"Speaking Truth" Program for Youth: Promoting Resilience, Belonging, and School Identification

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Abstract

In the current study, researchers report on a summative evaluation of a four-week long psychosocial intervention, Speaking Truth to Empower Youth (STEP4Youth). STEP4Youth has two goals. First, STEP4Youth seeks to close ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps among elementary school-aged children. Second, STEP4Youth cultivates environments in which all students, especially underperforming and underrepresented students, are eager to learn, possess a sense of belonging, and feel safe to take on challenges by reappraising social evaluations, such as stereotype threat, as normal and changeable experiences. Participants are third-fifth grade elementary school children (ages 8-11).

Authors

• Inayah Baaqee, San Francisco State University

• Jeffrey Cookston, San Francisco State University

• Avi Ben-Zeev, San Francisco State University