UPdate from the UP for Learning Team
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Dear UP partners and friends,
On Friday, I had the opportunity to meet virtually with members of our Youth Advisory Council (YAC). The YAC represents both middle and high school youth from across VT. We sat together with the heaviness of the news that the school buildings would be closed for the remainder of the school year. We struggled with the fact that this reality will likely expose and illuminate the inequities present in our schools. We wondered aloud how youth might mobilize to support one another and their communities. And, we considered how this time away from the school building and the conventional structures of "schooling" might potentially allow youth to explore their curiosities, develop real world skills, contribute to solving real world problems, or connect young people with rich networks of adults in their community and beyond.
At UP for Learning, we are guided by the belief that at the
heart of every human is a deep desire to belong and contribute good in the world
. This desire is becoming more visible as the coronavirus pandemic disrupts our daily lives, the economy, our healthcare system, and every level of our education system. Our team has been coming back to these questions:
- What does it mean to be there for one another?
- How can UP facilitate connections for our school teams even when the physical distance is greater?
This blog from
Agency by Design Oakland Blog
resonated deeply with me and reflected the conversations UP has had internally and with our youth-adult partners over the past weeks. In their blog post, they shared their "critical moves" that are guiding their organization right now and I hope that these can be
the critical moves that guide all of our work moving forward
:
- Be human and kind to one another. Navigate our collective capacity.
- Make decisions based on students’ equity needs. Engage in empathy exercises, again and again and again.
- Use this moment to dismantle traditional classroom structures built on racism and compliance. Question our own biases. Double down on our beliefs about liberatory teaching & learning.
- Find & forge paths and resources that cultivate learners’ agency, a sense of internal curiosity and academic mindset.
Last week, I shared UP's commitments to you:
- Communicate: Keeping in touch with all of our UP school teams during the school closure is our priority. We are here to respond to all of our UP partners with compassion, support, kindness, flexibility and creativity!
- Support the facilitation of connections with teams and between teams. Consider UP the facilitator of connections!
- Reimagine what could be different about schools now and when we return?
Please reach out to us if you want to connect, need resources, support, or guidance.
Warmly,
Lindsey
Lindsey Halman
Executive Director
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An Invitation from UP's Partners at Vergennes Union High School: #vtwegotthis
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"Let's get the whole state on board. Next week, March 30th to April 3rd, we hope to get everyone involved. Seeing people in their spirit garb on zoom meetings, and on social media. We hope to see students, as well as parents, participating and posting these pictures of themselves on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Please use the
#vtwegotthis
as well as sharing with everyone you know."
We have a Facebook group called
#vtwegotthis
. It is a public site. We also want to make sure people tag their location as well. We are going to share our map of locations as we get posts!"
Beth and Jasmine
(Vergennes Union HS students)
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From Our Friends at BIG PICTURE LEARNING
"
We all have those weeks in our lives
that will be remembered years later and this is definitely a chapter for the history books. As the news of COVID-19 and school closures made their way east, there was talk that Vermont schools were likely going to follow suit. What we didn’t expect, however, was the news that came late on Sunday night from our governor: schools had two days to make the necessary arrangements to close indefinitely. Suddenly school administrators, parents, and learners alike were facing academic, social-emotional, and logistical challenges."
Read more
from
Julie Torres, Missisquoi Valley Union High School senior
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As we try to make our way through these new experiences,
we would like to offer free Life Coaching with Amie Conger, a certified Life Coach, to anyone in a school currently working with UP.
Coaching focuses on what is happening right now and helps you find ways to move forward that work for you. It is an opportunity to reflect, process your experiences, and then create realistic and manageable action steps toward your desired outcome. If you are interested in a coaching session or just want to learn more, email Amie at
amie@upforlearning.org
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UP has created a Virtual Community Building
resource
for youth-adult teams who are looking for ideas to support their school community. We hope you find these ideas helpful!
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Community Resources for Youth and Adults:
- Panorama created a new Community Needs survey (available in English and Spanish), which is free for people to run on their own - and also is free for any district or school to administer the survey via the Panorama platform.
- Vermont Folklife Center: The Listening in Place Sound Archive will preserve recordings submitted to us by Vermonters, creating a living document of how Vermonters are coping with this global reality. We invite people to send us audio recordings of interviews with the people they are sheltering with, exploring their lives during this time of pandemic. We also encourage people to record the sounds that punctuate their lives in these unusual times—board games and birds, cooking and pets—whatever fills your ears.
- Maine's Teen Science Cafe - Tuesdays @ 3pm, Learn More
- QuaranTeen Virtual Science Cafes are every Wednesday @ 3 pm! Sign up!
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