College access

Educational Opportunity Centers

Exposes participants to STEM and creative-industry careers, produces recruitment-ready video content, increases participation and retention, and gives adults returning to school a memorable college and career-readiness experience.

We support music-industry and STEM career exploration, outreach and recruiting, participant retention, and college and career readiness with the SEL books, keynotes, and the recording and music video program.

FAQs

Straight answers.

The advanced edition is written for an adult reading and interest level. Most published social-emotional material assumes a school-age audience, which reads poorly to a 35-year-old returning to education — that mismatch is the most common complaint we hear from EOC staff evaluating options.
Adults who return to education leave at higher rates than traditional-age students, largely because of competing demands rather than academic difficulty. Advisors asking how to improve retention in students in this population are working against logistics as much as motivation.

The Psychological Effects of Music Supplemental Instructional Books address academic self-concept and persistence. They do not address childcare or work schedules.
Managing the emotional side of re-entry: academic self-concept after time away, competing demands, and the specific discouragement that comes from having left education once already.
Yes. EOC contact is often brief and non-continuous, so programs typically use selected sections in a single session rather than working through a full book. Participants keep their copy.
EOC serves adults in communities that mainstream educational material rarely reflects, and adults notice that faster than children do. Programs looking for culturally relevant social emotional learning, black psychology books, or african american psychology books as a framing are responding to a genuine shortage of adult material that speaks to their participants. Ask for a sample and let a participant read it. That is the honest test. Many of our participants left school without a diploma.
It changes the framing more than the material. Adults returning to education after leaving are working against the same self-concept the original disengagement produced. Programs searching for dropout prevention programs are usually thinking about students still enrolled — EOC is working the other end of it, after the fact. The advanced edition addresses academic self-concept and persistence for adult readers, which is where that work sits.
Yes. Keynote and workshop sessions are available for participant events, staff development, or community outreach.
Yes, and adults engage with it readily because the equipment and the process are real rather than simulated. For participants weighing a career change, audio and media production is a field with defined credentials and entry points — useful information at an EOC intake conversation. Workshops run on site or virtually and can be scheduled around participants' work hours.
Yes. For adults weighing a return to education, career paths with defined entry points and short credentialing timelines matter more than degree prestige. Audio engineering, live sound, and media production fit that profile, and the recording programming gives participants direct exposure rather than a description. It also functions as career prep in the practical sense — participants encounter a real workflow with deadlines and revision.
Yes, on the underlying skills rather than as a workshop. The material builds the self-assessment and articulation an adult needs to describe a work history that may include gaps, career changes, or unpaid work. Participants who can name what they are capable of write better resumes. We would rather describe it that way than claim to be a resume service.
EOC is measured on postsecondary enrollment, and our material addresses the self-concept and persistence side of that. Whether a participant enrolls depends on aid, timing, childcare, and work — far more than on programming. One component, honestly described.
No. We send our own staff to run the programming. We do not train your staff to run it. Recording and production is a skill set, not a procedure. Trying to hand it off in a few hours would be like teaching a doctor to perform surgery in an afternoon — you would get a session that technically happened and a result nobody wants to hear. Participants get hands on the equipment during the session. Your staff are not asked to run it afterward.
No. We are supplemental. We do not replace your SEL curriculum, your trauma-informed practice, or any program you already have in place. If you run a core SEL program, keep it — ours adds a music-based component alongside it. If you have trauma-informed protocols, training, and referral pathways, those stay in force exactly as they are. Nothing in our material substitutes for them, and our facilitators are not a substitute for your clinical, counseling, or behavioral staff. Your intake, advising, and referral process is unaffected. This is material you can add to it.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Workshop works for community outreach, information nights, and partner events. For an adult audience considering a return to education, an experience-based session lands differently than a presentation about programs.
45 minutes to 2 hours. Most schools book a class period or 90 minutes. The 90-minute format is the one we recommend when you have the room. 45 minutes works for a single class period or a tight bell schedule, and 2 hours suits a half-day event, a grade-level rally, or a Black History Month or Red Ribbon Week program. Tell us your bell schedule and we will fit the session to it rather than asking you to build around us.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Workshop is built for exactly this — a family engagement event where parents and children participate together rather than sitting through a presentation. That is the difference that matters for attendance. Families come to an event where something happens; they skip an information night. The session is music-driven and participatory, so a parent who speaks little English and a fourth grader are in it on the same terms. For EOC, family engagement and community outreach are close to the same activity — the event draws adults who had not considered returning to education.
Quote, W-9, invoice, SAM.gov registration, purchase orders and card accepted. Confirm your budget period end date on your Grant Award Notification, since TRIO periods often run September to August.

How this program runs

Same SIWM work. Built for Educational Opportunity Centers.

Start with the social emotional learning books. Add a keynote. Bring a recording program when you want participants writing and performing — we produce the song and video.

Aligned with Educational Opportunity Centers’ goals for postsecondary access, educational reentry, financial-aid awareness, and career planning. Strengthens motivation, confidence, communication, digital skills, and future planning. CASEL 5 SEL competencies; National Core Arts (Music/Media Arts); Common Core ELA writing & public speaking; CTE Arts/A-V & career-readiness pathways; STEM/STEAM.

Send a request and tell us this is a Educational Opportunity Centers site.

Request this program

All programs

The Psychological Effects of Music