Marilla Argüelles is a program designer, teacher and blogger who helps overlooked, discouraged teens Access New Skills, Take Healthy Chances, and Realize They Can Matter! The strategies she developed grew out of the federally funded media education projects she designed and conducted in four Oakland public high schools.
Marilla’s programs help teens answer two important Questions:
- why key adults in their lives support destructive, profit-obsessed systems, and
- where they can find allies who help them develop resources and solutions.
These are questions we all should ask, but when Marilla was a teen no one ever did. Like many quietly desperate teens today, she secretly developed a pattern of dangerous behaviors. That’s why she’s writing How To Matter Now! a survival guide and workbook of strategies and resources teens can use to discover their own strengths and potential while dealing with stressed-out, overbearing parents and authorities.
“Teens want to learn about nutrition, sexuality, relationships, how to elect good leaders, and skills that help them survive, not only how to get into competitive colleges that leave them thousands of dollars in debt.”
It’s why Marilla promotes the “radical” notion that schools should stop focusing on SAT scores and the Common Core Curriculum. “We should be paying teens to work on projects that benefit their communities, and to take seminars with leaders who’re developing system changes.”
While most administrators and parents may initially consider this approach far-fetched or impractical, it’s actually more like the way our country’s wealthiest teens are being educated at private prep and boarding schools. And it helps explain why The University of Chicago Admissions recently made SAT scores optional and why the University of California and other state systems are considering the same.
“Unfortunately most schools buy into the current market definition of what the country needs: a workforce that produces what’s most profitable financially, and the same gadgets and technologies that are accelerating the use of robots and computer technology in the workplace.
What happens to students who won’t, or can’t, obsess on SAT tests, Core or STEM curricula? They’re herded into programs that train them for low paying jobs that are the most vulnerable to automation and the gig economy’s evisceration of collective bargaining. That is, if they’re docile, if not, we lock ‘em up!”
If your students are being left behind even though you, and they, know they’re bright, capable, and caring, be sure to read the blogs on my Blog page. And be sure to access Marilla’s free report for strategies to inspire and support them.
