Many outsiders believe that the “magic” is in the curriculum or in the math content. While Flagway is certainly engaging, what makes it magical is that students are given the space and responsibility for owning it themselves and creating their own curriculum from an idea. The biggest training that would need to happen for adults trying to understand what the work is revolves around their mindset: the shift comes from thinking that students are doing a program to “students are creating/leading/ revising/reflecting on their own work to lead younger versions of themselves.”?
Positioning youth at the forefront of education within their communities allows them to feel inspired to learn and subsequently pass that commitment, excitement, and positive attitude toward education onto their direct and near peers.?
In order to achieve these outcomes, the following beliefs are vital to YPP:?
- Young people are capable of making changes happen.
- Leadership is learned. People in YPP are capable of leading in their own way through guidance and opportunity.
- Responsibility is taught, and it is important to channel young people’s energies in positive and responsible ways.
Quality is expected in whatever task or expectation is being?accomplished.?
YPP’s pedagogical foundation is built on core concepts that shape its practices. Each concept builds on the next to ensure that curricula and learning environments are designed and implemented to allow all learners to thrive and maximize successful YPP FlagwayTM work.?
Most importantly, all efforts must be learner-centered. For YPP in particular, programming is youth-led and facilitated in a way that recognizes and leverages an asset-based approach to the opportunities that youth bring. The curriculum is based on who they are or what they say or how they say it and does not discount their experiences. From this vantage point, learning is designed to be experiential (highly interactive) and relational.?
- Learner-centered – Learners and their experiences are central to learning, and they are also significant drivers of their learning.
- Youth-led – Young people are central to decision-making.
- Asset-based – Learning is considered from a place of what learners and communities bring. Asset-based learning is opposite to deficit approaches that focus on “lacks,” “gaps,” and “grit.” Asset-based learning actively resists blaming students and communities for “failures” and instead recognizes how systems have set up students to fail (or succeed).
- Experiential & Interactive – Learning is actively connected to meaningful experiences that require movement with a purpose; learners are engaged, not passive in their learning, and share experiences to facilitate understanding. YPP leverages gamification, grounding experiences, metaphors, and models to anchor shared experiences.
- Relational/Relationship-focused – Relationships matter for learning. Fostering a healthy community among peers matters for learning. Teaching and learning should allow for a healthy relationship among students and between students and what they are learning. The YPP near-peer model is a key factor in building learning relationships.?
- Equitable – Meeting eet people where they are. Learning must foster opportunities that allow for the full participation of learners in an environment that is culturally responsive and directly addresses the role of power among individuals and the systems that affect life outcomes.
- Accessible – Meeting people where they are and provide multiple pathways to participation, engagement, learning opportunities, and assessment.
- Emancipatory – Quality learning environments cultivate learners’ humanity, affirm their identities in a productive way, and expand their consciousness. Efforts lead to meeting high standards through developing culture (earning students’ trust and energy) to create an environment where learners rise up to the challenge of doing their best.
On part 2, we will expand further following the same "magic" question. Stay tuned.
