Teachers at Bowie Academic Youth Development Camp

Academic Youth Development – Improving Achievement by Shaping the Culture of Algebra Classrooms

As students get older, they have a lot to juggle…. especially as they prepare for high school.  Academic Youth Development supports the successful transition of students in Algebra 1.

Research demonstrates that relatively modest interventions aimed at shaping the culture of ninth grade classes can have powerful effects on student success.  Key to the AYD initiative is helping students understand that intelligence is malleable, not fixed.

The Academic Youth Development Initiative is:

• A set of experiences designed to influence student beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors about learning.

• An intervention designed to create and support a classroom culture of respectful engagement

The initiative provides students and teachers with an explicit set of tools and strategies for applying these ideas in Algebra 1 classrooms and daily learning. 

Why focus on the transition to Algebra 1?

• Algebra is a gatekeeper – 50% of all ninth-grade students fail Algebra 1

Summer Bridge Experience 2009 – 2010

 Over 125 incoming 9^th graders spent their time not swimming or playing video games, instead, students built relationships with other students and with their future Algebra 1 teacher. This summer students from Akins, Anderson, Bowie, Crockett, Lanier, Reagan and Travis:

• Learned how to use mathematical clues in forensics science and crime scene investigations.

• Increased their math skills with new online tools that they can use at school and at home.

• Learned about what it takes to be a successful learner even in harder or challenging courses.

• Learned mathematics that will give them a jump start in Algebra 1

• Met their Algebra 1 teacher and many of their new classmates.

• Became part of a learning community that will support them throughout their freshman year.

Academic Youth Development has been implemented with great success in over 100 schools nationally this past year-including 40 in Texas.  Austin ISD is included in the list of success stories that implemented AYD.  Success has already been witnessed from Tier 1 implementation.

For more information…

The Charles A. Dana Center