Donations may be sent to us:

The Game Loft
78A Main St.
Belfast, Maine 04915

Please feel free to call us at 207-338-6447 or email us at gameloft@midcoast.com

Click here to learn how to raise funds for The Game Loft!

Positive Youth Development

The programs of The Game Loft are all run on the framework of Positive Youth Development.  Gisela Konopka (1973) and Karen Pittman (1991) identified critical elements essential to the healthy development of young people. The Eight Keys to Positive Youth Development are:

1) Youth feel physically and emotionally safe.

2) Youth experience belonging and ownership.

3) Youth develop self-worth.

4) Youth discover self.

5) Youth develop positive relationships with peers and adults.

6) Youth discuss conflicting values and form their own.

7) Youth feel the pride and accountability that comes with mastery.

8) Youth expand their capacity to enjoy life and know that success is possible.

Fostering Motivation with Gaming:
 

These are the factors most fundamental in the fostering of motivation in adolescents.

1) Focus on promoting intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) motivation.
The desire to come back and play a game each week is an intrinsic motivation.

2) Maintain children's sense of self-determination when describing rules and giving instructions.
The Loft uses a system of "tone" setting and self-regulation.

3) Minimize comparison and competition between youth; instead, focus children's attention on their own improvement.
Role-playing is focused on self-growth and we use that form of language in everyday discussion as well.

4) Expose children to successful models with backgrounds and characteristics similar to their own.
This is done through mentoring, both with adults to youth and youth to youth.

5) Take social goals into account.
Show in games, the Game Loft, and community that social goals are very important.

6) Downplay the seriousness of failure.
This must be done with the youth in their lives as well as games.

7) Help them learn that some successes come only with considerable effort and perseverance.
This can be shown wonderfully through gaming.
 

Excerpted from Child Development by McDevitt & Ormrod

[ Home ]

Send mail to gameloft@midcoast.com with questions or comments about this website
Last modified: April 24, 2008