How to Catalyze the Magic of Strengths-Based Teaching

This post sheds light on why strengths-based teaching (strengths-based education) is uniquely effective in empowering students to succeed in all areas of their lives, and how to harness its magic.

We’ve written a number of posts about how SETS (Student Evaluation and Teaching Sytem) helps you organize your program and secure more funding, but here’s the thing: while SETS does all of that beautifully, that’s not the main reason educator Bill Rossi and the Merge team created it. So what’s the point? It’s all about a student’s strengths.

At its core, SETS was developed to promote Strengths-Based Teaching—to give teachers the orientation and tools they need to empower students to be the unique individuals they are.

What do you believe the most important aim of education should be? Do you agree that it should focus on helping students learn about themselves? Strengths-based education, when implemented well, can do exactly that. It empowers students to understand themselves and learn in a way that works for them—ultimately helping them find their place in the world.

Seeing Students as the Individuals They Are

The beauty of strengths-based teaching lies in its ability to recognize each student as a unique individual. While this can be more demanding for teachers, it it is also far more rewarding. When teachers take the time to understand how each student processes the world around them, they can use their understandings to create learning environments that tap into students’ strengths and challenges.

This approach creates an atmosphere where students feel validated and important, simply for being themselves.

That said… strengths-based teaching can sound great in theory, but as you may know, it’s not always easy to implement. It requires teachers to be highly attuned to each student’s individual needs and to recognize where they are in their learning journey.

We hope this post sheds light on why SETS could be invaluable for teachers who are looking to empower their students through their own unique strengths.

What is Strengths-Based Teaching?

Strengths-based teaching (SBT) works for all students, but it’s especially transformative for those who face more than the normal amount of challenges in their lives. Simply put, SBT focuses on nurturing students’ strengths while addressing and supporting their challenges. It’s a process that empowers students to:

• Discover and understand their unique strengths
• Develop their strengths through practical, hands-on experience
• Strengthen their challenges in a way that supports their strengths
• Build confidence in their ability to learn and succeed

This is quite different from traditional standards-based education. While standards-based education has its merits, we advocate for a shift in focus—one that prioritizes students’ strengths, natural inclinations, and unique learning styles.

To explain further, here are a few key points from Bill Rossi’s book Venturing Together: Empowering Students to Learn (or you can scroll down to see how SETS encourages SBT):

• Strengths-Based Teaching celebrates uniqueness. It promotes different ways of thinking and focuses on teaching how to think, rather than what to think.
• Strengths-Based Teaching nurtures individual abilities. It’s all about developing each student’s natural talents and capabilities.
• Strengths-Based Teaching encourages self-awareness. It helps students understand their internal drives and use them to reach their goals.
• Strengths-Based Teaching honors diverse learning styles. It recognizes that every student learns in their own way.

At the heart of SBT is the belief that, rather than rewarding conformity, we should empower individuals to discover and embrace who they truly are. This process not only gives them the best chance to succeed in life—but also helps them appreciate and enjoy the uniqueness of others along the way.

How SETS Encourages Strengths-Based Teaching

SETS (Student Evaluation & Teaching System) is a comprehensive, 3-scale student assessment tool. Its Observation Scale trains teachers to focus on where their students are with the Principles of Empowerment—fundamental learning and development principles that every student needs to thrive.

As teachers observe their students, they can identify each student’s strengths and challenges. This scale helps teachers move beyond subjective impressions, offering concrete, measurable insights into student progress and areas that need attention.

In terms of program oversight, the scale turns subjective observations into actionable data—allowing teachers to track milestones and identify next steps for each student.

Identifying Student Strengths and Abilities

You might have noticed that the concept of “strengths” can vary within different educational models. Many lists focus on attributes like leadership, exam-taking ability, or fitting into traditional systems. While these traits can be important, we believe true strengths lie in how students learn and engage with the world around them—once students are able to really learn, they can lead, test, or fit in as they wish.

In our experience, it’s most effective to focus on how individual students process information and learn. When we meet students where they are and accommodate their unique learning processes, we set them up for success.

Challenged students, in particular, often don’t have a clear understanding of how they learn. More importantly, they’ve rarely had a teacher who truly understood how they learn. When a teacher adopts a strengths-based approach they’re communicating their intention to understand a student’s learning process. That alone builds trust and motivation.

The Principles of Empowerment (POE), which are at the heart of SETS’ Observation Scale, help teachers identify and nurture each student’s strengths. By focusing on how a student learns—rather than just what they learn—teachers can form deeper, more meaningful relationships with their students.

Strenths-Based Teaching Focuses on The Principles of Empowerment (POE)

The Principles of Empowerment are the core qualities and skills involved in learning.  These qualities and abilities are essential for learning, and while they are inherent in all of us, they must be actively developed for effective learning to take place.

The POE are grouped into three categories: Relationship to Self, Relationship to Teacher, and Skills Development.

Relationship to Self:

These are the personal qualities and skills that influence how a student engages with their learning. Key areas include:

• Ability to concentrate
• Motivation and persistence
• Self-confidence
• Frustration tolerance
• Consistency in effort

Relationship to Teacher:

The student’s connection to their teacher is a vital aspect of empowerment. These metrics include:

• Listening and responding to the teacher
• Understanding directions
• Communicating needs and ideas effectively

Skills Development:

This area focuses on how the student is learning specific skills, including:

• Respecting materials and equipment
• Willingness to try new steps
• Freedom of expression
• Identifying connections between concepts
• Building on previous learning
• Incorporating new elements into their skillset

SETS: The Trojan Horse

Perhaps the original developer of SETS was right when they observed that SETS could be a “Trojan Horse” for a more empathetic approach to teaching, especially for students who face challenges.

We’d love to give you a virtual tour so you can see for yourself how SETS can help you empower your students.

Nonprofit Consultation for Growth

Has Your Nonprofit Stalled?

If you’re past the startup stage but your nonprofit has stalled, you’re probably wondering why. Even with an engaged board, it can be hard to pinpoint the cause. Our individualized nonprofit assessment can help you see the forest for the trees, because it’s individualized just for you.

Does this describe you?

• You’ve grown your nonprofit beyond the startup stage so you’re no longer scuffling just to survive.
• You have a small but adequate staff and the architecture needed to keep your business humming (most days).
• Your support is varied and basically adequate, but …
• You seem to have hit a ceiling and you don’t know why.

You’d be surprised to know how many nonprofit directors are in your position. But who can you ask? Nonprofit consultation is like a “check the box” service today. That’s fine, if you fit neatly into a box.

What if you’d just like some targeted, experienced feedback? For that, you need someone with decades of nonprofit experience who can learn about your nonprofit – where you’ve come from and where you are now – and tell you what you’re missing or simply what needs to be done next to move forward. The team at Merge can do that.

Unbiased Professional Feedback

The team at Merge Education has been immersed in nonprofits for almost 3 decades. From founding and growing our own successful nonprofit to nonprofit consulting, we have the experience to understand what you need to do to get where you want to go.

Assessments are typically 2-5 hours and always result in an individualized, step-by-step plan created with your strengths and weaknesses in mind.

Contact us today and get a sense of what we can do. Then, discover why you’ve hit that ceiling and what you can do to break through it.

How and Why to Build a Great Board

Are you ready to build a startup nonprofit board that actually moves your organization forward? If you’re reading this, chances are your nonprofit has been operating for a while and you’ve discovered that your current board isn’t quite doing what you hoped.

Most founders begin with a nonprofit board made up of friends. It makes sense — you need names and addresses for the IRS form, plus some cheerleading and support. And unless you’ve done this before, it’s all new territory. How could you possibly know who would be best for your board?

Your friends may have been wonderful encouragers, so kudos to them. But there often comes a time when you realize that as much as you enjoy them, they’re not really helping move the organization forward.

Why Early Nonprofit Boards Stop Working

Many people join a board with the caveat that they “don’t have much time” or “just want to help where they can.” Others simply don’t have the skills your nonprofit really needs to grow.

For example: do you have even one board member who is great at fundraising?

If you did, you probably wouldn’t be reading this. Need we say more?

Who You Need on Your Nonprofit Board

You need board members who:

• are passionate about your mission
• truly want to give their time, energy, and creativity
• understand that their role goes beyond attending quarterly meetings

After 20+ years in nonprofits, I can tell you something hard learned:

Many people join boards for reasons unrelated to your mission — networking, personal visibility, or résumé padding. That can drain time and energy from your real work.

Be sure that their motivations match your mission and that they want to serve.

Which Professions Make Great Board Members?

Certain professions consistently make for strong nonprofit board members:

• A financial professional to act as Treasurer, offer fiscal oversight, and possibly submit your IRS Form 990
• An attorney to handle bylaws, risk, and legal questions
• A strong communicator and note-taker to serve as Secretary and document meetings

These are helpful roles, but don’t stop there. You need more than professional expertise — you need people willing to roll up their sleeves.

Who else should you consider?

• Someone with experience in your service field
• Someone with local connections
• Someone who can open doors to decision-makers

But what’s the one trait that matters most?

Funding: The #1 Need for Nonprofits

It’s simple: your organization cannot survive without funding.

And what is the thing that most people (including board members) avoid?
Asking for money.

People may say they’re willing to help with fundraising, but as your balance sheet likely shows, that doesn’t always happen.

You need board members who:

• can personally donate
• represent companies with strong charitable giving programs
• know individuals who care about your mission
• are comfortable making “the ask”

When someone has both capacity and passion, fundraising transforms from stressful to natural.

How to Cultivate an Effective Nonprofit Board

If you want to make an experienced nonprofit director laugh, tell her most boards are “proactive.”

Effective boards are rare. They don’t just appear — they are built, developed, and encouraged.

A proactive nonprofit board can take your organization further, faster, than almost anything else.

But it requires:

• Strong leadership
• Modeling
• Gentle, consistent pushing

Notice the word consistent. Not a one-time training session. Not a binder of bylaws. Consistent encouragement and accountability.

The Executive Director Must Be Willing to Make the Ask

This is non-negotiable.

Why?

1. Modeling matters.
   If the Executive Director isn’t willing to step out and ask, why should board members?
2. Confidence grows with practice.
   Asking gets easier the more you do it. The seasoned asker will have credibility when encouraging others to ask.

If you want a strong fundraising board, you must first become a fundraiser yourself.

Why Is It So Hard to Ask for Funding?

It helps to face the problem squarely: why is asking for money uncomfortable?

Three big reasons:

• In American culture, wealth often defines status
• Wealthy people tend to be guarded about finances — asking can feel intrusive
• Asking puts you in a vulnerable position

Your mindset is everything.

If you believe you shouldn’t ask, you probably won’t succeed. But if you believe you are offering something valuable, everything changes.

Why Giving Feels Good: A Story You’ll Remember

There’s a traditional story that illustrates why it’s better to give than receive.

A man asked a saint to show him the difference between heaven and hell…

Hell: people in a room with bowls of food they can’t feed themselves because of long spoons attached to their hands.

Heaven: people in a room with the same setup, but they are feeding one another.

The moral?

Giving creates joy, connection, and meaning. That would sound trite if it weren’t so true.

When You Ask for Support, You Give Others an Opportunity

I learned this early in my nonprofit career:

When you ask people to support your cause, you’re giving them an opportunity to feel good about themselves.

Our culture could use more generosity. When you invite someone to support your mission, you are offering:

• belonging
• purpose
• significance
• joy

You’re not taking. You’re inviting.

Your Startup Nonprofit Board Culture Matters

What makes a great nonprofit board?

It goes beyond titles and bylaws. It’s a shared energy — active, not passive.

It’s the joy of a shared mission. The positive energy that comes with putting ego aside and focusing on service.

Be willing to:

• take risks
• encourage growth
• expect participation

When you do that, you will cultivate a nonprofit board that truly supports your vision and helps you achieve it.

Want tools that help program directors demonstrate impact and secure sustainable funding?
Learn how Merge Education’s SETS software helps organizations track student outcomes, improve teaching, and strengthen funding proposals.

Mary Helen Rossi is Co-Director of Merge Education, which grew out of 20 years of after-school fine arts mentoring to over 2,500 challenged young people. Merge’s student assessment and program management software reflects this experience: as one client said, “It’s clear that a lot of thought and love went into SETS!”

How SETS Makes Your Data Work for You

Transforming Observations into Data

Does your program work to see students as individuals and teach to their strengths? If so, this post is for you.

These days, we can’t make it far without running into data. People may be more or less the same as we were fifty years ago, but the collection and use of our contact points with the environment have become increasingly complex and targeted. Since advertisers are able to effectively market down to the individual consumer, it should also be possible to make your data work for you.

How can you apply the immense value of data? Merge Education has developed an evaluation system that empowers your students through their individuality. SETS (Student Evaluation & Tracking System) meets learners where they are, creating a baseline for their progress based on their goals, their relationships, and their own reporting of their self-esteem.

Our system measures progress in both technical competence and social and emotional growth so that you can best serve each student and demonstrate and develop the efficacy of your program.

A Variety of Feedback for Comprehensive Oversight

By allowing students, staff, and ‘significant othrs’ to provide feedback, SETS allows you to create multifaceted and balanced assessments and reports. SETS anchors traditionally qualitative concepts to specific numerical points with detailed yet simple guides, That empowers your staff to assess their students with confidence that their feedback is grounded in direct interaction and observation. In so doing, mood, bias, and other unhelpful factors are greatly limited.

The product of this feedback is reports within reference ranges that have come from decades of programming experience combined with thoughtful research in the social sciences.

Simplify, Organize, and Improve

Running extracurricular programs comes with an overwhelming number of administrative tasks like scheduling, staffing, and maintaining biographical and demographic records. For many programs, tracking the progress of individual students doesn’t even make it onto the to-do list.

SETS creates a single space for all of the above, cleanly and simply tying your students’ participation and background information to their personal progress. Organizing this data within a single system creates the opportunity for teachers to be more deliberate, to grow in their own performance, and to more deeply understand what the individual student needs most to feel empowered and to excel.

Empower Students through Your Observations

We’ve all felt seen by marketers, often to a degree that makes us feel uncomfortable. Imagine when the students in your program feel truly seen by your staff, and then imagine you were able to show the benefits of this exchange to all of the stakeholders in the process, whether it’s parents, funders, or referring programs. SETS helps you to do this.

Help your staff to empower your students as individuals while benefiting your program with data that provides words for the previously indescribable. We can do better with our data. SETS can help.

How the Sandbox database helps youth development practitioners learn SETS

The concepts behind the Student Evaluation and Tracking System (SETS) were conceived in the Youth Development field, so the program makes sense to youth development practitioners. That same thinking was carried over to SETS’ development as software, so it’s also easy to learn and use.

How we best learn new technology is unique to each of us, but for most, learning new tech is not a favorite weekend hobby. According to VerywellMind “some experts believe that we all suffer at least a small amount of nervousness when confronted with new technology.” A small amount? Many of us suffer a lot more than that!

All of the concepts behind SETS were developed by former teacher and afterschool director Bill Rossi who is not a techie, and his intuitive learning style has influenced everything about the SETS program.  That’s why SETS comes with a Sandbox database.

Almost a day at the beach?

That’s a stretch, and yet … one of the joys many of us experience in childhood is spending time in the sandbox. Free to play, free to experiment, free to just be. And as its name implies, SETS’ Sandbox database is a place to play around … you know, sit back, relax, sift the sand between your fingers, and get the feel of things. No pressure! When the pressure’s off you can absorb and assimilate, so it’s a great way to learn.

An example for youth development practitioners

A student’s identification screen is a good example of how the Sandbox database helps familiarize you with SETS. When you look at this screen filled with Sandbox (hypothetical) data, the fields make sense. On the screenshot below, you’ll see that the Population field is self-explanatory …

If the meaning isn’t clear enough, you can click on the down arrow for that field and see other options which should clarify it:

If you’re still in doubt, you can consult the SETS Program Director Manual for clarification. But consider the manual excerpt below.  Wouldn’t you say it would make more sense once you’ve explored SETS with the Sandbox data?

Populations

SETS asks you to specify a population when you enter a student in your database. A population groups students for data management and statistical purposes. Each student comes from only one population.

Populations may be any groupings you want for your comparative needs – they could be the sources for your students (social service organizations, schools, etc.), or age, grade level, gender, race, parents’ marital status, etc. Just keep in mind that a student’s population will determine how he is grouped in reports: SETS reports are organized by population, activity, student, and staff.

Have we made our point? Do you see how the Sandbox database can help you learn the program? For that matter, do you think most people learn best by experiencing what they’re learning? Experiential learning!

We’d love to hear your take!

How to Assess Vulnerable Students After-School

Youth development programs are often challenged to find an assessment program that’s an effective way to assess vulnerable students. Since their mission is to empower youth to succeed, they find that generic assessments don’t drill deep enough to evaluate the vulnerable/marginalized students they serve.

Merge Education developed SETS software to fill this gap. Assessing students can serve many purposes, and this post details some of 0f SETS’ benefits. Here are just a few:

1. Assessing students gives you great data, proof of your program’s value that you can present to funders.
2. Student assessment helps program managers evaluate their mentors (and provide training when necessary).
3. Assessing students helps mentors see what kind of success they’re having with students.
4. Student assessment helps mentors better understand how to teach.

That fourth item is SETS’ secret sauce. Although most assessment tools give you a general idea of students’ strengths and weaknesses, SETS asks questions that drill deep. And if you have a mentoring program, that’s what you need.

How Youth Development Programs Use SETS

Youth development programs almost always serve vulnerable children and youth. And if you serve them, you know they need more than a few hours of after-school tutoring … they need a good relationship with someone who cares enough to dig in and get to know them.

Vulnerable Students Need a Targeted Approach

The problem is that teaching marginalized or vulnerable youth after-school can feel a bit amorphous. Even if the mentor has experience with strengths-based teaching, it can feel like unchartered territory. That’s because it is. You may be able to pull out a method book or other stock teaching guide for a well-adjusted student, but that doesn’t work with challenged youth.

Teachers Improve Their Teaching when they Assess Vulnerable Students

As I said, SETS’ secret sauce is in how it helps mentors and teachers improve their ability to teach vulnerable, marginalized students. Basically, it does this by helping the teacher focus her attention on how the student is (or is not) learning. It does this very specifically by focusing her on the skills and abilities we all need in order to learn. Educator and author Bill Rossi refers to these as the Principles of Empowerment:

1. Ability to concentrate
2. Level of motivation
3. Self-confidence to succeed
4. Frustration tolerance
5. Consistency of effort
6. Listens to teacher
7. Understands directions
8. Communicates needs
9. Communicates ideas
10. Respects equipment and materials
11. Willing to try new steps
12. Freedom of expression
13. Identifies correlations (relationships)
14. Able to build on prior learning
15. Incorporates elements of the skill

This scale is just one of three that SETS utilizes (the others track behavior and self-esteem). Since this has an educational focus, it implements anchor points so mentors will understand the scoring variables. This helps create an objective assessment.

When the teacher consistently uses this scale to assess her students, she becomes increasingly focused on where the student is with each of these skills and abilities. This not only gives her a framework within which she can work to improve her students’ skills and abilities, but it also improves her awareness.

Well-Documented Success Impresses Funders

I don’t think many of us choose to work with challenged students for the kudos, but we all need sustainable support to do it, and being able to prove your program’s success is the very best way to get it. We can tell wonderful success stories until we’re blue in the face, but it’s the data that brings home the award. Funders are far more likely to write a significant check if a program’s value and integrity are clearly documented by detailed reports.

Are You Serious About Empowering Youth After-School?

SETS was developed for small and growing youth development programs that are serious about empowering their youth. Try SETS, and you’ll get it. SETS makes sense, and it will help you get sustainable funding. It has a 30-day guarantee so it’s risk-free.

Would you like a tour? We’re at your service. Or just get started with SETS today!

Mary Helen Rossi is Co-Director of Merge Education, which grew out of a nonprofit that provided after-school fine arts mentoring to over 2,500 vulnerable young people. Merge’s SETS software reflects this experience: as one client said, “It’s clear that a lot of thought and love went into SETS!”

Why Use Anchor Points to Assess Youth?

Youth development practitioners (both teachers and mentors) often find that anchor points do exactly as their name implies: they anchor the teaching by providing concrete guidelines. That’s why SETS: Student Evaluation & Tracking System offers anchor points in the teacher’s observation process.

It can be amorphous to pinpoint just how well a student is able to concentrate, for example… unless you have points of reference. But looking at the anchor points for the first question in the document below, the value is clear.

Less Subjective Ratings Improve Outcomes Assessment

Youth development anchor points also make a teacher’s ratings less subjective. This greatly improves their validity.

If you’re not currently using putting SETS to work for you, visit us, view the SETS video, or contact us. SETS’ reporting will optimize your program and impress funders.

How to Use SETS as a Youth Development Teaching Tool

Are you looking for a youth development teaching tool? Youth empowerment programs often seek out ways to help their teachers become more effective at empowering their students. They also typically have limited resources for training teachers, and it can be hard to know how a person teaches until you see their results. Perhaps you’ve had a disappointing hiring experience?

Here’s one example. Let’s say you’ve hired a new teacher whom we’ll call Shannon. Shannon really understands her subject (she’s a painter with a degree in fine arts and a minor in teaching), and she does a lot of things right:

• she clearly loves painting
• she’s friendly with students and parents
• she’s always on time.

You’ve seen her work and she’s talented and accomplished. You’re pretty sure she’s going to be a great addition, so you’ve been looking forward to sitting in on one of her lessons.

But when you sit in on her class you see she needs help:

• she’s using a generic lesson plan and seems aloof from students
• she’s nervous and talks a lot, so students are mostly quiet and not engaged
• students leave looking disinterested or even dejected.

Does this sound familiar? Shannon is like so many other mentors and teachers working in after-school environments … well-meaning, accomplished, and deep into their subjects, but with so little teaching experience they don’t know how to connect to share what they know.

Teaching — especially teaching vulnerable youth — is an art. How do you connect your subject with people you don’t even know? As a teacher, how do you get to know them? What do you look for to understand how they are (or aren’t) learning? How can you ascertain what they need so they can grow into more capable people?

Learning How to Connect with Youth

To connect with students teachers need to meet them where they are, and to do that they need to discover just where that is. This is especially true for working with vulnerable youth.

Unfortunately, teacher training often focuses more on delivering lesson plans than on assessing/understanding individual student learning. Understanding how students are learning gives teachers a focus and empowers them to engage each unique student individually.

Merge Education’s SETS (Student Evaluation and Tracking System) is an assessment program that was developed to serve as a teacher training tool. Using the Teacher Observation Scale monthly to assess students (and referring to it throughout the month), Shannon will learn what to look for to discern how students are learning. That will help her understand them as individuals.

Discernment is an important component of good teaching. A great teacher knows how to step back and observe students while staying emotionally present. This ability takes attention and practice, but it’s essential for effective teaching. It’s an ability that teachers acquire (or hone) when they work with SETS.

SETS helps teachers focus on and develop specific abilities that help lead the student to feel successful — a necessary ingredient for empowerment.

The strengths-based connection

Everyone has strengths, even the most vulnerable and challenged students. A strengths-based approach can be especially effective in youth development programs because it can re-enliven youth who have essentially shut down. As Merge Education’s Bill Rossi says:

Many challenged students have significant strengths and talents that lie beneath their troubled exteriors. This orientation enables us to be like miners digging for ore.

SETS supports strengths-based teaching by helping teachers find students’ strengths and limitations. SETS accomplishes this via the Principles of Empowerment (POE).

The Principles of Empowerment

SETS uses The Principles of Empowerment (POE) as its metrics (quantifiable measures) to assess student learning. Identified by  Merge Education director Bill Rossi, the POE are the qualities necessary for learning. Although inherent in and natural to us all, these qualities must be developed.

As detailed in Rossi’s Venturing Together: Empowering Students to Succeed, the POE are grouped as Relationship to Self, Relationship to Teacher, and Skills Development.

Relationship to Self: These are the personal qualities and skills students need to develop in order to learn well. These are delineated as:

• Ability to concentrate
• Level of motivation
• Self-confidence to succeed
• Frustration tolerance
• Consistency of effort.

Relationship to Teacher: The students’ relationships with others are important indicators of empowerment, and your teachers are well-positioned to evaluate this. The metrics are delineated as:

• Listens to the teacher
• Understands directions
• Communicates needs
• Communicates ideas.

Skills Development: This concerns whether the student is becoming a more capable learner. The metrics are delineated as:

• Respects equipment and materials
• Willing to try new steps
• Freedom of expression
• Identifies correlations (relationships)
• Able to build on prior learning
• Incorporates elements of the skill.

Youth Development Teaching Tool. Smart Metrics = Improved Teaching

So back to Shannon, your hypothetical new teacher. She knows her craft and has a lot going for her as a teacher, and now she can work with SETS to learn how to connect with her students where they are. It seems obvious, yet so few assessment tools utilize the concept. When metrics concern essential principles of learning, they make sense to teachers. They’re like specific signposts, pointing where to look.

So, after spending time with SETS, Shannon will no longer be unfocused because she’ll know how to observe and understand her students. And she’ll no longer be as nervous because she’ll start to connect with them. And your students? They’ll become engaged so they can start learning and growing.

SETS is A Comprehensive Youth Development Teaching Tool

The Teacher Observation Form is just one of SETS’ three scales. The others are a self-assessment completed by students and an assessment completed by a ‘significant other’. While just one can be used as a simple standalone, using all three gives a comprehensive view of each student.

SETS is described in some depth here.

SETS can be purchased here or contact us for a quick tour.

How to Assess Mentoring / Youth Development

If you’re a skill-building program, chances are you know you need to assess youth development. But what, and how?

As we reported in 5 Ways to Assess After-School Outcomes there are countless tools available in a variety of formats, and most are based on a particular philosophy as to what’s important to assess.

So, how do you know what you should assess, in order to choose the tool or process that’s right for you?

It all starts with “Why?” Why assess youth development?

Choosing an assessment tool is a bit like choosing the perfect pair of sports shoes, with the two main considerations being why you need them (for running? soccer? workouts?) and how they feel on your feet.

When considering assessment programs, you can even back up a bit to ask the (almost) obvious … why are you assessing your program in the first place?

Hah! You’d be surprised how few people ask this question. Understanding the benefits that are important to you is a simple first step to take. Here are just a few that you might consider:

• better general oversight (including managing classes and student numbers)
• better teacher and mentor oversight (knowing who needs a little help and who can mentor other teachers)
• better teacher / mentor training (good metrics can minimize the need for outside trainers)
• better student outcomes (which always come from good oversight and better teaching)
• better support — financial and personal (which always comes from good oversight and great data)

These are just a few of the myriad benefits. Can you think of more?

Next, ask “What?”

Once you’ve decided on your “whys”, you can think about “what”. What do you want to assess? If you’re a mentoring program, chances are you understand that the more closely attuned your teachers are to how your students are learning, the greater success they’ll achieve. But typically, teachers and mentors in youth development programs aren’t highly trained teachers. So if you want to fine-tune their teaching it’s very helpful to have them assessing students ongoing, based on the qualities and abilities that empower student learning.

Merge Education’s director Bill Rossi has made a life-long study of this, and he identified 15 qualities and abilities we all need to be able to learn well. He defines and explores these Principles of Empowerment in his book Venturing Together: Empowering Students to Succeed, and these are the metrics we used to create one of the assessments in our software SETS: Student Evaluation & Tracking System.

So, those metrics (here) can give you a good feel for SETS, just as looking at the metrics in other tools will give you a good feel for those. Because just like a pair of running shoes, it typically comes down to which one feels the best … all the way around.

Numero Uno … how do you feel?

Chances are, you’ll ultimately make your best choice by intuition … even if two or three align with your criteria, one pair will simply appeal to you most. My advice is to do the same when choosing an assessment process or program. Find two or three that you think might work for you, then dive into them one by one and see how they feel. Get a tour or a demo. Read and re-read the sites and FAQ, until you know your answer. Since you’ve already narrowed the field, it’s really a visceral and intuitive decision and you need to feel comfortable with your choice.

What’s the big deal? Why assess youth development?

Why does it matter so much? If you end up with a tool that focuses more on attendance than learning, for example, then your data won’t tell your story. But if you’re tracking benchmarks that are meaningful to you, the reports will mean something. And by reflecting you and your program, they’ll give your supporters a better feel for you and good insight into why they should support you.

Merge Education is for Youth

At Merge, we really are in this for the youth. Try SETS, and you’ll get it.

SETS makes sense, and it will help you get sustainable funding just like it did us.

Would you like a tour? We’re at your service. Or just get started with SETS today!

Mary Helen Rossi is Co-Director of Merge Education, which grew out of 20 years of after-school fine arts mentoring to over 2,500 challenged young people. Merge’s SETS software reflects this experience: as one client said, “It’s clear that a lot of thought and expertise went into SETS!”

SETS is an Affordable Youth Development Assessment Software

“SETS looks like a great tool for assessing youth development outcomes, but there’s no such thing as “affordable youth development assessment.” Why does SETS cost so much less than other youth development assessment tools?”

We hear this reaction a lot at Merge, so we thought we’d better clarify.

Merge director Bill Rossi founded and ran a nonprofit youth development program for 20 years, and during that time the need for outcomes data grew — not just for program oversight, but for sustainable funding. Like many other youth development programs, it was a constant struggle to:

• get sustainable funding
• compete with larger programs
• find an evaluation tool that made sense to teachers and staff

Rossi left the nonprofit world in 2010 and began creating SETS … a simple, easy-to-use assessment tool. It wasn’t automated, but it had a powerful effect on program funding. He later decided to create software that would work for a variety of after-school programs.

So, back to the original question: why is SETS so affordable? As we say in the SETS Overview video, we believe programs that individualize their instruction are uniquely effective with their students.

So, if smaller programs are going to use SETS, it needs to be affordable. There are also a few “nuts and bolts” reasons why it’s so affordable.
Here they are:

• SETS is not in the cloud (it lives on your PC)
• SETS is an essential, easy-to-use program that requires almost no tech support
• Merge employs almost no salespeople.

So perhaps that answers at least a part of the question. If you’d like to know why and how SETS was created and what it does, read on.

How (and why) SETS was created for affordable youth development assessment

Working with social workers, other teachers, therapists, and software developers, educator Bill Rossi created SETS after 20 years in the youth development field.

He’d reviewed most of the available tools, but they are typically expensive and complicated and don’t track what Rossi found to be the skills and abilities we all need to succeed in life.  This leads us to what is most unique about SETS. SETS is a very effective youth empowerment tool.

SETS as a youth empowerment tool

Rossi believes that the most essential and potent way to empower students is by developing their ability to learn. In fact, he believes students should be empowered to self-educate … but that’s for a future post. Suffice it to say that if students can’t learn well, they won’t be successful (or happy) in life.

So, when Rossi created SETS, he built the Student Observation Scale around the skills and abilities that everyone needs in order to learn. He calls them the Principles of Empowerment. There are 15 skills in all, including the ability to:

• teamworking
• listen well
• understand directions
• critical thinking
• tolerate frustration
• persevere

These “soft skills” are being seen as even more important as the world becomes increasingly digital. So, this one way SETS is unique.

SETS helps create a wrap-around youth development environment

SETS incorporates and reports on an array of assessments from a variety of sources:

• goal setting, recording, and assessing
• a Student Observation assessment by your program teacher
• a Self-Esteem assessment for student self-assessment
• an Assessment Scale for student assessment by significant others to evaluate students
• opportunities for in-depth teacher input on students (“Profiles”) which helps satisfy human services departments
• notes about any changes in student’s lives that may affect their ability to progress
• and other opportunities to incorporate information on all important areas of students’ lives

This variety provides an in-depth view of the student that gives you great program oversight and demonstrates to funders that your in-depth approach is providing significant results. Social workers consider this an essential component of a wrap-around environment.

Affordable Youth Development Assessment — Merge Education is for Youth

At Merge, we really are in this for the youth. Try SETS, and you’ll get it.

SETS makes sense, and it will help you get sustainable funding just like it did us. It has a 30-day guarantee so you’ve everything to gain, risk-free.

Would you like a tour? We’re at your service. Or just get started with SETS today!

Mary Helen Rossi is Co-Director of Merge Education, which grew out of 20 years of after-school fine arts mentoring to over 2,500 challenged young people. Merge’s SETS software reflects this experience: as one client said, “It’s clear that a lot of thought and love went into SETS!”