In The Quest for Mastery, Sam M. Intrator and Don Siegel investigate an emerging trend: the growth of out-of-school programs dedicated to helping underserved youth develop the personal qualities and capacities that will help them succeed in school, college, and beyond.

Intensive programs from rowing to youth radio, from lacrosse to studio art, aim to create "communities of practice" that capture young people's interest and support them as they strive to excel. Through richly detailed accounts, the authors describe the unconventional ways these programs have evolved and articulate the formidable challenges they face in operationalizing their aspirations.

By documenting the powerful effect out-of-school programs like these can have in transforming lives, the authors show how young people can become engaged in meaningful and productive learning experiences and highlight the poignant contrast between what these students experience inside and outside of school.
About the Author: Sam M. Intrator is a professor of education and child study and a member of the Urban Studies Program at Smith College. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University and master's degree from the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College. Prior to working at Smith, he taught and served as an administrator for twelve years in public schools in Brooklyn, Vermont, and California. At Smith, Intrator teaches courses on urban education, youth development, and the teaching of humanities in K-12 schools. He founded the Smith College Urban Education Initiative--a program that places college students in urban classrooms in an effort to deepen their understanding of the challenges and possibilities of working with youth in urban contexts. Intrator has written or edited five prior books, including Tuned In and Fired Up: How Teaching Can Inspire Real Learning in the Classroom (Yale University Press, 2003), which was a finalist for the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education. He has received a number of awards, including a Presidential Distinguished Teacher Award by the White Commission on Presidential Scholars, a W. K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellowship, and an Ella Baker Fellowship. He is currently serving as principal of the Smith College Campus Laboratory School.

Don Siegel is in his thirty-eighth year as a professor of exercise and sport studies at Smith College, where he helped develop the graduate program that specializes in training college coaches. This nationally acclaimed program has been accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Coaching Education. He teaches graduate courses in motor learning, sport psychology, and sport philosophy. He also teaches undergraduate courses in sport sociology and in sport as an educational medium for youth development. He has coached on the collegiate and youth levels and was an urban youth sports program consultant for the Boston-based Barr Foundation. Siegel has been instrumental in developing several youth sports initiatives in Boston and Northampton. He has been the editor of Research Works, a section of the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Coaching Education, and has been a reviewer for many refereed journals, including the Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. He has published widely in the areas of sport psychology, motor learning, exercise physiology, sport sociology, and computing and in professional aspects of sport and physical education.