For Schools

Schools are uniquely advantaged to teach and support Developmental Assets due to the fact that there are hundreds of young people attending them every day, a captive audience!  Schools also provide several built-in mechanisms to naturally nurture Asset development in the kids who attend them, and perhaps in the staff members, families and broader school community as well. 

• As educational facilities, schools provide learning contexts. 
• As social systems, schools provide breeding grounds for research and development.
• As gathering places, schools provide physical spaces that people feel comfortable in and that come with built-in resources to access.
• As mirrors for the communities they serve, schools provide opportunities to initiate and lead; to reflect the effective ways we do things on behalf of the community.

The "How To's"

We are providing a very easy-to-follow set of implementation steps ("Building Developmental Relationships in Schools Implementation Kit"; download below). These 3 simple steps are offered as a framework for how 40 Developmental Assets can be used in any school.  All the school needs to provide is at least one champion willing to work through them, and then lead the early adopters in your school to get the snowball rolling. These key people will be the type who understand social collaboration (see diagram) and who know that often the biggest change comes from a more focused and refined effort as opposed to the broader and less developed one. Too big a target often leads to missing the mark more often.

The Developmental Assets framework provides a very specific context for focusing and refining your efforts to target happy, healthy, and well-adjusted kids in your school.

Please email us at sparc40rd@gmail.com if you need support, or to help develop the asset framework in your school