This social capital — the knowledge of how to forge connections that make opportunities visible and attainable — is the missing curriculum in American K-12 and postsecondary education. And it’s a shortcoming with consequences.

Young people from well-connected families absorb social capital almost by osmosis when it comes to learning things like how to ask for help, follow up and signal ambition without arrogance. Others, equally capable but from less-connected families, must figure this out alone. The result is unequal starting lines and unequal outcomes — a yawning between social wealth and social poverty. 

Social wealth means having not only knowledge and credentials, but relationships that open doors, including mentors who give advice, supervisors who challenge us when we need to grow and networks that surface opportunities. Social poverty is the absence of those assets. It is being a talented individual without advocates.

Research finds that students from higher-income families are far more likely to report having mentors who help them consider careers, internships and next steps than students from lower-income backgrounds, first-generation college-goers and young women, especially those without college-educated parents. They report thinner networks and fewer trusted adults to guide them through critical transitions.

One of the most schools and colleges can counter social poverty is through mentorship. It’s not just a “nice to have” experience; young people with mentors are more likely to persist in education and transition successfully into work than those who lack such guidance.

But schools treat mentorship as an optional add-on, something that happens only if a motivated teacher, counselor or employer goes above and beyond.

Psychologist David Yeager what young people need is not generic encouragement, but relationships combining high expectations and genuine support. Effective mentors don’t simply reassure students that they belong. They communicate that growth is expected and that effort will be taken seriously.

This builds trust and reinforces agency. Young people are more likely to persist when they believe that adults see their potential and are invested in helping them meet it.

Yeager suggests these dynamics can be designed and structured rather than left to chance. This doesn’t mean turning schools and colleges into networking factories or diluting academic rigor. It means recognizing that social development is educational development. 

Just as literacy requires instruction and practice, so does learning how to form professional relationships and networks, seek mentorship and navigate institutions.

What would it look like for schools and colleges to design a system that takes this responsibility seriously? Here are six principles to guide this effort.

1. Make mentorship universal, not exceptional. Mentorship shouldn’t depend on self-selection or teacher heroics. Schools and colleges should assign mentors, integrate advisory systems and partner with local organizations to ensure every student has sustained contact with at least one non-family adult mentor. 

2. Start early. Students should encounter mentors beginning in middle school, when identities and aspirations are still forming. These relationships should become more formal and structured as students progress through school and college. Mentorship should be framed as normal, not remedial.

3. Teach the skills of relationship-building. Social capital isn’t only about access — it’s about competence. Students need instruction and practice in how to ask for help, follow up after meetings, give and receive feedback, and navigate professional norms. These skills can be taught, rehearsed and assessed, just like writing or public speaking.

4. Connect learning to people and places. Career exploration should include visits to workplaces, not just abstract classroom discussions about careers. Opportunities to shadow professionals on the job, internships, project-based learning and alumni networks help students see how knowledge travels into the world, and who helps move it along.

5. Signal high expectations with high support. Mentorship programs should avoid coddling or coldness. Adults should communicate clearly that they expect students to grow, stretch and persist, and that they’ll provide the guidance that makes growth possible.

6. Measure what matters. Schools and colleges track test scores and graduation rates but rarely monitor whether students graduate with mentors, references or professional networks. Simple measures, like verifying whether students can name adults who would help them find a job or write a recommendation, should serve as leading indicators of social wealth.

The remedy for this missing curriculum isn’t a mystery. It’s the will to treat social development as a core educational outcome rather than a byproduct. Reframing education around social wealth doesn’t diminish the importance of academic knowledge. It completes it. 

In a world where opportunity increasingly flows through relationships, schools and colleges that ignore social capital risk graduating students who are credentialed but stranded. Those that build it provide young people with the relationships and networks they need so they know that they are seen, supported and connected to a realistic future they can pursue.

That is the curriculum students need. And it’s one that schools and colleges can no longer afford to leave unwritten.

Six years later, those relationships remain an anchor of my personal and academic growth. We still speak regularly, and their pride in my progress reflects the care they invested early on.

Today, as a 20-year-old business student, I have mentored 25 high school students as they navigate academics, career exploration and the transition to higher education. This , I’d like to share some advice for mentors, based on my experiences.

Do not wait for young people to ask for mentorship

Though many students desperately need trusted adults outside their families who can offer guidance, perspective and encouragement, that Gen Z is to report having had a mentoring relationship. This is not because students lack interest; another found more than 70% of teens have turned to artificial intelligence for friendship and 50% use AI companions regularly. They simply don’t know what mentorship is supposed to look like or how to find it.

That was my experience. As a high school student, I did not know mentorship was something I could seek out. It entered my life because adults noticed my curiosity, followed up and encouraged me to stay connected.

One lesson I learned quickly is that mentors must explicitly say they are willing to maintain a relationship. Without that clarity, many students assume they are bothering adults by following up. Silence is often interpreted as disinterest. Saying something as simple as “I’m happy to stay in touch” or “Please reach out again” gives students permission to remain engaged.

Offer guidance early, before pressure replaces curiosity

Students are expected to make life-shaping decisions early, often without the information needed to make them well. A found that fewer than half of Gen Z students felt they had enough information in high school to determine the best path after graduation. 

My early mentoring relationships in high school reshaped how I imagined my future. My mentors believed in me before I believed in myself. They raised my expectations and encouraged me to pursue opportunities I would not have considered, including interning while still in high school at Kaiser Permanente, applying to and attending USC and completing college internships at Kaiser and Making Waves Education Foundation.

That belief helped me see what was possible and maximize my potential before choices felt final.

Use your successes and failures as learning experiences. Both matter.

K-12 schools are places for developing . Teachers, counselors, coaches and volunteers can serve as mentors, building trust through everyday interactions. My mentors did not just share where they ended up. They told me how they got there, including uncertainty and detours. That honesty helped me make more informed decisions and see opportunity as something navigable, not abstract. They provided perspectives I still rely on today.

Your experience and vulnerability can be life-changing

Mentorship does not require seniority. I became a mentor while I was still learning. During my senior year of high school, I freshmen, working daily on organization, study habits and how to navigate challenges in and out of the classroom. Many of them had started the year unsure of themselves. By the end, they were more confident, engaged and willing to ask for help.

Mentorship is not about having perfect answers. It is about slowing down, being specific and remembering what it felt like to not know yet. The biggest impact comes when both mentors and mentees are transparent and honest about what they know and don’t yet know.

I continue to mentor high school students, and I am well equipped to do so because I navigated the process recently. I remember what was unclear, what was never explained and which decisions felt overwhelming without context. Sharing that knowledge while it is still current helps students make informed choices instead of guessing and trying to navigate critical decisions alone.

Treat mentorship like a continuous cycle

Knowledge flows in multiple directions, and mentorship works best when it is rooted in trust and humanity, not hierarchy. It’s not about having a title or attaining a certain level of success. Hearing about your experiences is often what students need most. Even information that feels obvious may be transformative for a student encountering it for the first time.

Every opportunity I have had is tied to someone who took the time to answer a question, offer guidance or remind me that I belonged in spaces I was still learning to navigate. As I move forward, I feel responsible to stay connected with those coming up behind me and offer the same clarity and encouragement. When knowledge is passed forward with care, it does more than support a single student. It creates momentum that carries entire communities forward.

In this special summer episode, Michael and Diane are joined by David Yeager, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the new book 10 to 25, which explores key insights into youth development. Together, they dive into the critical lessons highlighted in his book, including the science behind effective mentorship, the significance of transparency and practical strategies to help young people reframe and manage stress.

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. How are you?

Diane Tavenner: I am well. This is a first for us. We are doing a special summer episode, and for good reason.

Michael Horn: We are trying to break out of the old structures of a summer break where kids go home and don’t go to school. We’re trying to break out of that model that we’ve always done in this podcast and have an important conversation about a book that is upcoming and will be out by the time this podcast is released. So, Diane, why don’t you introduce the book and our special guest?

Diane Tavenner: I’m excited to welcome Dr. David Yeager to the podcast today. He’s a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and has a long, long list of accomplishments and works with a number of other learning scientists. I encourage you all to go look at that impressive bio. Let me just share personally that we met about a decade ago, and I have always been such a huge fan because David’s work is so applicable to schools, young people, mentoring, teachers, and parenting. He is, in my view, one of the rare researchers who not only has a background in those areas but is deeply committed to making sure his research is actually meaningful and embedded in practice. Over the years, we’ve had tons of incredible dialogues and conversations about very practical things in schools. He had a huge influence on our summit learning model when I was at Summit. I am so excited for his upcoming book called “10 to 25.” 

It’s all about mentoring, which is a huge part of what I have worked on and focused on in my career. I am thrilled that you’re here with us today to have this conversation. David, welcome.

David Yeager: Thanks a lot. It’s great to be here. Diane, I think it was twelve years ago we met.

Diane Tavenner: Wow, Yeah.

David Yeager: You were my favorite person. We met at this crazy meeting where we were briefing thought leaders in education reform. The last question of that interview was, “If you could do one thing, what would it be?” Whatever I said, a week later, you’re like, “Okay. So we did that thing you said, now can you help us?” I was like, I love Diane Tavenner. She’s just gonna make it happen. So I’ve always been your admirer, and it’s great to be on this podcast.

Michael Horn: It’s not just talk with Diane, it is action.

David Yeager: Yeah, be careful what you say. She’ll do it.

Filling in the blanks on youth motivation 

Diane Tavenner: Well, thank you. We are thrilled to have you. I wanted to jump in. This is going to be kind of silly, but I think it’s meaningful. Your new book introduces what I would call a Madlib activity. It’s like a fill-in-the-blank activity and the fill-in-the-blank sentences. I know you’ve asked a bunch of people to complete this, so I’m curious about the different responses you’ve gotten. It starts with this idea: The sentence, “Given that young people are ____, the best way to motivate them is ____.” I’d love to know your response to that. Also, what do you normally hear from people when you ask them to fill in those sentence starters?

David Yeager: Let me just start with the most common things I hear. The most common thing I hear is, “Given that young people are kind of short-sighted, lazy, hard to motivate, not listening to grown-ups,” or something like that. Something kind of denigrating. Then you tend to see one of two things. One is “Explain to them why all their choices now are not quite right and why they’re not aligned with their long-term best interests or motivate them with either threats or rewards.” So, “If you do this, something bad is going to happen to you,” or “If you do this, I’ll give you this nice thing.” Either bribes or threats. That’s the most common answer I see. The second most common answer I see is, “Given that young people are stressed out, overwhelmed…”

Diane Tavenner: Addicted to their phone.

David Yeager: Right. Addicted to their phones, recovering from COVID, lonely, in the middle of a mental health epidemic, etc. The best way to motivate them is to remove their demands, chop up what they’re doing into tiny steps, help them feel a sense of success, let them feel confident, don’t overwhelm them. Basically, make it easy on them to grow up. Both of those internal logics make sense, but neither of them are great. The big punchline from my book is when I started studying people who do an awesome job at motivating young people, even in the most difficult of circumstances, they complete the sentence with, “Given that young people are capable of doing incredible things that make contributions to the world, the best way to motivate them is to inspire them, sometimes to get out of their way, to run interference, so that way things don’t derail their ambitions and hopes, but really support their potential to come alive.” I like this exercise because it reveals how our beliefs about young people are intimately tied to our practices and how we deal with them. That sounds obvious when I say it, but it’s not obvious to most people. They just think, “Okay, the best way to motivate people is the following,” and they don’t question the fact that that’s a choice, and it comes from a belief system, and it’s something that could be changed.

David’s Motivation for Writing 10 to 25 

Michael Horn: It’s really interesting. I’m feeling jealous at the moment because Diane’s had the chance to read the book in advance, and I will read it once it’s out. What motivated you to write this book, 10 to 25? What was your intention? What’s your hope for the book?

David Yeager: For me personally, the book comes from 15-20 years of frustration, feeling like the advice I had been given as a teacher and later that I saw in the research literature just wasn’t cutting it. It wasn’t good enough. I remember being a mediocre middle school teacher and caring so deeply for my kids and wanting to do everything for them and feeling like I never got that kind of inspiring, enthusiastic love of learning, where kids were embracing the hardest stuff and coming after class because they were curious about the topic. Then when I started doing research, I also felt like the answers I saw in the field were very… I don’t know, just not useful. It was very abstract and bland and not applicable. We’ve conducted a lot of research over the last 15 years, and part of the book is, “All right, let’s put that all in one place.”

I’m often asked about this part of my work. Some people think of me as the community college student success person, others as the purpose-in-life person, others as the youth mental health, and others as the growth mindset. I wanted all the work to be in one place, but the other thing was just an acknowledgment that there was a lot I didn’t know, and I needed to go out in the world and find great leaders who were awesome at motivating young people. The book is a combination of the science we’ve done over 15 years and original reporting on what I’ve learned from the wisdom of practice, I guess you could say.

The Mentoring Mindset

Michael Horn: Very cool. I’m curious, then. Diane teased that a lot of this book is not just about motivation and how to spark students, but a part of that is this mentoring mindset, I think you call it. I’ve certainly bought hook, line, and sinker on the importance of mentoring, but the mentoring mindset is a phrase that is unfamiliar to me. So, what is the mentoring mindset?

David Yeager: Yeah, the mentor mindset is an approach or a philosophy you take with a young person where you maintain very high standards. You’re tough, you expect a lot, but you’re supportive enough so that a young person can meet those standards. It’s not just saying, “Hey, I have super high standards, you can meet them or not,” which often ends up with maybe the top 5% doing well and everybody else struggling. It’s not saying, “I care about you, but I’m not going to ask a lot of you,” where maybe kids feel supported but they don’t grow and improve. The basic mentor mindset is high standards, and high support. It’s a simple idea.

Where does that come from? It comes from this investigation of the most successful people I could find in K-12 education, higher ed, academic research, NBA coaching, parenting, management at retail, grocery stores, management, and technology firms. I wanted to look at anyone who’s in charge of or relates to someone aged 10 to 25 in any of these domains. What do the most successful people have in common? The answer was this mentoring or mentor mindset. In the book, I describe it and also describe what’s the opposite of that. What happens if you don’t have that?

Diane Tavenner: Michael, you’ll love it because it is a two-by-two because you always have.

Michael Horn: You’re saying I’m going to feel at home is what you’re saying.

Taking an Asset-Based Approach

Diane Tavenner: You’re going to feel very at home. I love the mentoring mindset because it embodies the belief system that I’ve had for my career, this idea of high expectations and high support. Let’s just put names on the other ones that you were describing, David. There’s this enforcer mindset which is like you were describing, high expectations but no support, and this protector mindset which is high support but no expectations. One of the things I love in our conversation is you never start from a deficit mindset. You’re always an asset-based approach where you’re like, “Look, even those other two places have one of the two parts of the equation, so they’re halfway there. We just need to get the other half in there, if you will.” Say more about that.

David Yeager: Yeah, I think there are two ways in which it…

Diane Tavenner: Hopefully, I explained that properly.

David Yeager: Yeah, it was great. Later on the test, I’ll give you a high score. As a professor, I’m just walking around grading everyone. Just kidding. There are two ways in which we try to be asset-based. One is that suppose you’re in one of these off-diagonal cases, the enforcer mindset: all standards, low support; protector: all support, no standards. That’s coming from a good place and I started to talk about that. Then the second is, as you’re saying, reframing those two off-diagonal cases as you got half of it right, so just add the other half. Why do I say they’re coming from a good place? Well, I think for a long time people have felt torn. If I’m a manager, a boss, a teacher, a professor, I have a dichotomous choice between being the tough, authoritarian, dictator, kind of hard-nosed person who demands excellence. The negative consequence of that, of course, is kids and young people are crying and feeling debilitated and crushed. Most people don’t succeed.

But that is viewed as a necessary side effect of me upholding high standards. You can see how you could put your head on your pillow at night and feel good about that. It’s like, “I’m the gatekeeper to excellence and high performance, and I’m doing what I have to do, though it’s sometimes unpleasant to uphold the standard for culture or society or performance.” On the other side, where you’re very low standards but high support, what I call the protector mindset, there too, you can feel good about how you’re caring. You love young people. You’re putting their feelings and needs first. You’re being empathetic. You’re very attuned. Those are all good things to feel. The problem is that you’re also a pushover and young people don’t get anywhere. But it might feel like that’s the necessary consequence of protecting young people from the distress of this dog-eat-dog world that they can’t possibly succeed in. Both come from a concern for young people, both the enforcer and the protector. They’re just a little misguided.

The reason they’re misguided is because they’re embedded in this worldview we have about young people generally being incompetent. If you think they’re incompetent and I have to be tough, well, that’s enforcer. It’s like, “I need to maintain the standards, and I’m the last defense against the world descending into chaos.” That’s why I have to maintain rigorous standards. On the protector side, they’re incompetent, they’re weak, but that’s why I have to make up for what they lack by protecting them.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

David Yeager: So the mentor is like, “All right, let’s just take both of what’s good from those. You’ve got the high standards. Great. Add the support. You’ve got the support. Great. Add the standards so you can have two reasons now to feel good about yourself at the end of the day, not just one.”

The Transparency Statement

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, I love that approach. The book is filled with the science that’s behind it. One of the things I appreciate about you is it’s not only all the science and research you’ve done. You are highly collaborative, and you have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the other research in the space that everyone else has done. You are very generous in bringing those ideas into the book. We are not going to spend a lot of time on the science here today because we want to, given our audience, go to the practices that you put forward. But I will say for people who want to do a deep dive there, I’ve listened to the Huberman Lab podcast that you did. It’s 3 hours, and it’s an extraordinary deep dive in that space. So I highly recommend that for people who want to go really deep there along with the book if you want to listen. I want to shift us over to these mindset practices. They’re particularly profound here in conversation.

Honestly, when I looked at the titles of these chapters and when I started digging in, these are things that Michael and I talk about all the time on the podcast. These are cornerstones of, in our view, what redesigned schools and learning experiences need to be building on, incorporating how they need to function, essentially. We are deeply aligned in our agenda for what learning can and should look like. Let me just say off the top because our listeners will recognize these. We’ll start with transparency, which is a really interesting intro. I think you say these go from easiest to implement to probably most challenging. So we’ll talk about that. Transparency, questioning, this reframing of stress, and then purpose and belonging. 

Again, our listeners have heard us talk about purpose and belonging sort of at nauseam, but we can keep talking. Let’s start with transparency because you have this very, very, I would say, easy lift that people can do, called a transparency statement. Tell us about that. What does that look like? How does that get you off on the right foot, quite frankly, in your relationship with young people?

David Yeager: The transparency statement that I write about is very simply explaining your motives whenever you are about to uphold some high standards and/or provide some support so that young people don’t interpret it in the worst possible light. That can be very short. Let’s take Uri Treisman, the world’s greatest freshman calculus professor I write about in chapter eleven. He’ll give students large intro courses in calculus, five problems where they have to find the limit of a function using L’Hopital’s rule. The thing is, most kids, when they take AP calculus, memorize L’Hopital’s rule, and then they just apply it to find the limits of functions. But the problem is that L’Hopital’s rule is not an analytic solution. It’s like a workaround.

So it doesn’t work. It breaks a lot. He’ll give students five problems, four of them L’Hopital’s rule won’t work for, and one it will. A normal teacher doesn’t do that. A normal teacher would think, “You’re a lunatic because they’re going to cry,” basically. Before he does that, he’s like, “All right, I just want you to know the reason why I’m doing this is because you guys are preparing to be mathematicians and to think mathematically. I want you to have careers long beyond this class. I don’t want you to apply math tricks. I want you to be able to take apart the math tricks, figure out how they work, and put them back together again.” He says that before they spend 25 minutes struggling. If you don’t, they would be in tears, thinking, “I’m dumb at math. I’m going to fail calculus. I’m never going to be a doctor or an engineer.” That’s where a freshman’s mind is going to go. You have to say something. In a world in which he says nothing and there’s crying, tears, and frustration, that’s not a great world. The most marginalized students are going to quit first because they’re also dealing with other stereotypes about whether they’re smart enough, etc. But in the world in which he has a transparency statement, it’s otherwise the exact same lesson and the students have the exact same great professor, but it means something totally different in that context.

That’s why it’s the easiest. You can already be awesome at mentor mindset stuff, high expectations, and high support, and you could be coming across the wrong way to your young people. Sometimes all you have to do is remind them of why you’re giving them something that’s a little unpleasant. The societal narrative currently about young people is, “Well, I shouldn’t have to explain myself, because if they weren’t such woke, wimpy idiots, then they would know that I’m here for them.” There’s a version in which people, adults and leaders, think, “I shouldn’t have to explain myself.” My answer to that is, look, for most young people, starting at the beginning of gonadarche and puberty until they’re in their twenties, that day you’re talking to them is the day on which they have the most testosterone they’ve ever had in their entire lives. That day and the next day when you do something else, that also will be the day on which they have the most testosterone they’ve ever had in their entire lives, both boys and girls.

That does all kinds of things to the brain that makes them over-interpret things that might be plausibly offensive. That’s why their head goes to this crazy place of, “I’ll never succeed,” or “You hate me,” or “This is biased,” etc. You just have to explain yourself two or three more times than you think you need to. Not because they’re too sensitive, but because the job of a young person is to figure out if they’re being taken seriously and respected. Just don’t make them guess. Just be transparent.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. One of the things that comes up in the book is this idea that at that developmental stage, they want status and they want respect, and there’s good biological reasons for that. When we are running counter to that, we’re creating all sorts of distance between us relationally, which makes so much sense to me. I can just say from my career, I can’t tell you how many of the rigorous teachers that I knew purposefully would not have been transparent upfront because they were actually trying to scare kids or create what is essentially a threatening environment because they thought that’s what they were supposed to do with high standards. The science is pretty clear that the effect they were having was not the effect that I think they ultimately wanted.

David Yeager: Right. I mean, I think there’s this mythology of the demanding leader that is impossible to please, and it’s a little bit ambiguous if you’ve won them over. In that mythology, you’re supposed to leave people you’re leading a little bit in the dark for a while and then only at the end reveal that you cared about them all along, but they’re supposed to be afraid for nine months so that way you get optimal performance. I 100% remember feeling that way as a teacher. If I tell them too quickly that I care about them, then they’re going to take advantage of me. But that’s not what the mentor mindset leaders do.

They’re super hard, and students are often crying in the first few months of their classes in college and K-12 settings. But they’re also super transparent so that by October, or November, students can now trust that when they ask a question, Mr. Estrada—Sergio Estrada is one of the teachers I write about—”Mr. Estrada, is this problem right?” He’d be like, “I don’t know. Is it right?” Initially, students hate that. But he says, “Look, I would never deprive you of the opportunity to know that you can understand physics. I care about you too much to lower standards. So that’s why I’m asking you the question back. So given that, do you think it’s right?” He’s got to say that for a couple of months. Eventually, students know that and then they start thinking on their own, and they own their own learning. It saves him tons of time. Later in the semester, they become independent thinkers. They go on to the next course in college and can do well. He’s given them that gift of being independent, thoughtful, curious, intellectual leaders, even though it was a little rocky at first because students aren’t used to it. But you’re not going to get there if you wait till May and they hate you all year. That’s idiotic. That’s mythology.

Questioning Techniques: Asking v. Telling 

Diane Tavenner: You’ve led us into the questioning technique. Some of those teachers we’re talking about, their class would also look like the professor not giving them any help or any support. That’s not what you’re talking about. Sergio and others that you profile, don’t they specifically have this strategy around asking, not telling? Tell us the dimensions and characteristics of that approach that are quite different from other folks.

David Yeager: I was really struck by the parenting coach that I followed who is almost always coaching parents to ask questions, not to tell their kids what to do. The similarities between great parenting and great teaching, great tutoring, and good management. The great manager I followed, Steph Akamoto, who was at Microsoft at the time, would do her performance reviews and ask questions like, “All right, how do you think that went?” and so on, get their opinions. Then she would say, “All right, for you to be a top 15% performer on your next performance evaluation, what’s a task you could do that’s above and beyond that would really impress everybody, and that would be something you would want to do and you want to learn?” Then they would generate two or three ideas. Then she’d be like, “Huh? All right, what are you worried about getting in the way of those things?” An example in the book is Steph’s doing a performance review when she was on the software testing unit for Microsoft. They would write manuals that would help the developers know what Windows is doing, for instance. Someone on her team was like, “Well, instead of just testing it and writing the manual, I could go talk to the engineers and fix all the goofy things with the software now, rather than have 20 pages in the manual about how the goofy thing is a workaround.” She’s like, “Okay, what would be hard about that?” “Well, the engineers don’t want to talk to a tester because I’m low status, and the manager is going to be like, ‘Stop wasting my engineers’ time.'” Then Steph would be like, “All right, would you mind if I contacted the manager and said, ‘Get off her case and let her go talk to your engineers?'” “No, that’s okay with me.”

So they formed this whole plan where her direct report could overperform and do something testers weren’t normally required to do. Steph’s out… She’s not doing it for the direct report, but she’s running interference to give her the freedom to be in the room to talk to the engineers. Six months later, her direct report is overperforming as the top 5-10% performer, gets a raise, promotional velocity, etc. But Steph didn’t do it for her. That’s what I mean by questioning. There’s a version of questioning that’s not good. If your kid comes home drunk and you’re like, “What were you thinking?” that’s not an authentic question. What you really mean is, “You were not thinking, and you’re an idiot, and you’re in trouble. I could not be madder at you.” 

That’s what you mean. There are versions of questions that are just about facts. What I’m really talking about is what I call in the book authentic questioning with uptake, where it’s a legitimate question that the person could have a true answer to that, in principle, the asker doesn’t know the answer to. Second, where the question builds on some thinking the person has done. I found mentors did that a lot and did it really well, whether it was the NBA’s best basketball coach, Sergio Estrada in physics class, Uri Treisman in calculus, or Steph at Microsoft.

Reframing Stress

Diane Tavenner: It’s resonating with me on multiple levels because as I build this new product to help young people figure out what they want to do in the future, this was the cornerstone of our approach. We would ask authentic questions of them and help them discover and explore versus the traditional approaches that kind of tell you, “We have this black box questionnaire or test, and then we tell you, ‘Oh, guess what? You should be a firefighter or a mortician or whatever.'” Young people are like, “What are you talking about? That’s not me.” So very resonant. The next piece is a total reframing of stress. Especially coming out of COVID. Michael and I started the podcast during the middle of COVID and everyone, probably at the time, really swung one direction about, “People are so incredibly stressed.”

We have to completely fundamentally change our expectations and our behaviors in response to that stress. I still think there’s a belief that young people and kids are so stressed. This is where I think the protector mindset comes in a lot. The science, though, tells us something very different. We should think differently about stress and then act differently accordingly. Tell us about that.

David Yeager: This was an important chapter in the book because there’s a world in which managers are out there saying, or teachers, or professors, “I’m a mentor mindset. Therefore, I have mega hard expectations for you, and you need to suck it up and just deal with how stressful it is.” That’s not what you see the best mentor mindset leaders doing. They definitely maintain standards. They definitely imply you should stick with it. But they don’t tell you to suppress your stress or feelings of frustration, etc. Instead, they have ways of reframing the negative emotions that tend to come from pushing yourself to your frontiers and reframing them as, one, a sign you’ve chosen to do something important and meaningful. If it was easy, then anyone would do it kind of thing.

But the fact that it’s hard means that you are doing something impressive. The fact that you’re stressed often means you care about it, that it matters to you, and that’s cool to do something that matters to you. Then, second, that those worries actually can be fuel to help you do better. You see that a lot. If you look at great one-on-one tutors or even a good golf coach or tennis coach, they’re really asking you to go take on a challenge. In athletics, choose harder opponents, and if it’s tutoring, choose the harder problems and try them if you can’t master them. Second, that physiological arousal of heart racing, palms sweating, butterflies in your stomach, that’s your body mobilizing oxygenated blood to your muscles and your brain cells, and that’s helping you to be stronger and your brain to think faster and so on. Most people don’t think that way.

They think the fact that I have butterflies in my stomach and my heart’s racing means my body’s about to shut down, that my body’s betraying my goals, and it’s going to get in the way. We talk a lot about the science of reframing away from what’s called a suppression approach. So classic suppression would be, well, as a parent, “Stop crying. Stop being sad.” You just tell your kid to stop feeling the way they’re feeling. But as a teacher, what you often see is, “You’ve prepared. You shouldn’t feel stressed. You’re fine. You can do this. You should feel confident.” You see this a lot. Kids say it to each other, “Oh, you shouldn’t be stressed out.” It’s like, no, actually, you should be stressed if it matters to you and it’s legitimately hard. Reassuring you that you shouldn’t be stressed is a suppression approach. It turns out if you suppress feelings, they just come back stronger and get in the way. The protector mindset leads you to that suppression approach. You feel so bad that you feel distressed that I want you to get rid of it, and I want to get rid of it either by removing the demand or telling you to push the feelings down, you know, push them away, don’t feel stressed, etc. I tell the story in the book about a student of mine who emailed and said, “Look, my mom just died. Most important person to me in the world. I can’t possibly do the assignments for the next couple weeks.

I hope this won’t make me fail, but I’m just telling you I can’t do it.” I could tell from the tone that most of my colleagues at UT would either imply that she was lying about it and that she had to prove it or would say, “Just take an incomplete in the class,” either to save you the distress or because the teachers are worried about it being unfair to the other students in the class. That wasn’t my approach. I had been thinking a lot about this stress approach, and instead my approach was, “Look, let’s separate the intellectual difficulty of what you’re doing from the logistical difficulty. The intellectual difficulty is you have to do an awesome final project that’s very impressive, that hopefully you can talk about in your job interviews, can be on your resume, and that you’re proud of. I don’t want to take that away from you. That’s why you took my class, was to learn new stuff and do things that are impressive. Frankly, your mom cared for you and rooted for you throughout college because you were doing cool, impressive stuff.

So one way to honor your mom’s memory is to do a great final project in my class. Do I really care that you do the daily busy work that I assigned? No. That’s only there to help you get prepared to do the final project. What I did is I reduced the demands for the logistical stuff, like the busy work, and I was like, just communicate with your group, and whenever you’re ready, come back and then do your final project with them. She took two and a half, three weeks off and just kind of stayed in touch with her group, and then they did a fully kick-ass final project. They created this whole AI-based support to help teachers do empathic discipline rather than very harsh discipline. Three years ago, they did this before GPT was released, and then she talked about it in her interview, got this job for a major financial services group, and now is traveling the world on this rotational program, fast track for managers. She immigrated from Africa, is a very interesting young woman of color who is constantly trying to help improve society and culture.

I caught up with her a year later. I was like, “Did I do the right thing? Should I have just given you an incomplete?” She’s like, “No. Half my professors told me to take an incomplete, but then I couldn’t have graduated on time, and then I wouldn’t be in this financial services mentoring program.” That’s an example where if you have the belief that young people are capable of impressive stuff with the right support, then you start thinking about, sometimes you maintain the intellectual demand or the demand for the work that’s truly impressive, but the way you support them is to reduce some of the logistical demands. I think a lot of people mistake those two. They think being a hard-ass on deadlines is what it means to be demanding. But I think it’s having people own thinking and contributions. That that’s the demand. Deadlines are a means to get there.

Diane Tavenner: I love this chapter. The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking back because you alluded to this in the beginning, David, but the first two times we met each other were arguably under very stressful circumstances that I would not trade, though. I mean, we were, in the first case, presenting our work to Bill Gates directly, and in the second case at the White House, presenting. If someone had taken those opportunities away from us, I think we would be very regretful. It was stressful. Those are stressful.

David Yeager: So stressful, but it’s stressful in a way where you have to bring your A-game. I think the challenge is to see it as a positive opportunity to perform at your peak rather than a threatening opportunity to fail publicly. When you do the latter, you’re still sweating, your heart’s racing, and you’re worried but doing poorly. But you also are like, all right, let’s go. It’s like if I’m a good surfer on a huge wave, that’s how you want to feel.

Purpose and Belonging

Diane Tavenner: So, David, with our last few minutes here, we’re going to give you the tall task of talking purpose and belonging, which are very significant. I should say the end of your book pulls all of this into whole models and approaches. Tell us the key concept here of purpose and belonging in your work.

David Yeager: I think that, as you know, 10-15 years ago, those were not concepts people talked about in education reform. It was like curriculum and interests were probably the two biggest things. The idea of a meaningful purpose, that wasn’t around. I think Bill Damon’s work brought purpose to a lot of people’s radars, and I did a lot of the early randomized experiments, but even now, I think it’s not as well known. Belonging, for a long time, was thought of as this soft self-esteem boost. Everyone needs a hug from all the world’s friends. It wasn’t taken seriously.

I think the common thread across the two is that they’re super powerful, especially for young people who are trying to make it through the world, having a sense of status and respect. Purpose, because you want to contribute something of value to the world around you. Having a meaningful purpose where it’s something beyond myself is depending on me, that’s super motivating for young people. A lot of education gets that wrong because they just make an argument about making money in the future or using this lesson plan in a job in the future, or it’s a delay of gratification, a long-term self-interest argument. I don’t think that’s ever really going to work to drive deeper learning. But the idea that right now somebody’s depending on you, having mastered something and done a good job, I think that’s really meaningful. In an enforcer mindset, you wouldn’t think of that because you’d be like, well, they’re going to choose the laziest possible way to do things no matter what. The only way we can entice them to do tedious work is through rewards, now, or delayed rewards later.

Belonging is similar in that now that it’s starting to get on the radar, more people are talking about it, but it’s still misconstrued. A lot of people think belonging is, “I’m going to give you a ‘You Belong’ sticker to slap on your laptop, and all of a sudden achievement gaps are going to disappear.” As I say in the book, you can’t declare belonging by fiat. It has to be experienced. One of the big things that has to happen is you have to help young people tell themselves a story of how difficulties could be overcome through actions that they could take. Then over time, they actually feel a sense of belonging in a community. I think that purpose and belonging go hand in hand because one way you know you’re valued by a community is when you’ve contributed something that they perceive as important to that community back in our evolutionary history. I think there’s a lot more in the book and there are stories about how you leverage those two to get deeper, more lasting, meaningful motivations rather than more frivolous things like turning education into a slot machine.

I don’t think that’s going to do it. What’s more important is appealing to a deeper purpose, a sense of connection, a sense of mattering, and so on.

Diane Tavenner: That’s awesome. There is so much more in the book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I hope everyone will read it and ping us with questions, thoughts, and what comes up for you. Maybe at some point, we can circle back and do even more on the other pieces when we hear from our readers what they think. Michael…

Michael Horn:  I was going to say the same thing. Just huge thanks first, David. Check out the book 10 to 25. I got a lot just from this conversation that has whetted my appetite, and I know many others will as well. Let’s circle back once we have some more fodder because I can tell we’re scratching the surface and you’ve hit these hot-button topics that, as you said, David, we sort of know there’s something there, but the full depth of how it’s understood is not there yet in the education field. I appreciate you writing this and joining us.

David Yeager: Absolutely.

Michael Horn: For all those listening, we’ll be back next time on Class Disrupted. Thank you again.

On this point, we are failing as a nation. Though , only 1 in 5 and share the same racial or ethnic background. At the district level, .

Much has been written about the need to diversify the pipeline of future educators. Less discussed — and arguably even more important — is the reality that educators of color are thinking about leaving their jobs, or education altogether. They desperately need help, right here, right now.

Run-of-the-mill support won’t cut it. Faced with , leaders of color need guidance and tools specific to their experiences navigating the schools as people of color. When leaders of color thrive, so do and .

We are fortunate to have access to this type of support, regularly meeting with more than a dozen other men of color who work as school and district leaders through .

For us, coming together in community with a group of guys who get what we’re going through has been life-changing. We love our jobs, but sometimes they don’t love us back. This can be exhausting and demoralizing. Dedicated space just for us affords us the chance to reflect on our experiences and to exhale, regroup and re-energize our leadership. This experience is not the norm. 

These discussions are anchored in the , a flexible roadmap to help educators of color navigate leadership journeys. The research-backed tool articulates 10 essential competencies — knowledge, skills, mindsets, dispositions and behaviors — that interviews with more than 300 education leaders of color across the country revealed are most critical to their success. This resource is focused specifically on fostering resilience among educators of color and reinforcing steady, confident leadership in the face of many distinct challenges.

How can districts tailor similar development and support for educators of color?

In Atlanta, I (Dr. Hunter) lead many courses. For each essential competency, I’ve identified and created aligned professional development opportunities that enable our guys to unpack key concepts, pause and reflect on their responses to various scenarios, and get real practice being both proactive and reactive to a range of leadership dilemmas. Eighteen aspiring leaders come together once or twice a month for these sessions, which take place at the district office during the week and at the Georgia State University Principals Center on weekends. Leadership coaches also provide 1:1 virtual support.

As one example, take the Executive Stance competency. Mastering that just-right balance between confidence and humility is crucial when helping families feel secure in the face of a crisis or when asking staff to lean into new ways of working together. Being assertive without coming across as “aggressive” looks different for a man of color than it does for, say, a white woman. The goal is to empower team members to lead in ways that are true to their identities and will be received well by their communities. All leaders — especially those of color — need opportunities to practice to get their unique Executive Stance just right. The Atlanta Public Schools leadership team wants principals across the district hitting home runs when they’re on the job, and the best way to make that happen is by giving leaders as many at-bats as possible with all the curveballs we know are coming their way.

In Los Angeles, I (Dr. Nava) offer professional development to educators of color in alignment with the district ’s focus on cultivating a diverse, well-supported workforce. The district is unusual in that it runs a two-year principal induction program in house — the Los Angeles Administrative Services Credential program, which is approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Participants serve in administrative roles, complete assignments at their schools and receive 40 hours of leadership coaching each year .Since 2016, 600 educators have participated in the program.

Men of color make up about 20% of the program’s participants, and many are responsible for managing athletics or school discipline. These are important functions for a school, but an educator who doesn’t have instructional leadership experience will not be prepared for the principalship. Through the program, I help aspiring leaders of color share their professional goals with their principals and advocate for opportunities to observe and practice instructional leadership. For example, a participant might request to assist the principal in executing a data review session with the math department and to shadow the principal before, during and after a subsequent classroom observation to more deeply understand the planning protocols and the coaching and feedback process.

If a principal is unable to provide on-site learning, I ensure that aspiring leaders gain meaningful experience elsewhere, such as by mentoring novice teachers or leading district-run training sessions. I pair this real-world practice with coaching, where I teach, model and dig into the essential competencies in ways that reflect each leader’s personal and professional goals. 

Overall, we both prioritize pushing leaders of color to engage in purposeful self-reflection around the essential leadership competencies. Having a conversation with oneself — by writing in a journal or reflecting aloud — can be really hard, especially when thinking about a mistake or misstep. But doing it surrounded by others who’ve been there and can help illuminate often-overlooked strengths feels safer. 

Most importantly, this work has reaffirmed for each of us a deep commitment to cultivating the next generation of leaders for American schools and society by promoting a more diverse and inclusive vision of extraordinary leadership. Our students deserve nothing less.

A critical aspect of addressing this youth mental health crisis is ensuring that young people feel a sense of belonging in the places where they spend their time. According to the CDC, when young people feel connected to adults and peers at school, they are significantly less likely to report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness or to consider or attempt suicide. 

But with school staffers already stretched thin, it’s not feasible to simply ask them to solve yet another crisis alone. Education leaders and policymakers need to invest in programs that strengthen students’ connection to school without adding more to educators’ plates.

Mentorship and expanded capacity of schools to provide it are critical pieces to this puzzle. Young people want and need mentors to support them as they navigate mental well-being. In fact, today’s 18- to 21-year-olds express unmet mentoring needs around depression, anxiety and suicidality at more than double the rates for millennials, according to a new from Mentor. They are also significantly more likely than 22- to- 24-year-olds to cite mental health challenges as the main area where a mentor could help.

Unfortunately, these relationships are in decline. While today’s young people are much more likely than their parents to have had a mentor growing up, according to the survey, members of Gen Z , those roughly 18 to 24 years old, are less likely (60%) than millennials (70%) to report having had such a supportive relationship.

Congress has the opportunity to help strengthen students’ connections to school by expanding school-based mentoring programs. The Mentoring to Succeed Act is just one example of a bill that would provide school districts with funding to match middle and high school students with mentors. 

The bill would establish a five-year, competitive grant program, open to districts, local governments and community-based organizations, that provides federal funding to establish, expand or support school-based mentoring programs. Funds could be used to screen, match and train mentors; hire staff to support school-based programs; facilitate activities like field trips and career exploration and conduct program evaluations. The bill prioritizes funding for school districts that serve young people with the greatest needs — those living in high-poverty, high crime or rural areas. 

While many schools have used federal COVID relief funds to increase mental health supports, this funding will run out within the next couple years. The Mentoring to Succeed Act would help schools sustain efforts to ensure students feel connected and supported by providing additional resources to support new programs and community partnerships, so educators and school administrators aren’t left to bear the weight of this work alone. 

This type of investment has broad public support. Nearly feel more mentoring is needed in this country, with more than 8 in 10 supporting the use of government funds to expand these opportunities.

While mentors cannot take the place of professional mental health providers, they can have meaningful positive impacts on young people’s well-being. For instance, a that examined the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program model found that mentored youth reported significantly fewer behavioral problems and fewer symptoms of depression and social anxiety than those without mentors. The national survey conducted by Mentor also showed a correlation between mentorship and a stronger sense of belonging, in both childhood and adulthood.

Short of advocating for legislation, everyone can take steps to ensure more young people have meaningful adult connections. Many around the country need volunteers to serve as mentors — and many people already act as mentors without even realizing it. Those everyday mentors play a huge role in making sure young people have support. 

The fact that mentoring is declining when young people need it most should concern all of us. At a time when many young people are struggling to find their footing, a healthy, supportive relationship with a mentor could go a long way toward helping them reach firmer ground.

Sandberg, who stepped down earlier this month as the longtime chief operating officer of Meta, Facebook’s parent company; and Goldberg, founder and CEO of Fresno Unlimited, took the mentorship aspect seriously. Both assumed that role themselves for two students in the inaugural 30-member scholarship class that became the first to graduate college last month.

“I am so hopeful about the impact these students will have in the world and am confident they will build a brighter future for us all,” Sandberg told ����Ӱ�� via email this month.

The Goldberg scholarship was created to honor Dave Goldberg — Sandberg’s husband and Rob Goldberg’s brother — who died in 2015 at age 47. Dave Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, was close with KIPP Foundation CEO Richard Barth, and all the scholarship recipients are alumni of the charter school network, which predominantly serves low-income students of color. 

Sandberg’s mentee was Maleah Densby, a Duke University graduate who struggled with veering from her long-determined plan of being a pre-med major and eventually, a doctor. Floundering at first in her hardcore STEM classes, Densby, a top student, credited Sandberg with helping her to see that her grades did not define her or her dreams.

“Over the last four years, I’ve seen Maleah excel in her classes, wrestle through hard decisions, and navigate challenges both small and big. I’m so inspired by her drive and determination — and grateful for the special relationship we have built,” Sandberg said.

 “I have tried to teach her a thing or two, but I am certain she has taught me more, especially about perseverance.”

First-generation, low-income students face multiple barriers graduating college — nationwide, the six-year completion rate is 28% — and while the Goldberg Scholars had many additional supports, COVID also blew a hole through their college careers.

Rob Goldberg’s mentee was Metzli Garcia, a 2022 UCLA graduate and the first in her family to earn a college degree. Her dad cried, she said, when she told him she had gotten into UCLA and graduating “is a super big deal for my family.” When staying that high-stakes course became difficult, Garcia said, having someone like Goldberg believe in her made a powerful difference.

Goldberg said for him, that person had been his older brother.

“Dave was the person who instilled confidence in me and helped me to believe my dreams were attainable,” he told ����Ӱ��. “When I was 22, I started a company … Dave had started a digital media company a year before and not only did he help me become a founder and an entrepreneur (at a time when there was no internet or access to online resources about starting a company), he also showed me how impactful it was to take time out of your day to help others, and to put other people first.”

There are now 93 students in the Goldberg scholarship pipeline, including the 17 who just graduated from KIPP high schools across the country and are headed to college this fall. Looking back on the first four years, Goldberg said he learned what an enemy imposter syndrome can be for these young people.

“I was raised to believe that college would always be in my future and it wasn’t until I met these brave Goldberg Scholars that I realized that higher education is not something that is inherent in all of our futures — let alone a place where everyone feels they belong,” he said. “Overcoming these feelings of self-doubt makes Metztli’s achievements, and the entire inaugural class’s accomplishments, all the more impressive.”

Here are five of those graduates:

MALEAH DENSBY

Duke University 

METZLI GARCIA

UCLA

HORUS HERNANDEZ

University of Houston 

JALIWA ALBRIGHT

Duke University

BREON ROBINSON

Duke University

Disclosure: Campbell Brown oversees global media partnerships at Meta. Brown co-founded ����Ӱ�� and sits on its board of directors. Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to KIPP and ����Ӱ��.

For some educators, teaching is only part of the job. For them, student and school success requires weaving a community of connection, support and belonging. These “weaver educators” teach the value of relationships to their students and make their communities stronger. ����Ӱ�� is telling their stories to inspire all of us to become weavers.

We created our series “Weaving a Stronger Society — Starting in our Schools” in partnership with The Aspen Institute, a global nonprofit headquartered in Washington, D.C. In 2018, New York Times columnist David Brooks and The Aspen Institute launched to solve the problem of broken social trust that has left Americans divided along many lines. The project works to find weavers bringing their communities together, tells their stories and offers them support and connection. 

During a recent conversation in Washington, D.C., David Brooks shared how the weave project began and why he believes we all can help heal our lonely, divided and distrusting nation by weaving community, starting where we live and work.

����Ӱ��: You founded ‘Weave: The Social Fabric Project’ with the Aspen Institute in 2018 — can you take us back in time to before the pandemic, and talk about what sparked the idea for you? 

Brooks: Well, my full-time job is being a newspaper columnist, and I spend a lot of my time writing about America’s problems. And a lot of the problems I was covering [around 2018] all had one similarity — and that was the tearing of our social fabric. Whether it was the rise in suicides, loneliness, depression, political polarization, people angry at each other and not really seeing one another … a common link was a loss of community. 

A loss of connection. 

And so as a reporter, you start asking questions and you run across these statistics: 54% of Americans say no one knows them well, the number of people who say they have no close friends has quadrupled, you see increasing isolation and rising opioid addictions, etc. And so I began to realize, the problem underlying all these other problems is a degree of social distrust. 

But there are people, whom we call weavers, who are out there actively rebuilding trust, rebuilding communities every day. And the purpose of weave quickly became: What can we do to help these people out? What can we do to encourage more people to become weavers?

How do you talk about ‘weaving’? What distinguishes a weaver? 

It’s easiest to describe when you talk about seeing it in action. I’m always reminded of this woman in Chicago who was living in a neighborhood called Englewood, and she was going to leave because it was getting dangerous. One day, as she’s about to move, she looks out across the street and sees a little girl playing in an empty lot with broken bottles. And she turns to her husband and says, “We’re not going to just leave. We’re going to be a family that stays here.” 

And so she Googles “Volunteer in Englewood,” and [starts getting involved] and now she runs this thing called R.A.G.E., Resident Association of Greater Englewood, which is the big community organization in Englewood. So she could have left, but instead she invested in the community. They clean up the lots in the community, they aid the homeless in the community, they help organize political things in the community. And so instead of leaving, she’s now actively weaving the fabric of that particular community.

The first thing a weaver does is they take a place where there was no community, or weak community, and they create a strong community. They’re hyperlocal, they tend to work in the neighborhoods where they live. They’re trusted by their neighbors and they know what the problems are. That last one is a key takeaway I’ve learned — that the entire neighborhood is the unit of change. A friend of mine said, “You can’t only clean the part of the swimming pool you’re in. You’ve got to clean the whole neighborhood.” 

And the thing is, the people in the neighborhood know what to do. They don’t always have the resources and the money to do it, but they’re the ones who understand the problems better than anyone — and they’re the ones who know exactly what their neighborhood needs.

So with weaving, it’s not about outsiders coming in to fix the neighborhood. It’s about neighbors being empowered to fix their own neighborhood, and we look for ways to support that however we can. 

With a new concept and new approach like this, how do you figure out where to start? How did you get this off the ground? 

While America was sort of at political war with itself from 2016 through 2019, we were traveling the country. And we’d arrive at cities like Wilkesboro, North Carolina or New Orleans or Chicago, or neighborhoods in Los Angeles like Watts or Compton, and we’d start asking, “Who’s trusted here?” And everywhere we turned, people would start giving us names of who they trust, and who has built trust among their neighbors.

In Watts, it was a woman named Keisha Daniels who runs Sisters of Watts, a group of moms who, when a kid needs some food to take home, they give him or her a backpack full of food. They help homeless people take showers.

Weave is about people like this, just pitching in for their neighborhood. 

We heard about a guy in Washington, D.C., in one of the neighborhoods here, who was working at the parking garage, taking the money. Apparently he knows a lot about city zoning regulations. And so if you have a problem in the neighborhood with the city, everyone just knows: You go to the guy in the parking garage and you say, “How do I fix this?” And he helps you fix it. 

So it quickly became apparent to us: Social fabric is really about who is trusted — who is building trust in their area? And I think, in many ways, good community members are generally weavers. 

I have a friend who says I practice “aggressive friendship,” which means I invite people in. I’m the one who’s organizing the block party. And so that’s a part of weaving, yes, but I’d say the one thing that goes beyond just organizing is being a moral force — having a moral vision for how to uphold the dignity of a person. In my reporting through the years, so many people tell me they feel invisible, unheard, and unseen.

That can be rural people who think coastal elites don’t understand them. Black people who think whites don’t understand their daily experience. Republicans and Democrats looking at each other without understanding each other. So Weavers not only organize people, they have a commitment to first seeing others deeply and seeing the dignity in each person. Which extends beyond a social thing — it’s a moral thing, a way of living that says “I see your dignity, I’m going to ask you about your life, I’m going to listen to you really well, and you’re going to go away thinking, ‘Wow, that person was a really good listener. I feel seen.’”

When you talk about ‘aggressive friendship,’ can you talk about times you’ve played the role of a weaver? What role has weaving played in your life? 

Before I really knew what a weaver was, I was benefiting from weavers.

I had a friend who had a kid in DC Public Schools, and that kid had a friend named James, whose mother was struggling, and he didn’t have a place to sleep or anything to eat. So my friend’s family said, “James can stay with us when he needs to.” And that led to James also inviting in another friend who also needed help. And that kid had another friend. So by the time I visited their home in 2015, I remember walking in the room, and it seemed like there were 40 people sitting around the dinner table, mostly high school-aged, and a bunch of mattresses were laid out for the kids who were staying over. 

We forged this little family for the next five years. I came back and ate with them every Thursday night. We did holidays and took vacations together. And through this family we forged sort of an urban tribe. For me, that was a powerful experience of weaving. I didn’t even really know what a weaver was, but I knew that there I was, sitting in the middle of a couple of them, helping these kids and creating a community. And it’s been experiences like that where I’ve learned about all this.

We’ve recently starting profiling “” at ����Ӱ��, who are playing a role in weaving community in and around schools. How do you think educators, schools and classrooms can play into your vision for Weave? 

One of the things that I find true of most educators is they have this skill of seeing others and being deeply seen themselves. It’s something most teachers are just good at: When they look at a child, they see not only the child but the potential of the child. And so they come with this ability to be other-centered, and to walk with a student through whatever level of education they’re at. 

I had a friend who had a daughter in second grade, and she was struggling. And one day the teacher says to her, “You’re really good at thinking before you speak.” And that one comment, that one aside, turned around the girl’s whole year, because the girl suddenly started thinking, “the teacher sees me. The thing I thought was my weakness, my social awkwardness, she sees as my strength.”

It’s been the same in my own life — I had teachers who were good at that. Once in 11th grade, in high school English, I had said something smug and stupid in Mrs. Dewsnap’s class. And she says, “David, you’re trying to get by on being glib. Stop that.” On the one hand, I was kind of ashamed — felt like, ooh, she called me out in front of the whole class. On the other hand, I was like, “Wow, she really knows me. I’m honored.”

I just think teachers are in the serving-other-people business and they exist in the community. I have a friend who says “teaching is a community of truth” — we’re in the classroom together and we’re trying to find the truth together. It’s not me lecturing at you. It’s we, discovering together. And so those people who can turn a classroom into a community — that’s what great teaching is all about. 

The thing that characterizes the teachers who we really prize as weavers is the fact that they’re not just coming into the building every day, but they’re creating a community, and community comes together around common loves.

At Weave, our theory is that culture changes when a small group of people find a better way to live and the rest of us copy. And so we set out to help amplify those who are finding a better way to live — to help spread the word. If you read a story about a weaver or see a video about a weaver, you think, “Wow, that’s an amazing person. I may be not that amazing, but maybe I can be a little more amazing.” And you can devote more of yourself to community service. 

The second thing Weave tries to do is, we give them resources. We have these things called . And they’re not large grants, but enough to make a difference in a small organization.

And finally a lot of weavers, a lot of people doing the work of building community, they’re exhausted. So many community needs are thrust into their laps, and they often don’t have anybody to talk to. Nobody’s trained them to do this work. And so by bringing weavers together with each other, they can also educate and help one another. So we’re also about fostering mutual support — they find that quite valuable. [Weave has created the for weavers to connect.]

It’s interesting that you’ve started to identify this universe of weavers at the same time as the country seems to be growing more divided. How do you reconcile what you’re seeing within the Weave project and then what you see every night on the news?

I think our gap right now is being widened by partisanship. We don’t disagree more than we always have, we just hate each other more. 

So the problem is not intellectual, it’s emotional. And the problem is of the “stranger” and the evil stories we tell about the “other.” 

So when I look at the weavers who are building community, the first thing I think is, they may not be involved in politics at all, but they’re making people feel safe. And then how does that build trust? Trust is built when somebody is trustworthy, when she shows up for you, when you feel safe enough to be vulnerable with him. And so trust is built on the ground level by one relationship at a time. And if we lived in a world where we generally felt the world was a trustworthy place, we wouldn’t live in a world with this much anger, so much lashing out, and so much political division.

So, to me, our political polarization, which I cover in my day job [at the New York Times], flows out of a social and psychological crisis. And the only people I see solving this psychological crisis are weavers — the people out there helping, being vulnerable, teaching others how to trust.

You can measure the health of a society by levels of trust. A generation ago, if you asked people, “Do you trust your neighbors?” 60% of Americans said, “Yeah.” Now, it’s 30%. And so we’ve become less trusting. That’s why I look at weavers as these essential engines of trust building, moving through their communities.

Like a lot of people, I went through a nanosecond in early COVID where I thought, “Oh, we’re going to come together. We’re all going to serve each other.” And I was ready to write a story on how we all came together in the time of COVID. And it’s one of those stories [that never came to be] — I’m not finding much evidence of this.

And so instead, I had to do: How we all fell apart during COVID. The pandemic has been tough and if you look at bad social indicators, at fights on airplanes, at more drunk driving, people being rude to each other in stores, more hate crimes — more crime, period — it’s all proof that this has been a time of intense stress. And when people are stressed, we’re not at our best. And so we’re living through this special challenge right now. 

But then, in early COVID, I met this woman named Sarah Hemminger who runs an organization supporting teenagers called Thread in Baltimore. At the start of the pandemic she leapt into action and started this food bank which became a community food distribution network. And I talked to her at the start, when stress and fear were off the charts, and here she was saying, “I was born for this.” And so some people just assume responsibility. It doesn’t matter what their day job is, whether they’re teachers or lawyers or anything else … they just start with this worldview of “Yeah, if there’s a problem, I’ll fix it.” If there’s a piece of garbage on the ground, they’re going to pick it up. 

And in taking action, and weaving community, I think people realize something that most successful people discover — which is that career success helps you avoid the anxiety you might feel if you felt you were a failure, but it doesn’t produce that much lasting happiness. 

That’s what I found — my lifestyle was putting time above people. I had so many deadlines, so many commitments … so I had this clock in my head: Okay, move on to the next thing. And I have a friend who says she loves people who are “linger-able” — who linger. And I was not linger-able. And therefore, all my friendships and relationships were weak, because I was always like, “Okay, 15 minutes, I’m off.” And so I hit a period, about eight years ago now, where my marriage had ended, my kids were going off to college, and I didn’t have good friendships. It was a period of intense loneliness for myself … I didn’t have to go report on the crisis of connection, I just had to look at my life and my pathetic little apartment and there it was. 

But connections were the key. I was helped out of that period by friends, just by throwing myself on my friends. And I felt guilty because I was throwing myself on them. But now I’ve learned the power of that, and now when people throw themselves on me, I’m so honored. And so much of what we work on here at Weave, this mission, has grown out of something that happened to us personally. And the weavers you meet, many of them can say the same thing — that some experience they went through inspired them, and they said, “Yeah, I’m going to try to make it so other people don’t have to go through that.” 

Now I look back and realize: I’ve been around the most giving and community-oriented people for three years. And the crazy thing is, they’re not hard to find. We would land in a place, and in six hours, we had a long list of people to meet with. They’re everywhere. And I guess I’ve been frustrated that America hasn’t done a better job at getting their stories out into the public … a lot of the time, those of us in journalism, we think our job is to explain how bad everything is and not focus on the people who are fixing it. But what gives me hope is the fact that those people are just sprinkled throughout society of all different types and shapes and colors and creeds. And they’re out there. 

And then I look at the younger generation. The group that’s been most enthusiastic about Weave, as we present it, is high school students. They’re filled with moral passion, and they get the crisis of connection firsthand, particularly now. They’re at a point in their life where they want to contribute. 

Learn more about Brooks’ at the Aspen Institute.

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to both the Weave Project and ����Ӱ��.

A far-reaching study has found Generation Z could shake up the workplace, transforming how it has operated for decades.

The survey of nearly 7,000 13-25-year-olds Gen Z’ers — the nation’s most ethnically and racially diverse generation ever — by the Springtide Research Institute found a majority want work to be meaningful, don’t have a mentor, are worried about work/life balance, and are concerned their gender or racial identity may prevent them from finding work.

“Work is not just going to be a place for work; it’s going to be a place for Gen Z where they make meaning for their whole lives,” said Executive Director Dr. Josh Packard of the study, “Work/Life Helping Gen Z Flourish & Find Balance.”

“One of the big trends that matters is trust, because you’ve got a generation who has now lived through two big recessions fairly close in succession and is also not only the most diverse generation in history but also cares about diversity,” Packard continued.

The two big economic recessions, one in 2008 and the current financial crisis caused by the pandemic, have also fueled the generation’s anxiety, with the oldest and youngest having the biggest concerns.

Many Gen Z’ers also believe their racial or gender identity will influence their search for work; 1 in 5 Gen Z’ers said they will have a hard time finding a job because of their race, and females express less security in their financial lives than their male peers.

The study breaks down three core concepts of mentorship, meaning, and growth in Gen Z’s perspectives of life and work, and what they want out of it.

Mentorship in the workplace is crucial as 82% young people report it’s important their supervisor helps them set performance goals; and 83% say they want their supervisor to care about their life.

Springtide found the experiences of Gen Z’ers is not monolithic, as access to mentorship varies based on racial identity, finding “white young people have more access to mentors in life” than Hispanic/Latino and Black peers and that 60% of the white young people said they knew “someone who listens” compared to 51% of Hispanic and Latino and 41% of Black Gen Z’ers.

The experience of having a mentor in life influences young people’s expectations for a mentor at work. Since Hispanic/Latino and Black Gen Z’ers often have less experience with mentorship than white Gen Z’ers, they don’t carry the same expectations of their supervisors to care for and guide them.

Gen Z has also shown a desire to find value in work and in their lives in general, as 74% of young people claim they want the things they do to have a purpose. Meaning for Gen Z’ers also includes growth, and being able to change as a person, as 87% want a job where they can learn a lot.

While many interpret meaning in different ways, Gen Z believes it needs to not only fulfill themselves but others, as 86% said want to make a difference with their jobs.

In fact, 70% of 13-to-17-year-olds told the Institute they believe work is not worth doing if it is not meaningful to them; and nearly 3 out of 4 young people say what they do as a job is a part of who they are.

Other stats from “work life balance:”

• Over 40% of Gen Z are worried about not being qualified for the work they want to do.
• 47% of 13-25-year-olds are worried about “a lack of good jobs.”
• Only 38% have someone who models good work ethic and healthy relationships.
• 73% of young people say they are more likely to do extra work when they believe in what they are doing.
• 87% of 13-to-25-year-olds believe they are “responsible for making their own meaning at work”

����Ӱ�� Million found several Gen Z’ers who echoed the sentiment and findings of the Springtide Institute, in topics such as work and life balance, mentorship, and meaningful work.

Nathan Hall, 21

Campus Attendant at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Barista

“I am absolutely worried about sacrificing a part of (my) time and hobbies for work. Worried about hours always because New York is expensive. I’m an actor, and my industry is taking a bit of a hit right now. Work to me is whatever can pay rent and get enough money to get by, it’s unfortunate. I wish I could spend more time doing what I actually want to do. But that’s just not how it is.”

Kaylie, 14

Student, Woodrow Wilson Middle School, Clifton, New Jersey

“Some teachers when it comes to certain things, you get attached to them, [like] my sixth grade teacher who I still talk to a lot of the time. He helped me through a lot, transitioning from elementary school to middle school, and especially during the quarantine. When everything went online, it was hard for me to transition, but my relationships with counselors and teachers helped a lot…. to balance everything out with them.”

Carlos Polanco, 22

Graduated Senior, Dartmouth College

“Mentors are important, especially in the workplace. Having people who can stick up for you and people who you can ask questions…It’s also very important when you’re from an underrepresented background, in my experience as someone who is Black and Latinx, there have been very few people who look like me or come from similar backgrounds in places where I worked.”

Yana Gitelman, 18

Rising Freshman, Georgetown University 

I had a teacher in school who is (also) a clinical psychologist… and he told me how a lot of his clients and parents at our school live and work for their vacations. They’re miserable most of the year, and then get a super nice, fancy vacation where they’re happy for two weeks. I want work to feel like fun and not like I’m just like getting through the week to get to the weekends.”

Ethan Siede, 22

Rising Senior Princeton, Microsoft Software Engineering Intern

“I am very passionate about my work, and I don’t think I would want to do something that I wasn’t passionate about. It’s important to balance out work and life, and I think when you’re in your 20’s it’s better if you work a little bit more. But I think there’s only a limit to that, because those who do like 100 hour work weeks, I think that’s just wasting your 20’s.”

Julia Clark, 17

Rising Freshman, Williams College 

“I want work that still makes me excited because I don’t want to have a job that I dread… even if it pays really well. I don’t want to think of it as a job; I want to think of it as a passion that I’m just lucky enough to get paid for.”