Mark Redmond

When I am not writing the occasional column for the Huffington Post, my regular job is executive director at Spectrum Youth and Family Services in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington is the state's largest city, and Spectrum is the largest provider of services to homeless and at-risk teenagers and young...

Much has been written lately about the achievement gap, which is the difference in school performance between one group of students and another, be that based on gender, race or socioeconomic status. The gap can be measured in a variety of ways, including standardized test scores, dropout rates and college-enrollment...

I was recently introduced to a woman who is doing something different and dramatic in the lives of young people. Lauren Calahan is the mother of four children and lives on the "Gold Coast" of Connecticut, in a town called Darien. Calahan was a career teacher who became more and...

The average person can feel overwhelmed by the problems facing our country and planet. It is easy to conclude, "What can I do?" I sometimes suffer from similar feelings of frustration, but it is at those moments that I take encouragement from a passage in the Talmud which...

When the holiday season began a few weeks ago, my wife suggested we start introducing our 9-year-old son to some of the movie classics by watching them with him. I had to confess that some I had never seen before (Miracle on 34th Street), and others I had seen but...

In the early 1990's I was director of a 72-bed residence for teenage males and females just a few miles outside of New York City. The technical term for the program was "residential treatment center" and it consisted of a series of cottages on an 18-acre campus which also contained...

Ask Us Who We Are, the latest documentary by Bess O'Brien of Kingdom County Productions, begins by chronicling the lives of nine Vermont teenagers, all of whom are or were in the foster care system. The film starts with each youth describing what his or her...

"Hoosiers" is about a small-town Indiana high school basketball team, set in 1951. The movie is loosely based on the Milan High School team that won the 1954 Indiana state championship. It stars Gene Hackman as Norman Dale, the new coach in town with a shadowy...

I work with teenagers who are having difficulties, I have done so for almost 30 years, and I have written previously about the propensity of some parents to fail to set limits on their children. I know this is not only my opinion, I have heard it voiced many times...

Watching March Madness last month reminded me of the very first time I followed March Madness, although back then it was simply the NCAA Men's Division Basketball Championship.

I was a senior in high school, and I sat in our living room with my father to watch...

The email flashed across my screen at work.

"Who is available next Sunday, 10am, to go to a church to pick up some items their fifth grade youth group wants to donate to us?"

The message was from a staff member at Spectrum, where I serve as...

I love the movie, "The Blind Side," about Michael Oher, a teenager who becomes homeless and is then welcomed into the Tuohy family. The Tuohys are upper-middle-class, and it is the mother, Leigh Ann, who is the main catalyst in the family's decision to reach out and help...

This occurred a few years ago, but I haven't given up my personal protest against United Air Lines yet. And I have since found out that I am not the only one.

Every January my wife, son and I fly to Denver for a ski vacation with my wife's...

This letter was sent to me two weeks ago at Spectrum Youth and Family Services, where I serve as executive director. It was addressed to me and to the woman who runs our counseling program. It is from a father whose son we were working with several years ago:

I...

I work with teenagers who are in trouble. I have been at this work for 29 years, now in Vermont. These teens are tagged with various labels: at-risk; disconnected; addicted; mentally ill; developmentally disabled; oppositional defiant; and on and on. The labels change over the years. But in the end,...