Thriving Youth Project: What makes you thrive?

The Thriving Youth project aimed to encourage high school students to meaningfully reflect on living their lives with intetion. The project engaged with students who are pursuing paths outside of a college education. This project allows students to reflect on their future and what it means to be their best selves.

This project took place on April 23, 2024 at senior stay day, a career fair in Charlottesville. The fair allowed central Virginia high school seniors to explore opportunities for their life after graduation. 

To accomplish this project, undergraduate students designed a poster board station with both audio and visual options to reflect on the concept of thriving. We had three prompts that gave the students different ways to respond to what they viewed as thriving. 

For the visual component students drew on sticky notes, while the audio component comprised of adding a song to a playlist and/or bucket drumming. The drawing and playlist prompts engaged the students the best, while the bucket drumming option was less successful than the other two options.

Lesson Plan

Materials

  • 1 tri fold poster and 2 flat poster boards

  • post it notes 

  • markers 

  • speaker, with phone play music

  • 2 easels 

  • 10 buckets

  • 10 pairs of drumsticks 

  • Phone camera for documentation 

  • candy/snacks to entice students

VISUAL – Draw your future 

Draw something that responds to one of the three prompts, and add it to our board 

Be creative! You can draw anything you want, including pictures or words 

Prompts

In this activity, you will choose to answer one of the three following prompts to describe what thriving means to you. The prompts are:  

  1. What would your best self be doing? 

  2. What energizes you? 

  3. What story do you want to tell yourself about yourself?

AUDIO – Songs to thrive 

Pick a song that answers your chosen prompt and write it on our playlist board! 

Then, we will all drum on buckets to the beat of the song with you. 

Helpful Hints

  • We found that saying “do you want to add a song to our playlist?” was a good way to get students engaged 

  • We had a bucket of candy and students were encouraged to take some after completing the prompt 

  • We played music from the student-generated playlist at the station, which seemed to make people curious about the station 

  • We had a variety of colors for sticky notes and markers, and enough that there were plenty extra at any given time 

The Results

Example responses

  • Drawing: a student submitted a person in a chef’s hat to represent a career in the culinary arts 

  • Audio: a student submitted “I got a feeling” by Black Eyed peas as a response to “what energizes you?”