Creating Great Places to Learn

The Developmental Asset framework resonates with educators at all levels because it captures so well the reason why many entered the schooling profession in the first place. Its focus on building strengths in young people and meeting the needs of the whole child or adolescent in the process of promoting learning and school success not only aligns with good teaching practices but also reignites the passion for nurturing eager young learners that brought educators to classrooms and schools in the first place.

So it was natural for educators to call upon Search Institute to help them incorporate asset building explicitly into their work in schools. Although many educators had discovered the power of the assets in their classrooms, schools and districts a number of years ago, the concerted effort to marshal support specifically to educators began in the mid-1990s. In 1999, the publication of Great Places to Learn: How Asset-Building Schools Help Students Succeed served both to illustrate the asset-rich work that many teachers, administrators, counselors and other support staff had been doing and to prompt others new to the framework to incorporate the asset approach into their work with students. That book and its accompanying video You Have to Live It! identified three themes for asset-building in schools that remain relevant today:

Building relationships with students is the foundation of fostering Developmental Assets in their lives as young people as well as learners.
Creating supportive environments is a key to providing a learning and growth experience that is both productive and positive.
Connecting to programs and practices that already are known by staff and are sound instructionally enables the asset model to be infused within the existing goals and priorities of schooling on an everyday basis.

The Institute maintains a five-year plan for working with educators that includes these goals:

Understand and share how asset building contributes to academic achievement.
Develop or identify asset-building strategies most likely to increase assets of diverse student populations and contribute to their academic improvement.
Serve as a catalyst in transforming schools into asset-building environments.
Create tools and resources to support school personnel in building assets.
Partner with others to create and deliver resources that help infuse assets.
Influence national educational policy and public opinion in support of children and adolescents.

In an era of heightened accountability expectations for schools, often fragile support systems for youth at home and in the community, and increasing concerns for the safety of students at school, the asset model holds promise for strengthening and encouraging students as well as staff members to foster relationships, create a positive school environment, and weave asset-building into a full array of programs and practices, making school truly A Great Place to Learn.