EduCon 2027Step 0 - Are students ready for what's next?
Every spring we ask eighteen-year-olds to make one of the biggest decisions of their lives: where to go, what to study, how much debt to take on. The developmental science says most of them are not ready. The National Academies place the end of adolescence in the mid-twenties, when identity, planning, and the capacity to hold to a hard decision are still forming. Young people with means get extra time anyway, through gap years, family networks, and room to change course. Most of our students do not. By age 24, about 16 percent of young people from the lowest-income families hold a bachelor's degree, against 58 percent from the highest.
Workshop U is a free, nine-month bridge year in Philadelphia built on an idea we call Step 0: give young adults time to build a vision they are actually attached to, the skills to create opportunity, and people in their corner, before asking them to commit. Three cohorts in, much of what we have learned points back to high school.
This conversation is less about our program than the question underneath it. What are we asking seniors to decide, and what have we given them to decide with? What would change if we measured success differently, not just where they were accepted? We will bring what we have learned, and we want to hear what you are seeing through your experience.
Conversational Practice
We open by asking everyone to think back to the decision they made at eighteen: how sure were they, who helped, and what made it stick or come apart. Pairs share, then the room names the patterns.
Next, a short framing from us (Workshop U) on Step 0 and what three cohorts have taught us.
Then participants try a compressed version of a tool our students use. In small groups, they sketch two or three different possible futures for a senior they know, and talk through what it would take to make each one feel real and what a high school could build toward it before graduation.
We close by building a shared document together: concrete things high schools can do to give seniors more of what Step 0 gives our students.
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