“Yet” ~ A Brief School-Based Program for Fourth Graders

Abstract

“Yet” is a school-based youth development program intended to introduce elementarygrade students to concepts of growth mindset, self-leadership, resilience and self-talk to promote healthy coping strategies to persist in tasks toward more positive educational outcomes.  Drawing from psychology, education, and management literature focusing on self-leadership, the “Yet” program encourages interaction and internalization of concepts such as “growing the brain,” and “stinkin’ thinking,” while modeling how to reframe set-backs to things students have not mastered…”yet,” and practicing adaptive self-talk to promote coping and persistence.  This unique program holds promise because it is approximately 30 minutes long, occurs within the context of a regular school day, and can be implemented with a high measure of fidelity because it is script-based.  The success of the program may be augmented by principal and teacher support along with online videos.