Workshop Model

Many students come to YouthBuild because they didn't find a good fit in the traditional classroom at their prior high schools.  Whether they found the spaces too crowded or simply couldn't follow the same pace as everyone else, our students come to YouthBuild looking for a curriculum that meets their needs where they are.  Complicating this is our schedule of incoming students.  Unlike a typical high school, we have four admission periods per year — two in the fall and two in the spring.  As new students are continually entering the program, it can be difficult to track which students need which credits.  Plus, many students aren't able to attend class every day — whether due to work, illness, or family responsibilities, a number of our students have very irregular attendance, and it's impossible to expect every student to follow the same course at the same pace.

Our commitment to help each student individually creates a unique challenge.  How do you teach skills to a diverse group of students when each student is starting from a difference place?  Rather than sit down every student in the same classroom to learn the same lesson each day, we follow a Workshop Model that provides modules to provide each student with a rewarding learning experience in the moment.  For English Language Arts courses, this means that I don't follow the same types of scaffolding seen in a traditional course.  Even in the Digital Literacy Courses, each session is designed so that the sessions can be taken out of order.  If needed, a group of students can join in the middle of the course and work together on the individual modules on the later parts of the course, then return to complete the earlier portions.  For the German Language Course, individual modules will be offered as standalone class dates — rather than carry students through the full in-depth examination of German grammar like a typical course, this course will allow students to learn grammar and vocabulary in discrete units.  This certainly isn't ideal for every student, but the goal of this website is to provide the material for students to work ahead if they choose.

The GROWER Model provides an overview of how YouthBuild workshops engage our students.  The goal is to engage students in multiple ways in order to build their interest in the topics.

• Group Teach: As a community, we learn from each other.  As instructors, we collaborate to find the best ways to reach each individual student, and we're simultaneously listening to find what most engages our classrooms.  For our English courses, several staff members take part in Reading with Our Lit Circles, and future teachers in the ISU Education Program regularly observe and take part in our workshops.

• Reading: Books offer windows into the world beyond our school walls, and the internet forces everyone to read and interpret information of varying quality.  Our Lit Circles provide students time three days a week to meet in small groups and read together — often out loud — to help foster enjoyment of reading.

• Oral Presentation: Open discussions are a key component of the English program here at YBMC.  Most days, I run discussions where students are free to discuss any topic that comes up, and then they write short reflections to help them better see the relationships between their lived experiences and the written word.

• Writing: Many to today's students aren't comfortable with writing, let alone the academic expectations of research papers.  To address this, I encourage students to write about any and everything for the Introductory Freewriting Course (ELA 09.1), and the Newsletter Writing Course allow students to follow their interests as they share their writing online.

• Experiment: We generally associate experiments with science, but the act of writing offers a continual experiment in language.  I center our Core Reading and Writing Courses on having students read and write whatever interests them, and many students write powerful expressions of memoir and poetry. 

• Reflection: It's often hard to find time for introspection in our fast-paced, information-driven world.  For many of our discussions and writing assignments, students consider their present lives and future career pathways, particularly in the Vocation Writing Courses.