Scaling Programs for Teens

Hey folks!

So I'm working on a presentation to my district about scaling up programs to also work for Teens and I'm curious what experiences you all have had in doing this! Scaling, in this case, is taking a program that is designed for either younger or older audiences and adjusting it so that it is both appropriate and engaging for our teens.

My best experience was my 'Science of Fear' program which I had designed for 6-12 year old to discuss what fear is, methods of overcoming it, how Hollywood uses it, etc. I'd run the program at a local comic convention, and they forgot to tag it as a children's program so I ended up with a room of adults and just decided to wing it. It worked well, using the simple concepts to launch into much higher order discussions. This year, I decided to deliberately try it with the teens and had good success - they were engaged, told ghost stories, and actually got some good resources out of it.

So what have you all done? Any experiences trying to adjust a program to target teens instead of the original audience? What worked for you? What didn't? I'm dying to know!

-Alex