High Impact Practices with Urban Youth--Circles at the Center A Guidebook for Practitioners and Scholar-Activists

High impact practices are evidence-based educational practices that have been shown to increase student learning and raise levels of performance, retention, and success. The circle--commonly known as a discussion circle--is a key high impact practice linked to positive outcomes for urban youth. Circles are effective tools for enhancing communication, promoting emotional support and healing, and encouraging problem-solving and creativity.

In High Impact Practices with Urban Youth--Circles at the Center: A Guidebook for Practitioners and Scholar-Activists, Yan Dominic Searcy and Troy Harden provide research-based best practices in an accessible format to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers who are specifically working to improve the life outcomes of urban youth. Targeted to assist front-line practitioners, program directors, and those training to be practitioners, this book reflects Searcy and Harden's combined over five decades of work with urban youth and imparts high impact practices to influence interventions and program design. Each chapter begins with a brief narrative from a discussion circle, reflective of the authors' interactions with youth or program staff that is germane to a high impact practice.

The best youth work combines art and science, emotion and skill. High Impact Practices with Urban Youth effectively blends both to ground the next generation of interventions aimed at improving youth program outcomes whether the programs are targeting juvenile justice, health promotion, education, sports, leadership, or mentoring.

Yan Dominic Searcy, PhD, is Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, Northridge. He has worked with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and Boys and Girls Clubs, volunteered with agencies addressing sexual violence and youth homeless shelters, and created a curriculum for youth leadership programs and a university-based program to increase retention and graduation rates of minoritized youth. Searcy has worked with youth for more than 30 years.

Troy Harden, PhD, LCSW, is Director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute at Texas A&M University. He has worked closely with Communities Partnering for Peace (CP4P), is the lead researcher with the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance's Community-based Crime Reduction Grant in Englewood, and is a member of Mayor Lori Lightfoot's Public Safety Research Advisory Committee. Harden has more than 25 years of experience working in higher education and community settings.

Introduction
Chapter 1: An Introduction to High Impact Practices
Chapter 2: Theory Informing Practices
Chapter 3: Program Team Building: Leadership Matters
Chapter 4: Recruitment, Retention, and Participation
Chapter 5: Discussion Circles: Centering Programming and Crafting Cohesion
Chapter 6: Content before Curriculum
Chapter 7: Fostering Youth Leadership
Chapter 8: Retreats
Chapter 9: Crafting Celebrity and Celebrations: The Importance of Public Events for Presenting, Performing, and Uplifting Accomplishment
Chapter 10: Post-Program Follow-up
Epilogue: Rocket Science
References