College access

Talent Search

Exposes students to STEM and creative-industry careers. Students create a song or music video that most directors like to use as a recruiting tool, and the program also serves as a yearly team-building enrichment that increases engagement, attendance, enrollment and retention.

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.

Yes. Middle grades is where chronic absenteeism becomes a pattern rather than an incident, and advisors are often the only adult tracking it across schools.

Strategies to reduce absenteeism in school work better when something at school is worth attending. Student engagement strategies middle school students respond to are the ones with novelty and peer connection. Most directors use our music recording program to create a music video they can use to increase enrollment and retention.
Yes, and it is one of the better recruitment tools available to a Talent Search program. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Workshop reaches a whole grade level at once, including students who would never sign up for a college information session. Middle school assembly programs and high school assembly formats are both available.
Talent Search serves low-income and first-generation students, and whether a student sees themselves as belonging in college is part of what determines persistence. Programs looking for social emotional learning are addressing that directly. Most directors use our music recording program to create a music video they can use to increase enrollment and retention.
Yes, because Talent Search operates in the window where prevention is most effective. Middle grades indicators — failure in English or math, or a GPA below 2.0 in grades six through eight — predict not graduating, and intervening there beats recovery later. Advisors searching for dropout prevention programs, dropout prevention strategies, or middle school programs for at risk students are looking for the engagement piece of that work. That is what this material is.
Course performance in grades six through eight — failure in English or math, or a grade point average below 2.0 — is a recognized early warning indicator for not graduating. The trajectory is usually visible before ninth grade begins. Programs searching for middle school programs for at risk students are working in exactly that window.
The upper elementary editions cover through 4th grade, and the teen advanced edition covers middle and high school. Advisors looking for social emotional books for middle school or SEL books for upper elementary generally order the teen edition for 6th grade and up.
Yes. The format is built for 30 to 45 minute blocks rather than a full instructional period, which fits school- day pull-out and after-school group sessions.
Because the books are consumable, student work goes home, and programs use that as a conversation starter with families. We also field questions from staff about parenting a teen who has intense emotions — the material is student-facing rather than a parent guide, but the work students bring home often opens that conversation.
Talent Search serves low-income and first-generation students, and in most service areas that means a substantial share of students from communities that mainstream material does not reflect. Programs looking for culturally relevant social emotional learning, culturally relevant books for elementary, or social emotional learning for black students are asking a fair question. Ask for a sample and put it in front of your students. A middle schooler will tell you in thirty seconds whether material was written with them in mind.
Your TRIO award, following Uniform Guidance cost principles and your approved project narrative. Confirm budget period end dates on your Grant Award Notification — TRIO periods frequently run September through August rather than matching the federal fiscal year.
Yes. Recording and video production programming works well with middle schoolers because the output is immediate and shareable, and career awareness at this age is mostly about learning that certain jobs exist at all. Advisors running programming for middle school programs for at risk students find studio work draws participation from students who avoid academic-framed sessions.
Yes, and middle grades is where it matters most, because career awareness at this age is mostly about learning that certain jobs exist. The recording programming introduces audio engineering, production, and media as career paths a student can actually picture. Programs looking at college access programming for middle grades often find career exposure lands better than college talk with a 12-year-old.
Yes, and it works especially well at this age. Melody and rhythm aid recall, so the material carries concepts in song structure rather than as a list to study. A student remembers a chorus months after a worksheet is gone.
Talent Search is measured partly on postsecondary enrollment, and the honest answer is that our material addresses one input among many. Engagement and persistence matter; so do coursework, aid, and family circumstance. We can tell you what the material does. We will not claim it changes your enrollment rate.
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. Advisors stay in the room. We run the equipment.
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 advising and college-readiness sequence stays intact. This is added enrichment.
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. Reaching families of middle grades students is the whole ballgame for Talent Search, and a participatory event reaches parents who will not attend a college information night.
The skills it builds in the middle grades — self-management and persistence — are the same ones college persistence programs work on years later. Building them early is cheaper than remediating them at 19.

Whether a given student enrolls and persists depends on far more than programming, and we will not claim otherwise.

How this program runs

Same SIWM work. Built for Talent Search.

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 Talent Search goals for secondary-school completion, college awareness, career exploration, and postsecondary enrollment. Builds confidence, communication, leadership, academic motivation, and future-readiness skills. 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.

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The Psychological Effects of Music