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Adventures in Research: Issue 13

By the time you’re reading this, summer is slowly fading and most kids will have been back at school for several weeks. The first-day jitters are hopefully behind them (and parents!). And while I like to think my husband and I helped our own kids successfully make the transition from summer to school, I’m self-aware enough to know who truly made the difference:

  • The guidance counselor who went out of his way to make sure my 16-year-old could keep her art classes in an academically heavy junior year.
  • The guidance counselor who started working with my 14-year-old last May to support his transition back to public school after five years out of district.
  • The exceedingly skilled, patient teachers who welcomed my nervous 5th grader into middle school.

If you know me, you know I’m a lifelong teacher (and guidance counselor) superfan. This past month, I’m just extra grateful for every one of them.

male guidance counselor and female student talking in school library

Measuring Joy’s Impact

I keep coming back to a study I read about over the summer. Researchers followed 22,000 students across 57 schools over a school year and tested which classroom practices helped students flourish. (A caveat: The sample consisted of students at Australian Christian schools, and it was a report rather than a peer-reviewed paper.)

So, what practice was linked to the largest gains in flourishing? It wasn’t a curriculum. It was laughing with other students. That’s right: laughing!

I don’t read this as an argument for bringing clowns or comedians into schools and youth development programming. And I don’t think the laughter is simply just laughter, either. I think laughter is the most visible and most countable signal of something we often leave out of our models: JOY.

And it struck me how rarely that word—”joy”—appears in our work. I’ve spent 15+ years designing studies of young people. We measure engagement, belonging, self-efficacy, socio-emotional competencies, attendance, dosage, and program quality. All of it matters. But I can’t remember the last time I saw “joy” in a logic model.

Which is strange, isn’t it? Isn’t there some near-universal, mostly unspoken agreement that childhood should contain joy?

I wonder whether we’ve gotten so precise about the machinery of learning and growth that we’ve forgotten about this key piece.

The “Big Three” Essential Features of Positive Youth Development (PYD) Programming

Kristina had an a-ha moment while picking up her fifth grader from “Library Society,” a program for middle-schoolers at her town’s library.

The kids love this program because it hits that sweet spot for tweens: It’s informal yet keeps them meaningfully engaged. (Plus, there are crafts!)

This got Kristina thinking about the “Big Three” that her mentor Richard Lerner cites as the three essential features of PYD programming:

  1. Positive sustained adult-youth relationships (Kristina says the town’s librarian is a rockstar)
  2. Life-skill-building activities (for example: debating the proper use of AI)
  3. Opportunities for youth contribution and leadership (the kids regularly contribute new ideas for programming at the library)

It’s a good reminder that PYD can happen anywhere, not just in large formal programs. Sometimes it’s a librarian, a craft table, and a room full of tweens who feel seen and heard. When those three ingredients are in place, that’s when the magic happens.

A Little Fun as We Head into Fall

When I started Lynch Research Associates in 2016, I was committed to building a business where we never lose sight of fun. And I’m grateful that, even 10 years later, that’s still the case, as evidenced by this recent bit of fun we had when Kristina and I met virtually to talk about a client report, but then we discovered that Google Meet dropped some new filters…

Ready to Hit the Ground Running in 2027?

It’s never too early to start discussing your research projects for 2027 (and beyond). Schedule time with one of us, and let’s chat.

Best,
The Team at Lynch Research Associates

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Natick, Massachusetts 01760

info@lynchresearchassociates.com
508-494-3751

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Adventures in Research: Issue 12