Home-brewed education at AHB

Nicole Lessin is an Austin-based writer whose work has appeared in the San Antonio Express-News, Edible Austin, and the Hundreds of Heads Survival Guides. She has recently returned from a two-year adventure living in Denmark with her husband and two daughters, both of whom are thriving at AHB Community School. We invited Nicole to the blog to write about the school and its unusual fundraising and community-building tradition.
 

For the past eight years, Austin Home Base Community School (AHB), a small, progressive elementary and middle school in Hyde Park, has been hosting the Austin Home Brew Festival, an annual fundraiser that celebrates Central Texas’s finest home-brewed beers, meads, ciders, and kombuchas.

Though the brewfest began as a small backyard gathering of parents swapping their homebrews and tossing cash into the kitty, the event has in more recent years emerged as a player in the city’s iconic festival landscape, offering participants a unique, DIY Austin experience.

“People say the beers at our festival taste professional, but they are not mass marketed,” says AHB parent and longtime festival volunteer Wendy Salome. “They are unique and individual and they exist in that moment.”

Indeed, this year’s uncommon flavors—all preselected by a panel of certified beer judges and not otherwise available for sale in any stores—will include Sweet Coffee Stout, Summer Cider, and some great traditionals like Helles Lager.
 

While small-batch beer and progressive education may seem at first glance to be unlikely bedfellows, festival organizers say the slow-food spirit of home brewing is a perfect match for AHB’s creative and collaborative approach to education.

“We talk about AHB a lot as a hybrid, taking the best of different things and creating something even better out of it, and I think that’s what homebrewers do as well,” Salome says. “It’s kind of taking the things that you like about your different beers and making the beer that works best for you. That’s what families and administration have done all along at AHB.”

To be sure, in an era of increasingly standardized education, testing, and grades, the emphasis at AHB is on authentic, project-based learning, critical thinking, and community participation. Instead of standard grade levels, kids work in mixed-age classrooms. And instead of mandatory attendance five days a week, the students’ school week ranges from three to five days—depending on age and interests. 
 

“When I first discovered the school and came into the classrooms, the thing that hit me the most was the confidence and the importance of the narrative voice of the child to be heard, to be understood, to be supported, and that follows along in everything we do in our integrated curriculum,” says AHB Director Mary Williams. “The teachers set the agenda, but then it’s up to the children to help drive the curriculum and to complete the process and the products and the projects.”

Parents say the result is a unique blend of creative freedom with rigorous academics, often at the level of or even exceeding international standards.

“We wanted to find a place where kids could grow and be free and be creative, but also have structure, so we knew that there was accountability for their learning,” says festival volunteer and AHB parent Valerie Sand. “I wanted someone who knew what they were doing to say, this is what’s going to happen now. Let’s make it fun. Let’s give you ownership of it. And I really believe in that, and that makes it easy to get involved.”
 

The 8th Annual Austin Home Brew Festival will be held from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Friday, November 4, 2016, at Saengerrunde Hall. For more information, go to facebook.com/AustinHomebrewFestival or ahbfestival.org.
 

Nicole Lessin

 

3 reasons personal development is essential to 21st-century education

Guest contributor Letsie Khabele is co-founder and CEO of KọSchool, a unique high school in south-central Austin. He joins us on the blog today to share some of his expertise on personal development, one of the pillars of a KọSchool education.
 

Many high-performing athletes, entrepreneurs, and leaders stress the value of personal development. While there are variations on approaches, there is a lot of consensus on the goals: How does a person increase their performance in any area by becoming more responsible, more compassionate, creative, and present? Oddly enough, an emphasis on personal development is either missing or marginalized in traditional schools as it’s typically considered silly and unnecessary. However, rather than minimizing its role, 21st-century education requires personal development as the foundation for student growth and success.
 

1. Being an Effective Learner

Hard work and studying matter. But they’re no longer sufficient. To deal with the abundant and ubiquitous data and information of our times, learners increasingly require presence, focus, and an optimal mindset. Consider the different results when a student spends two hours on pre-algebra with the mental model “I’m horrible at math” versus the same amount of time on the exact same subject with the mental model “Math is a puzzle that’s fun to figure out.” A core practice in personal development is becoming aware of one’s attitude and mindset around a particular activity, taking full responsibility for it, and then embodying an attitude that’s more effective. Unless students are in control of their mindsets, they’re often resigned to drudgery and struggle to “just get through the classes,” which can color their educational and learning experiences for life.
 

2. Having Purpose

Getting through secondary school and graduating from college can be challenging. Without purpose, it’s often daunting, meaningless, and uninspiring. Students who have purpose, who have passion, who have a context for their experiences, are more likely to make the most of their time in any school. Developing an authentic purpose necessitates a level of personal responsibility, self-confidence, and self-awareness. When schools neglect to provide students opportunities to develop these characteristics, like anyone else, they are less likely to overcome challenges or connect with their inner fire of motivation. Worse, once structures of accountability disappear upon graduation, many young people are left rudderless, without a developed connection with their inner compass. On the other hand, when educational systems invest in teaching personal development practices, purpose and meaning naturally emerge. Students become increasingly likely to succeed on their educational path and even enjoy the process.
 

3. Embracing Change

There’s a saying that the only thing that is constant is change. I’d argue that even change is changing. What I mean is that the speed of change is accelerating. Driven by technology and demographics, there will be more disruption and change in 2017 than there was between 2000 and 2005. Successfully navigating change requires years of personal development work. Without ongoing practice, the vast majority of people automatically fear change, with many being prone to intense anxiety. With practice, not only can students learn how to stay centered and proactive during times of rapid change; they can also learn how to embrace it. While most are feeling overwhelmed and reactive, people who have been practicing personal development will create new ways of providing value, will discover new solutions, and will find ways to make a difference in the world.
 

At KọSchool, all members of the community engage in a sustained personal development practice. For our students we use group exercises, socratic inquiry, and personal coaching to expand their capacities of mindfulness, integrity, and self-awareness. Our mission is to develop “FutureAuthors”—students who continuously improve, can teach themselves anything, and are driven to make the world a better place. If you’re interested in learning more, please join us for a tour or our upcoming open house.

Letsie Khabele

How to have a great day at a museum? Step into your kid’s (lunar-powered) shoes.

This post was written by Abigail Kutlas, who studies Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. This summer, Abigail is a museum intern and researcher in Washington, DC. Her research focuses on family engagement and accessibility for children with intellectual disabilities.

What would you invent to help someone see differently? Ask an eight-year-old and a thirty-eight-year-old and you’ll get very different answers.

When we posed this question to our visitors at the hands-on, maker-space-esque exhibit I work in, the youngest patrons were fountains of innovative ideas. They drew elaborate lunar-powered shirts, shorts, and shoes so soccer players could practice at night. They wanted to make a virtual reality headset so you could see information about your favorite constellations just by looking at them. One jokester even sketched carrots.

The answer I got nearly every time from grown-ups? Glasses. Nothing special or new, just glasses, like the ones perched on my own nose.  

Something similar happens when I watch kids sit down at a table with an open-ended prompt, like “How can you project an image onto a screen?” They start by sifting through every available material, and they work until they’ve found two or four or ten solutions, often using every Lego in sight. And most of the answers they come up with make sense, because they intuitively understand that lenses and light, in some combination, will help them reach their target.
 

Meanwhile, their parents often turn to me within seconds of sitting down and ask, “What’s the right answer?”

I don’t fault grown-ups for thinking like this. It’s a combination of what our traditional education system has taught us to value and the many hats we wear when we take our kiddos out into the world: timekeeper, taskmaster, bathroom-runner, and above all, expert. Each of those roles is important at times, but for a museum experience that lasts in the minds of all family members, I wish parents could check most of their hats at the door when they walk in.

The best advice I can give to adults visiting any museum with children is to be 25 percent grown-up and 75 percent kid while you’re there.

Go ahead and use your advanced fluency skills and big vocabulary to make sense of the information given on plaques and signs, but then assume your role as a kid and just enjoy it.
 

On your day at the museum:

• Ask questions with the assumption that there are no right or wrong answers.
• Talk about connections between what you’re seeing and anything (literally, anything) it reminds you of.
• Don’t feel obligated to see every single thing in every exhibit. Let your and your kids’ natural interests tell you where to linger, which exhibits to race through, and which to avoid.
• When you discover something new or are confused, stop and pay attention to those feelings. Discuss them with your kids. In other words, model the fact that learning is a lifelong process.

I see our youngest visitors do most of these things naturally, and it enhances their learning and overall experience when they see their grown-ups behaving this way too.

As museum professionals, we have theories upon theories about how to engage your children, but in the end, you spend every day with them and have so much more influence over their experiences than we ever can. We do our best to facilitate experiences that will be meaningful to kids and stick with them. But when parents let go and learn to walk through the museum like their kids do—with boundless imagination, curiosity, and amazement—that’s when the truly lasting impressions happen.

That’s also when parents and kids have the most fun!

Abigail Kutlas

Math and happiness

Lacie Taylor is founder and owner of Math For Keeps, a math ed business in Austin, Texas. She teaches her students how to practice math (much like you’d practice piano or basketball). With this approach, as she explains in the guest post below, her students develop a fluency in math as a language that changes the whole game for them.

Learn more about the Math For Keeps practice-to-mastery method here.
 

One of the magical things about one-on-one teaching is that it’s easy to keep a student in what educational theorists call their Zone of Proximal Development. I call it your Sweet Spot! If you’re bored, optimal learning is not happening. On the other hand, if you’re stretched so far that you’re freaking out, shutting down, with tears and much stress, optimal learning is also not happening. Here’s the fun, happy news: when you’re feeling your best while learning something, when you’re stretched enough that you’re engaged and inspired but not so much that you’re giving up, it FEELS good, AND that’s when optimal learning is happening. How lucky is that?

So how do we keep a student in that sweet spot? Let’s use one of the most famous subjects for knocking students out of their happy learning place—math—for outlining how.

First, a more formal definition of the Zone of Proximal Development: it is the gap between what a student can do independently (what they have mastered) and what they cannot yet do independently. Skills that are in the gap might have been introduced, and perhaps the student can do them with assistance, but they don’t yet have them mastered. Another way to put it: You’ve got your Actual Development, and your Potential Development, and your Zone of Proximal Development is where skills live when they’re in transition from one to the other.

So this space of learning—after you’ve been shown something, but before you’ve got it in the bag—that’s a fun happy space! The brain loves to be in this space, and loves to see skills move through this space into mastery. So why does learning sometimes stop feeling so fun? One culprit is our expectation that students work on things outside this zone. We’re expecting them to work on things they either already have in the bag (boring) or things that are unfair to expect them to do on their own just yet (defeating). The antidote, then, the guidelines for keeping students in their sweet spot, are pretty simple:
 

GUIDELINES FOR KEEPING A STUDENT IN THEIR SWEET SPOT

1. Don’t teach past what they’re ready for.
2. Don’t give busy work.

(TO NOTE: Do not get mad at your child’s classroom teacher if they aren’t doing this for your child. Doing this in a classroom of 25+ kids, all at different levels, when the paradigm is set up for its opposite, is a formidable challenge. But it’s one that alternative education is up to, and that’s one reason we’re all here on this blog.)

Number One Guideline: Don’t teach past what they’re ready for.

 If you as a student have truly been set up for success, each new level of math should feel completely do-able and accessible. The fact that it doesn’t, for most math students, sooner or later, simply means that the last level didn’t get mastered. At every new level of math, there is a new layer of skills that you’ll be figuring out. You won’t be able to do them independently; you’ll need help. The previous layers will have felt like that too at some point, but by now, if they have been practiced effectively all the way to mastery, then they will feel intuitive. You will be DONE with those skills. You won’t have to figure them out anymore. They are there to support the new skills you’re being expected to learn. When math starts feeling impossible, as it does for so many of us, it’s because we’re still getting that last layer down. We’re not ready for the new layer yet. Don’t give it to us before we’re ready, or our brains will reject it. We will hate math, feel discouraged by it, think we can’t do it, and start asking why the heck we have to learn it. Vicious downward spiral. Yuk.
 

Number Two Guideline: Don’t give busy work.

This is a tricky one because it is true that the more practice you have at a given type of problem, the better you become at it. The more automatic it feels, the more your brain energy gets freed up for the next level of skills. But it is also true that practice can quickly become tedious and mind-numbing once you’ve made it past that first-problem moment. In a perfect world, the student will have perfectly prescribed practices that are just right for their level. Your brain loves to witness progress. Nailing something that just recently seemed difficult is rarely boring. In fact, the most common student response to this scenario is “these are fun!”
 

Alt Ed for Curing Math Woes

In public education, currently, it seems students have two options: they learn at the school’s pace, or they end up having a less than happy, thriving experience in math. Sadly, most fall into the latter camp, because the school’s pace really doesn’t work for that many students (at least not without a different approach for practicing skills to mastery).

Students learn at different paces. If practice methods were introduced earlier, we could probably equalize better, but as it is, the further along you get in age, the more likely you will be in a class full of 15+ other kids all at dramatically different levels.

In the work I do, if I get a student early enough, I can make sure they’re ready for each class as it happens. The more likely scenario, however, is that parents have no idea just how behind their students are until after the student is multiple grade levels behind. The pain point gets loud enough long after the “ideal” time to fix it.

This doesn’t mean it’s not fixable. For many students, remediation can still happen in time for them to get on grade level. Then there are students who, even though entirely capable of learning math, at their own pace, will not catch up with the school’s pace. In this scenario, for students in public school, it is so easy for everyone involved to feel defeated. Parents, students, teachers alike are all operating under the assumption that because the student is not learning math at the school’s whirlwind pace, which has been pushing them along before they are ready for years, the student is condemned to struggle and to be perpetually behind and to probably not really learn math at all. And this is all with students (those using my practice method anyway) who are absolutely learning math.

What if “behind” didn’t even have to be a notion? Already, some students don’t go as far in math as others, and that’s fine, but what if those who didn’t go as far still learned math, and still loved it? Of course, this is totally possible in public education, with a bit of overhauling. Meanwhile, let’s explore it via all the amazing alternative education options in Austin.
 

Summary

Happy is most important! My whole method was developed on the premise that most of us (both “math-minded” and not) will end up frustrated by math trying to learn it with the minimal practice that is offered in the classroom. And not just the kind of healthy frustration that comes as a natural part of learning, but a very defeating kind that makes us feel inept. This is not fair. EVERYONE deserves to have a rewarding experience learning math. I aim with my practice method to give that to my students, regardless of what they’re getting in the classroom. So while it may feel discouraging—for those of you for whom your brain’s timeline is different than your school’s timeline—-I hope that overall the message I am sending is encouraging. The people I work with are fantastic students. They work hard, they’re enthusiastic, they show up ready to learn, they will get this stuff, on the timeline that is perfect for their brains. My job, with the help of parents—we all work as a team—is to make sure that when this timeline is different from the school’s, as it sometimes is, they don’t feel defeated, that if their enthusiasm for learning takes a hit, they know the reason and bounce back.

Lacie Taylor
 

Does your child’s school support mental health and well-being?

Returning guest contributor Michael Strong is co-founder of the Kọ School + Incubator. He joins us on the blog today to discuss an important but often overlooked factor in adolescent well-being: school connectedness.
 

I’ve spent most of my life developing small, personalized schools that provide supportive environments for teens. For decades it has been obvious to me that a teen’s connection to a school is one of the most important factors in adolescent well-being. The research community is finally beginning to recognize this.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 2009 on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health:

School connectedness was found to be the strongest protective factor for both boys and girls to decrease substance use, school absenteeism, early sexual initiation, violence, and risk of unintentional injury (e.g., drinking and driving, not wearing seat belts). In this same study, school connectedness was second in importance, after family connectedness, as a protective factor against emotional distress, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation and attempts.

Families are certainly important. But note that school connectedness is even more important than family connectedness with respect to a teen’s propensity to engage in multiple dangerous behaviors (substance abuse, violence, drinking, and driving). Moreover, school connectedness is the second most important factor, after family, to guard against clinical depression, eating disorders, and suicide.

Figure from Improving the Odds: The Untapped Power of Schools to Improve the Health of Teens, p. 4.

What is “school connectedness”? Teens were asked:

How strongly do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements:

• I feel close to people at this school.
• I am happy to be at this school.
• I feel like I am part of this school.
• The teachers at this school treat students fairly.
• I feel safe in my school.

A 2003 analysis of the responses of 36,000 teens discovered remarkable correlations between “school connectedness” and well-being. Summarized as “Improving the Odds: The Untapped Power of Schools to Improve the Health of Teens,” this research led to the CDC’s public position on the importance of school connection and adolescent well-being.

Researchers are only now discovering just how deeply these connections go. For instance, a 2007 article in the Journal of Adolescent Health discovered a direct connection between early teen experiences and mental health. They surveyed a cohort of almost 3,000 teens at grade 8, grade 10, and one year after graduation:

Overall, young people’s experiences of early secondary school and their relationships at school continue to predict their moods, their substance use in later years, and their likelihood of completing secondary school. Students with good school and good social connectedness are less likely to experience subsequent mental health issues and be involved in health risk behaviors, and are more likely to have good educational outcomes.

In a world in which an estimated one third of teens are on prescription medication, and almost half of those are on psychoactive substances (medications addressing depression and hyperactivity), it is important for more parents to realize that school may be a causal factor with respect to their child’s depression.

Another cohort study of 2,000 teens states bluntly in its report title: “School Connectedness Is an Underemphasized Parameter in Adolescent Mental Health.” It explicitly suggests that a lack of school connectedness is a causal factor in mental health issues.

School connectedness also predicted depressive symptoms 1 year later for both boys and girls, anxiety symptoms for girls, and general functioning for boys, even after controlling for prior symptoms. . . . Results suggest a stronger than previously reported association with school connectedness and adolescent depressive symptoms in particular and a predictive link from school connectedness to future mental health problems.

Pharmaceutical companies invest significant marketing dollars into persuading parents and health care practitioners that depression is a biochemical disorder to be corrected by pharmaceuticals. But what if a significant portion of adolescent dysfunction and mental illness is actively caused by a child’s feeling of disconnection from the school community?

A recent dissertation on schools and depression summarizes the scale of the issue:

Depression is a debilitating condition that is increasingly recognized among youth, especially adolescents. Nearly a third of adolescents experience a depressive episode by age 19 and an increasing number of youth experience depressed mood, subsyndromal symptoms, and minor depression. The prevalence of depression is particularly high among female, racial minority and sexual minority youth. . . . major depression and subthreshold depressive symptoms often first appear during the adolescent years. Rates of depression steadily increase from ages 12 to 15. Based on retrospective studies of depressed adults and prospective studies of youth, major depression is most likely to emerge during the mid-adolescent years (ages 13–15). Prospective studies that follow the same children over time reveal a dramatic increase in the prevalence of major depressive episodes after age 11 and again after age 15, with a flattening of rates in young adulthood (Kim-Cohen et al., 2003).

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll finds that only 44 percent of high school students feel engaged at school.

As a lifelong educator who has seen literally hundreds of children improve their well-being by means of transferring to a school at which they felt more connected, these are not merely hypothetical speculations. I believe we have a mental health catastrophe among our teens, and massive disconnection from schooling is a major causal factor in this catastrophe.
 

The CDC goes on to describe four factors that can improve school connectedness:

1. Adult support: “In the school setting, students feel supported and cared for when they see school staff dedicating their time, interest, attention, and emotional support to them. Students need to feel that adults care about them as individuals as well as about their academic achievement. Smaller schools may encourage more personal relationships among students and staff and allow for personalized learning.”

2. Belonging to a positive peer group: “Students’ health and educational outcomes are influenced by the characteristics of their peers, such as how socially competent peer group members are or whether the peer group supports pro-social behavior. Being part of a stable peer network protects students from being victimized or bullied.”

3. Commitment to education: “It is important that both students and adults are committed to learning and are involved in school activities. Students’ dedication to their own education is associated with the degree to which they perceive that their peers and important adults in their lives 1) believe school is important and 2) act on those beliefs. . . . School staff who are dedicated to the education of their students build school communities that allow students to develop emotionally, socially, and mentally, as well as academically. Committed adults engage students in learning, foster mutual respect and caring, and meet the personal learning needs of each student.”

4. School environment: “A positive school environment, often called school climate, is characterized by caring and supportive interpersonal relationships; opportunities to participate in school activities and decision-making; and shared positive norms, goals, and values. One study found that schools with a higher average sense-of-community score (i.e., composite of students’ perception of caring and supportive interpersonal relationships and their ability to be autonomous and have influence in the classroom) had significantly lower average student drug use and delinquency.”

Is your child experiencing healthy school-connectedness? All parents should take these issues very seriously, before their teens experience much more serious challenges.
 

Please share this article with your friends so we can begin a national debate on how we can help address our most pressing teen issues—including, according to the CDC, “ . . . substance use, school absenteeism, early sexual initiation, violence, and risk of unintentional injury (e.g., drinking and driving, not wearing seat belts) . . . emotional distress, disordered eating, and suicidal ideation and attempts”—through authentic human relationships rather than pharmaceuticals. It is wonderful that we are now much more attentive about the foods that we put into our children. Now we need to focus on the ways in which they may be supported by their school environments.

Michael Strong

Top 5 reasons why teens make great entrepreneurs

Sarah Hernholm, lead contributor of this guest post, is the founder/president of WIT—Whatever It Takes, the only six-unit college-credit social entrepreneur and leadership course in the country for high school teens. Based in San Diego, WIT has locations in St. Louis, New York, and now Austin. WIT is currently accepting applications for 2016–2017; visit www.doingwit.org to learn how. To view Sarah’s TEDx talks and read more of her thoughts on why teens rock, check out www.sarahhernholm.com. You can follow her on Twitter @miss_wit.

Also contributing to this piece were teen entrepreneurs Safi Jafri, founder of WhiteHat; Daniela Montes, president of Student 2 Student Art (S2S); and Andrew Castro, president of Choose You.


Rebellious.
Willful.
Out-of-the-box.

These are just a few words to describe two groups of people: teens and entrepreneurs. 

Over the last six years, through my company WIT—Whatever It Takes, I’ve spent my days working with teens and helping them become entrepreneurs and leaders in their communities. The work isn’t always easy (because of those words mentioned above), but it certainly is rewarding to see teens become more confident, empathetic, self-aware, and successful. 

And since I think most experiences are better with teens, when I was asked to write this Top 5 list, I went to teens and asked them to chime in with their reasons as to why they make great entrepreneurs. Check out some of their thoughts below.
 

1. Teens want to do something. I know the common societal narrative is that teens are apathetic and self-absorbed (although I think I know more adults than teens who fit that description!), what I see on a regular basis are teens who are frustrated by what is happening in their world and interested in figuring out how to make “it” better. What usually holds them back is the lack of programs/platforms available to them and those countless hours of ridiculous homework (but that’s a topic for another blog). Yet at WIT we see teens finding ways to launch a social enterprise despite their heavy school workloads. Why? Because they are passionate about doing work that actually matters to them.

2. Teens like proving you (adults) wrong.  If I wanted to apply reverse psychology on teens, I would just say, “I don’t think you can build a company,” and I know that would only fuel them to do it. But I don’t take that approach. I don’t have to. Society is already doing it. As teen Safi Jafri puts it, “. . . that teenage mind that people say can't ever be professional enough or smart enough or mature enough? Well that mind will do whatever it takes to get what they want, no matter how little you believe in their potential . . .” Just because they don’t want to do their homework doesn’t mean they don’t want to change the world.  Proving doubters wrong is a common motivation for successful entrepreneurs. As teen Andrew Castro says, “We love to prove people wrong and push the envelope.”

3. Teens aren’t carrying a lot of baggage.  As teen Pia Deshpande shared with me, “ . . . most teenagers haven't defined themselves as people yet. They never sit back and say, ‘That's not me’ like so many adults do . . . they're still exploring . . .” In other words, teens aren’t as cynical and hardened as most adults; they haven’t labeled themselves or put themselves in boxes like a lot of adults do. Also, the majority of teens don’t have a mortgage, lots of bills, debt, or dependents, so they are able to take on more risks—and being able to take risks is a great trait of an entrepreneur.

4. Teens want more “real world” experience. Most of a teen’s day is spent sitting and listening to someone tell them what they think is important. All of this is done in the hope of better preparing said teens for the “real world.” But last time I checked, I don’t spend my days sitting for 10 hours while someone talks at me. It doesn’t surprise me that teens experience burnout and want to ditch school. I would too (and did). Teens just want adults to acknowledge that the world they are living in is actually their “real world” and that they would prefer not to just talk about things in theory but instead apply the knowledge to their real world! This is why entrepreneurship is a great outlet: teens can apply math, reading, writing, public speaking, debate, etc., all while running their own business!

5. Teens want reasons to believe in themselves. Teen Daniela Montes shared with me: “At an age where insecurity is common, building entrepreneurial skills allows us to believe in ourselves and say, “Hey, I'm capable of making a difference,’ thus creating confidence, professionalism, and maturity.” Those teen years can be tough. It can be seven years of questioning your place, value, and worth and wondering if you measure up. But when you launch a business as a 16-year-old and see your efforts improve the lives of others and get recognized for your impact, you see proof that you matter and are changing lives. That tangible proof helps build confidence and self-worth, which all teens could use a little more of.
 

So to all those teens out there: I see you—your rebellious energy, willful determination, and desire to make a difference—and I applaud you for it!

And I want to invest in your enterprises . . . so hit me up.
 

Sarah Hernholm, with assistance from Safi Jafri, Daniela Montes, and Andrew Castro