Resilience A Closer Look
Ever had a student who seemed to rise out of adversity, only to later fall even harder? If you’ve wondered about the mysteries of “resilience” and how to tap into it, this study is an eye-opener!
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Asset-Based Teaching Taking a Holistic Approach
Wondering how you can shape your teaching to impact kids more holistically? The 40 Developmental Assets offer a framework to get you started.
Bouncing Back Increasing Resilience for Hurting Kids
Our kids face obstacles every day — difficulties with friends, stress at school, issues with boyfriends or girlfriends.
But many of the students we work with also face larger obstacles-poverty, violence at school or in their neighborhood, parents getting divorced,…
See Jane Deal With Her Body
While adolescence has always been a time of physical (and all kinds of other) changes, the way teenage girls experience those changes is now, in fact, changing.
New Twists on Not-So-New Issues for Girls
While it may seem to some that adolescence hasn’t changed much for girls in recent years, research and media trends indicate at least three areas we’ve identified as needing our renewed attention as youth workers. In this article we share ideas for responding to three “mores” that bring new twists to some perhaps-familiar issues: more sexy, more pressure, and more violence.
Your Kids Half Full or Half Empty?
When you look at the students around you, what do you tend to see—their potential or their hindrances? Their advances or their setbacks? This second report from our Urban Youth Workers in America (UYWA) study takes a closer look at the “full-ness” and “empty-ness” of both urban kids and non-urban kids.
Turning Towards Holistic Ministry
Many of us would agree that the forms of typical youth ministry are in need of change. But towards what new forms are we turning in order to have greater transforming impact in students’ lives? Mark Maines offers an integrated asset-based model as one opportunity for re-forming our ministries in a holistic way.
Unearthing the Whole Truth About Holistic Ministry
Most of us have no trouble focusing our ministries on the spiritual needs of students — it’s what we do best. But how carefully do we look at the “whole kid” in our approach to youth ministry? These findings from FYI’s Urban Youth Workers in America research dig up some powerful truths about the reality of holistic ministry.
A New Perspective on At-Risk Youth Positive Youth Development and Violence Prevention Research
When you see youth facing certain challenges, do you begin labeling them “at-risk”? Or do you focus on the potential assets and resources available to them? Maria Bjørdal recently interviewed two Fuller faculty researchers about Positive Youth Development and its influence in their study of violence prevention.
What Attracts and Keeps Students at Your Church?
Think about the last student who showed up at one of your youth ministry events for the first time. Did they come back? If not, why not? If so, that’s great, but do you know what your ministry did that kept them coming back to your church?