For thousands of years, rites of passage were an indicator that a child was becoming an adult. Have we lost the rites of passage?
Today, many teens get a phone with no guide, no milestones, and no process of learning and earning more responsibility. Can rites of passage help parents and teachers help children grow up well in the digital age?
In today’s show, Betty Ray, founder of Boss Battle Labs and former director of programming and innovation at Edutopia (the George Lucas Educational Foundation), shares her STARS model for designing a modern rite of passage. She also shares a “Signal Check” process that parents can use to set device boundaries in ways that kids understand.
This is an important Thought Leader Thursday for parents or anyone who works with helping kids draw boundaries for digital devices.
In short: A rite of passage helps a young person step into a new role by facing a real challenge with adults who have their back. Betty Ray’s STARS model (safety, trust, autonomy, responsibility, service) and her red, yellow, green Signal Check give parents and teachers that structure for phones and devices.
Betty studied an ancient practice and found a modern answer for the first phone. Here’s where to listen.
Here’s where the facts in this episode come from, with the time stamp so you can hear each one. Checked November 11, 2026.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Vicki Davis (00:00): Did you hand a kid a phone and just hope they’d figure it out? And why are so many teens putting off first dates and even their driver’s license? Today we’re talking about rites of passage and helping teens grow up well in a digital age. For Thought Leader Thursday, Episode 1029.
Announcer (00:18): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:22): Hey, everyone. We’re talking today with Betty Ray, the founder of Boss Battle Labs. I met Betty when she was the Director of Innovation at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. When she was there, she studied something ancient, rites of passage, and asked a modern question. How do we help kids grow up well in this digital age? So, Betty, thanks for coming on the show.
Betty Ray (00:50): Thank you, Vicki. It’s a real honor to be here.
What is a rite of passage, and how is it different from a ritual?
Vicki Davis (00:53): Let’s talk about the word rites of passage and rituals. Let’s talk about that so that we don’t have any misconceptions about what you’re thinking here.
Betty Ray (01:01): Rites of passage and rituals have been embedded in human societies since the Stone Age. And so they’ve taken quite a circuitous journey through all of the different eons of humanity. And some are really detours and some are in a lot of marketing. Some of them are a little woo-woo. So what I really am talking about is an archetypal human practice that has been embedded in human societies since the Stone Age. And they’ve got some really important psychosocial roles in communities. Ritual, it’s a repeated practice within a community that is designed with intention and focus that enables a group to really come together, to teach, to impart wisdom, to process difficult emotions. So ritual is a huge practice throughout cultures, grand unifier. We don’t have a lot of rituals in our society anymore, although we certainly do have some. Rites of passage is a subset of ritual, and these are one-off events in a person’s life. So they mark a giant life transition. So in our society, we have weddings, we have graduation, we have funerals. And we highlight in our culture, the celebration, the time together, the connectedness. But the ones that I’m really interested in are the rites of passage for adolescents, turning from a childhood into adolescent into adulthood.
What did traditional rites of passage give kids that school doesn’t?
Betty Ray (02:21): I think those are really fascinating and different than what we have in our society because there’s some elements that we don’t really include and that have historically been included. Rites of passage traditionally were a way that humans educated their kids, prepared them for life in the society. Yes, they marked the transition, but they built skills and mindsets throughout a set of activities that were going to be needed in society. So we think of that as school, right? In so doing, there is a shift in identity. A kid goes from a child to an adolescent. There’s a recognition in community that this child has now moved into adulthood. I think this is where it really differs from school is that there’s a tripartite or a three-part structure. Right? And that structure is designed to put kids in a very challenging role where they have to use the skills that they’ve built over time and create something. Things like capstone projects. We see this in things like overnights where kids go out into the woods. So they do something that pushes them past their comfort zone and they come back to the so-called normal world and reflect on what they’ve learned and how they’ve leveled up into adulthood.
Why do kids need scaffolding before they get a smartphone?
Vicki Davis (03:29): So, Betty, could you tell us about your framework with rites of passage as well as you use it with devices?
Betty Ray (03:35): Yeah. So I got into it through devices. But what I realized, because kids really need scaffolding with devices, a lot of us parents, I was guilty of this myself, hand the kid a phone at a certain age. Here you go. Off you go. Have fun. You’re a digital native. You know what to do. And of course, that is like handing the keys of a car to a kid and being like, have at it, go ahead and drive on. They need a little bit more scaffolding than that. And so I reverse engineered what I would have liked to have as the parent of a kid so that I could give them some skills to be able to have a healthy relationship with this thing.
What is the STARS model for raising teens in a digital world?
Betty Ray (04:11): The model is called STARS, and S stands for safety. And that is where a kid feels a sense of safety, that they can trust the adults around them, that they’ll have their back, that their community is strong. The second is trust. Trust is the nature of the relationships, that they feel that they can come to an adult or an older mentor, teacher, or another member of the community so that they can share their experience. My experience parenting an adolescent is that sometimes they don’t want to go talk to mom or dad. They need to have a trusted advisor or somebody else that they can really lean on as they differentiate and become independent. The third one is autonomy. Once there’s safety and trust, autonomy is where kids practice using a device. They practice something that they care about. They practice advocating for something that they believe in.
Why does the “messy middle” of autonomy and responsibility matter for teens?
Betty Ray (05:04): Responsibility is R. That is the phase where they start to show that they can take care of things on their own. Now, autonomy and responsibility is a fluid system, right? There’s going to be autonomy and then they’re going to be like, whoops, I didn’t get responsibility. So this is a little bit of the messy middle that we talk about in a rite of passage where I don’t really know yet. Am I an adult? Am I trustworthy? I don’t know. Back to trust. So this can be a messy process, but it’s really important because here is where kids are learning how to identify who they are and what they care about and what brings them meaning and purpose, who are their people, where do they belong, and how can they find a sense of confidence and voice. So I love this little messy middle of the responsibility and autonomy soup.
How can service to others be part of a modern rite of passage?
Betty Ray (05:54): And then finally, as many of us in education are conscious of, is that the role of service is the S and how to bring that learning into whether it’s their community, or to mentor a younger kid in their school, or a younger relative, so that they’re doing things for not just themselves and for their own well-being, but to give back to their communities. So this model is, I think, an important redesign of this idea of a rite of passage that takes into consideration modern context. Because we can find in any community something of service. In any community, we can find some kind of what’s responsibility, but it will look different in my California town than in Georgia, than in England or Asia. So the idea is to create something that can be scalable and can be replicable.
What is Signal Check, and how do red, yellow, and green zones work for device rules?
Vicki Davis (06:44): What are some of the resources that you share on this? Where can people get those?
Betty Ray (06:48): At bettyray.net, there’s a model that I use with parents mostly, although it does work in classroom settings. It’s called Signal Check, and that is another very beneficial way to start to introduce this idea of rites of passage to young people, and it uses the three colors of red, yellow, green. Red is a Indication that no, this is off limits. This is websites that are not appropriate. This is chatting with people who are not in your friends list. Using it after 8 p.m., whatever it is, is the red zone. No. The green zone is not a problem. Go for it. You don’t need adult oversight, right? So that might be texting with your family or using Zoom to hang out with grandma.
How can parents use a yellow zone to build one skill at a time?
Betty Ray (07:28): The yellow zone is this creative space where parents and kids can work together. And what I love about it is that as a parent, it can be really overwhelming. So this is a place that we can carve out to address very specific skills. So you have to learn to get up on your own. I wake you up every day and I’m really tired of that. So we’re going to put that in the bucket of yellow. And when you can show me that you can get up every day for two weeks without me getting in there, then we’ve moved that to green. And then maybe you can get a little bit more device access. Now you’ve shown me that you can do this positive skill. Now you get the reward of maybe you can use your Procreate app a little bit longer so that you can do some drawing. Those are the kinds of ways of using yellow. It’s because parenting, and I know educating too, can be so overwhelming. That having this very focused area to just build skill keeps some of the noise out. And then kids don’t argue because red is red. Nope, sorry, that’s red. And that’s green. You can do all these things. So it gives a nice, very easy to understand set of boundaries. So that part is just really beneficial.
How can moving from red to green become a rite of passage?
Vicki Davis (08:33): And a rite of passage from moving things from red to green.
Betty Ray (08:38): Exactly.
Vicki Davis (08:39): And so from red to yellow, you don’t have to constantly explain the status of, well, you said I could do that. No, this is in yellow. I really like that. That’s really nice, Betty.
Betty Ray (08:47): Yes, exactly. That’s exactly it. The rite of passage. And it teaches that there are these little mini wins, right?
What should parents do when a teen slips back into yellow?
Betty Ray (08:54): You can get there. And you know what? If you slip up, we’re going to have to put that back into yellow. And that’s okay because we learn. And that’s growth mindset in there. And then you practice again. And then, you know what? I know you can do this. I’ve seen you do it. I know it was hard to slip up. Let’s understand what the circumstances were around that slip up so that we can mitigate those in the future.
Vicki Davis (09:12): That’s really nice. We’ve been talking with Betty Ray. It’s been a while since our Edutopia days, but I’m so glad that we’ve reconnected. And this is just a really interesting conversation. So thanks for coming on the show.
Betty Ray (09:26): Thanks, Vicki. Thank you so much for having me.
Announcer (09:27): Thank you for tuning in to 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
Former Director of Innovation at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, Betty Ray is the founder and director of Boss Battle Labs, a consultancy that works with schools and families to imbue young people with the skills and mindsets for a healthy digital and real-world adolescence. Combining education and psychology research with the universal structures of traditional coming-of-age rites of passage, she created the STARS model as a culturally responsive, trauma-informed approach to designing a modern rite of passage that fosters healthy development in diverse populations of young people. Betty is also a DJ and lives with her teenage daughter and two fluffy cats in a cohousing community in Emeryville, CA.
What rites of passage do the teens in your life still have? Tell us in the comments, and share this with a parent or teacher who needs it.
