Focus on Youth

GOOD WOLF'S WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS

TEACHING NEUROSCIENCE TO FACILITATE TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING AND PROSOCIAL AGENCY

The Challenge

Our modern world presents enormous challenges for adolescents in their quest to grow into healthy and functional adults engaged constructively and meaningfully in their families and communities. A recent CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey documented an escalating crisis in adolescent mental health, made worse by stresses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and the toxic influences of social media. Many adolescents additionally suffer from adverse childhood experiences that threaten not only their immediate well-being, but also their life-long physical, emotional, and cognitive health and functioning. 

The Opportunity

Developmental neuroscience research has found that there is enhanced brain plasticity during adolescence. Likely the result of major hormonal changes, this plasticity means that adolescence is a particularly crucial time for brain development, perhaps even providing the possibility of developmental recovery from the impacts of earlier adverse experiences. 

Good Wolf’s methodology builds on research in educational neuroscience showing that teaching neuroscience can positively impact youthful attitudes, providing hope and helping change attitudes from a defensive to a growth mindset. Good Wolf also incorporates evidence-based aspects of other educational approaches to construct Good Wolf’s eclectic approach. 

Good Wolf’s results show that our approach to teaching neuroscience can engage and promote self-examination. Coupled with guided social-emotional learning, individuals can experience transformative learning that facilitates the growth of self-regulation, self-efficacy, and prosocial agency. 

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Good Wolf’s Answer: Wellness Wednesdays

Based on Good Wolf’s track record, and the literature mentioned above and elsewhere in this report, the City School District of New Rochelle (CSDNR) invited Good Wolf to teach weekly classes at New Rochelle High School throughout the second semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. This engagement was made possible by a grant to Good Wolf through the My Brother's Keeper and My Sister's Keeper (MBK/MSK) programs of the CSDNR. 

From January 2024 through early June, Good Wolf taught weekly classes in the High School’s Leadership Course. Each Wednesday Good Wolf shared cutting-edge concepts from cognitive neuroscience paired with guided social-emotional learning. We engaged seventeen students aged 15 to 17 in learning about how their brains work, then developing skills to support self-awareness, self-regulation, and active listening. Students were encouraged to focus on clarifying their own values and goals as they grew themselves into more effective learners, friends, family members, and citizens. 

Goals

Goals for Good Wolf’s Wellness Wednesdays Program included:  

  • Engagement, self-examination, self-regulation, and value-based thinking.
  • Changing attitudes of negativity to mindsets of growth, hope, and motivation.
  • Skills and habits of active listening, critical thinking, and life-long learning.
  • Self-efficacy and prosocial agency in support of effective and thriving lives.

Outcomes were assessed quantitatively using a validated survey tool to measure social-emotional competency, alongside independent classroom observation. Qualitative outcomes were assessed through student video self-reports, pre-intervention and post-intervention.  

Qualitative outcomes reported by many students suggested that Wellness Wednesdays had resulted in improved impulse control, self-reflection, self-regulation, critical thinking, and conscious attention to values and goal-directed behavior. Analysis of quantitative outcomes is currently underway. 

Outcomes

Outcomes were assessed quantitatively using a validated survey tool to measure social-emotional competency, alongside independent classroom observation. Qualitative outcomes were assessed through student video self-reports, pre-intervention and post-intervention.  

Qualitative outcomes reported by many students suggested that Wellness Wednesdays had resulted in improved impulse control, self-reflection, self-regulation, critical thinking, and conscious attention to values and goal-directed behavior. Analysis of quantitative outcomes is currently underway. 

A Continuing Opportunity 

Based on the positive outcomes from the initial program, Good Wolf was invited by the CSDNR and MBK/MSK programs to be part of the new Leadership Class and to expand engagement with adolescent students in the 2024-2025 academic year.

We are grateful for the support of the CSDNR and the MBK/MSK programs, and for the additional support from generous donors that makes the continuation of this work possible.

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