A community intentionally cultivated
A community repeatedly practiced
A signal of what's possible.
We intentionally design transitions for at-risk youth.
from pretending to UNDERSTANDING
from isolation to ASSOCIATION
from reaction to OBSERVATION
from familiar responses to PRACTICED COURAGE
from consuming community to STEWARDING COMMUNITY
KeepWalking
How do I make my students care?
How Do I MakeMy StudentsCare?
Maybe you can’t.
What ten years and 1500+ sessions with at-risk youth in North Baton Rouge taught us about motivation, status, practice and formation.
How do I make my students care? We asked this question for years.
Some worked better than others.
But eventually something bothered us about the question itself.
Maybe you can’t make them care.
But you can pay attention to what they already care about.
One young man
A thirteen year-old kid named Tyrell once announced:
“When I walk down the street I want everybody to know I don’t care.”
At first, that sounded like a problem. Eventually, we began wondering whether we had misunderstood it.
Maybe the problem wasn’t that Tyrell didn’t care.
Maybe we hadn’t paid enough attention to what he cared about — and what caring about it earned him.
Tyrell cared very much about what the people around him thought of him. “I don’t care” wasn’t the absence of caring.
It earned him something.
What do your students already care about?
Not what adults want them to care about. What actually gets noticed?
What earns status?
STATUS
A working observation
After more than a decade and 1500+ sessions with youth, we began noticing that telling youth what mattered was far less powerful than what their community made visible and valuable.
What earns status gets practiced.
What gets practiced forms people.
A discovery
At the end of one recent semester, students were given a choice: take an incentive apart from recognition, or choose to recognize what was worth noticing in one another.
85% chose meaning.
Stop and notice
What earns status in your community?
“Status is everything.”
— webmaster Kyree
Not what you wish mattered — but what actually gets noticed, repeated, and rewarded.
Tell us how you got here.
Two different inquiries
Traditional program inquiry
Providence Road inquiry
What earns status influences what gets practiced.
The question changed
We began by asking how to make youth care. We ended up asking what the community itself was teaching them to value.
For Educators Thinking About What’s Possible
What if the work of becoming mattered as much as the work of learning?
Every school community is shaping more than what students know. It is shaping what they experience, what they practice, and what they come to believe is possible.
Community
A community intentionally cultivated — where belonging is designed, not assumed, and what earns status is shaped by the adults in the room.
Practice
Ways of being, repeatedly practiced — so courage, attention, and care become habits a young person carries beyond the classroom.
Possibility
A signal of what's possible — moments that show youth, and the adults beside them, who they are becoming.
The field note you’re reading is one educator’s ten-year reckoning with that question. The approach is where the practice lives.
Explore the approach
Take a look
You’ve noticed what earns status.
Now let’s ask what that practice is forming.
Start a Conversation
Are you an educator exploring how school communities can shape who students become?
We’d welcome a conversation.