner

All of us who work with students in the New York City public schools know that about half the kids drop out. And we know that many students live in families and neighborhoods that are so distressed that it seems a miracle they stay in school as long as they do.

But we also know that many students are "push outs"-driven away by a school system that does not serve their needs. Some are trying to escape years of structured drill and an incessant focus on "basic skills" which is designed to help them score higher on standardized tests, but induces rampant boredom (for students and teachers). Others leave because schools fail to provide structure or direction.

Whether schools clamp down with testing and drill or abandon standards and direction the results are depressingly similar: large numbers of students opt out.

If a test-driven, back-to-basics approach doesn't work, and a loose, student-driven, "shopping mall" approach doesn't work, what does work?

At Youth Communication we have found that at least part of the answer is to restructure learning around projects instead of around testing and traditional curricula.

New Youth Connections (NYC) is monthly 24-page magazine for the teenagers of New York City published by Youth Communication. It is written and illustrated by a staff of over 100 teens who represent a wide cross-section of public school kids. Our reporters have included drug addicts, dropouts and valedictorians; students from traditional two-parent homes, and students who were already parents themselves.

The teens who work on NYC are here by choice so they are more motivated than typical students. Unfortunately, another common denominator among this diverse group is poor skills. Few of them have mastered the basic writing or math skills expected by employers and needed by citizens.

Though many of them have strong motivation and a desire to improve their lives, their lack of basic skills and their inability to organize their work frustrates that desire. They have been disabled by a system in which they are passive test-takers, and in which the structures to help them translate their aspirations into reality are broken down.

A key educational experience that these youngsters lack is that of solving a problem. Not a narrow problem that they've been coached on for six months before they encounter it on a test, but something multi-faceted and meaningful, like "If a boy is pressuring his girlfriend to have sex before she is ready, what would you write that might help her?" Or, "If we want to warn teens about unscrupulous trade schools, will it be better to print an article with facts, statistics, and a warning from the Consumer Affairs Commissioner...or should we interview teens who have had bad experiences and report their stories? Or even, "Was Columbus' discovery of America a net gain or loss for the world?" And in every case, "Where can we get the information we need to support our point of view?"

NYC is organized around solving such problems. We face one overriding problem every month-how to communicate valuable information to 200,000 readers. That problem then gets broken down into hundreds of subsidiary problems: What are our readers' most pressing needs? What articles might meet those needs? What vocabulary should we use? What illustrations will aid communication? What responsibility do we have to respond to the various racial and ethnic groups among our readers? Should we criticize school administrators by name? How can we insure that stories are accurate? etc., etc. The number of "problems" to be solved is never-ending.

The "right" answer to these problems is the answer that makes sense to the reader. Since our readers are like our writers in many respects, one way of discovering their needs is for the writer to become more aware of her own needs. Another way is through investigation-talking to teens, teachers, and experts.

All of the information we gather is evaluated by the teen reporters, which forces our classroom (newsroom) to become student-centered. There is strong adult guidance and training, of course, but teens obviously have special insights into their interests and into the problems they face. Many of the articles flow from their "natural expertise" and their experiences growing up in New York. Yet it is rare that a perfect, fully-formed story blossoms from a single student's head. Instead, story ideas are proposed in regular meetings, and then they are supported, attacked, mulled over and modified over by a group until the essential information is clarified.

When the first draft of a story is completed, the teacher/editor (and often other students) have comments and questions, which almost always require reflection, further clarification and additional work.

In the process of researching and writing several drafts students improve their writing skills. They also learn to type, to read for the "main idea," to travel the subways, to present themselves professionally on the telephone and in an interview. They learn to speak in a group, and to listen. They learn to address an envelope, and to use a computer. They necessarily learn that the immense gratification of a published byline comes only after weeks or months of sustained hard work.

They also learn that in a complex project everyone is essential: a good story idea gets better after discussing it with several peers; even the best article may be overlooked if the artwork is boring, and it will be undermined if errors creep in because of sloppy typing or proofreading.

Finally, the students learn that there is a world outside of themselves. They are not writing to pass the "business letter" section of the next standardized test, they are writing for their peers-the teens of New York City. They are accountable to that audience in a very real way. From limitless choices they must select the few dozen most important stories to include in each issue. Those articles must be accurate and interesting, and they must meet the needs of an extraordinarily diverse group of readers. (When they don't, our readers let us know in angry letters, or worse, by ignoring the paper.)

What we do at New Youth Connections is often called experiential education. Some of the important elements of good experiential education programs include the following:

• they are problem-oriented;
• they are student-centered;
• they include training in concrete skills;
• they acknowledge the validity of the students' life experiences, but they also help the students engage the larger world;
• they encourage cooperative work, while fostering individual responsibility.
• they produce a product;
• they encourage students to reflect on their work; and
• they serve an audience that depends, to a greater or lesser extent, on the quality of the work that the teens provide.

Experiential education does not eliminate the need for testing and memorization. And it doesn't automatically create its own structure. But with hard work and careful planning it can provide a framework in which students learn a wide range of discrete skills, and at the same time learn how to apply those skills to solving real problems. Experiential education cannot eliminate the dropout problem, but it can help reduce it, with the added benefit that the students who stay in school will be better prepared for college, work, and citizenship when they graduate.