Teaching Between the Lines: How Youth Development Organizations Reveal the Hidden Curriculum

by Andrew Maguire

Buried beneath the formal classes and assignments in college lies a hidden curriculum, a series of unstated but powerful norms, expectations and language of how to operate at universities. Students that don’t learn about these academic and social expectations before college face unanticipated barriers. In Teaching Between the Lines, Andrew Maguire shows how youth development organizations (YDOs) prepare students for these unexpected obstacles and support them in dismantling the hidden curriculum’s unfair influence.

Teaching Between the Lines tells the stories of YDOs across the country and the predominantly low-income students and students of color they support. Readers travel from the weekend classrooms of enrichment programs in Chicago and New York, where students see college academic norms modeled, to family dinners and college admissions workshops in San Diego and Boston. By sharing the perspectives of YDOs and their students, Maguire hopes to shine a light on these programs’ transformative impacts on young people and the challenging choices YDOs face as they support students through a broken education system.

224 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2021

About the author

Andrew Maguire wrote Teaching Between The Lines to learn more about educational opportunity in the United States. Maguire received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, where he was recognized as a Lisa Ellen Goldberg Fellow.

As a youth development leader and non-profit strategist, Andrew has worked with youth worldwide, from his role helping launch Fulbright University Vietnam to his time spent working with organizations such as UNICEF USA and World Learning.

Andrew’s hope is to continue necessary dialogue around bringing equity and inclusion to America’s broken educational system. When not working or writing, Andrew loves to travel and is in constant pursuit of the world’s best bagel.

Reviews

[Duyên Lê · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teaching Between The Lines is no doubt my favorite book of 2021. While flipping through the pages, I saw myself in a similar situation to those students who live across the world, facing an unfair education system and to those Youth Development Organization staff, trying to support these students. While offering bandaids to help students navigate through their education journeys, we must also think about how to fix and transform the broken system which sadly exists in most parts of the world.

[Stephanie O'Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teaching Between the Lines should be required reading for anyone working or aspiring to work in the education system, as well as anyone who wants to better understand how our education system is broken for countless low-income students and students of color. Maguire offers a roadmap to help us do a better job addressing the obstacles and difficulties faced by young people who are adversely impacted by the "hidden curriculum" that exists in our education system. Maguire provides detailed information about how youth development organizations try to prepare mostly low-income students and students of color for better educational opportunities and experiences. The book also features students themselves sharing their experiences and invaluable insights. I highly recommend this masterful book.
Stephanie O'Neal, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Los Angeles Valley College

[Khoi Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This time I got the book FROM THE AUTHOR in a lucky draw game. Maybe because I heard their presentation before reading the book, I felt closer to the book than I would have. The message is powerful -- their is always a gap of informal knowledge that reinforces inequality in schools and colleges.