“The positive impact of working with Turning the Wheel these past few years has been incredible. Their philosophy of inclusion, shared creativity and mutual support brings joy and a culture of positive acceptance to our school.” —Family Outreach Coordinator at Columbine School
Turning the Wheel’s teaching model is based on inclusiveness, collaboration and unconditional acceptance. In many cases, the youth who come to TTW often feel “invisible” in their schools and communities. TTW reaches out to youngsters with opportunities to give to others, to share their talents and to be seen and heard. This includes “last chance” schools, teen parents, and kids in rehab programs, as well as kids struggling desperately for identity and balance within the mainstream educational system.
For the past six years, under the direction of Dr. Larry Frey, a professor in the Department of Communication at CU Boulder, Turning the Wheel has been formally evaluating the outcomes for youth participating in Boulder County school programs. With Dr. Frey, we developed self-evaluation sheets to learn how well these programs accomplish eight outcomes that are absolutely crucial to this work: improving youths’ (1) self-esteem and well-being, (2) accountability and self-discipline, (3) communication ability, (4) leadership, (5) relationships with others, (6) appreciation of diversity, (7) group/community engagement, and (8) performance skills and art appreciation.
By measuring young people’s perceptions before and after participating in Turning the Wheel’s programs, we have evaluated the effectiveness of TTW’s school programs. The results have been incredibly rewarding and supportive of our work, as youngsters changed in a statistically significant and positive manner on virtually every single one of those outcomes. We are now working with Dr. Frey to facilitate the use if a new tool for effective pre- and post program teacher evaluation using a random samples of students.