A Proposed Full-Circle Learning-Based Bridge Program For Summer 2025 Implementation in Upland, California
WHAT
A proposed summer school program for students entering middle school and/or high school
WHY
Learners become leaders when we offer them meaningful rites of passage. Vulnerable youth especially benefit from programs in which a positive peer culture reinforces a sense of belonging and values their contributions.
HOW
Planners learn to apply a project-based curriculum that instills collaborative leadership skills, conflict resolution capacities, and enhances altruistic identities earned through research-based service-learning. Projects reinforce literacy, creativity, and critical thinking skills and expand the sense of purpose that comes when learners know their efforts truly matter in the community.
WHEN
The pilot program we propose would include a three-day professional development workshop, to occur within the first 10 days of June, in preparation for a daily four-hour, five-week student program beginning in mid-June, 2025.
OUR BACKGROUND
Full-Circle Learning exists to help young people embrace their role as humanitarians and change agents. Learners in California and around the world have benefited from in-school, after-school and summer enrichment programs based on the educational model over the past three decades. What began as a pilot project with 30 students during a time of civil unrest in Los Angeles has blossomed into community-driven impact programs in schools across 40 nations, with projects serving more than two million people in 2024 alone. The model is adapted for relevance at the site level. Historically, those in the most underserved regions or living situations have benefited the most from the fusing of integrative learning experiences, character development, resilience skills and service. We propose a scalable pilot program for the summer of 2025 with potential applications added in the future across the Upland School District, cinching the bond between student growth and community transformation.
Professional Development
The training program Incorporates pedagogical exploration and time-tested, hands-on strategies, through professional development workshops designed to build capacity from within. Teachers and facilitators learn to synchronize community needs and human resources as a part of their planning process. The continuing collaboration of program leaders, teachers, and volunteers can build positive relationships in the community.
Invitation List
District leaders, classroom teachers, program administrators, and volunteers are invited to collectively embrace program goals in the short term by attending the initial workshop, with the goal of cultivating new trainers in the long run if the pilot program expands. The plan offers internship possibilities for university students, with teaching strategies, research and planning experiences, and avenues for inspiriting student engagement and community involvement. Teachers and facilitators learn to synchronize community needs and human resources as a part of their planning process. Participants will have email or Zoom access to the trainer at intervals during the summer, as needed.
Program Costs
Costs can be estimated after we meet with the Upland School District leaders. Identifying onsite resources can help us to provide an expense budget for the program, for example, knowing the number of participants in the professional development, the availability of a facility with power point and music amplification possibilities, and whether the ultimate student program sites will include access to a copy machine and basic supplies.
Highlights
Countless examples among diverse California and global campuses set a precedent for fostering future leaders who apply their emerging skills as humanitarians and change agents, expanding their own capacities and well-being in the process.
Above top: Art became service as learners made birdhouses to welcome songbirds back into a community. Learning communities for three decades have reached out to global wisdom exchange partner schools to share their approaches to parallel community challenges.
Students used clinometers to conduct carbon count studies, to inform their community of how forestry decisions affect climate change.
Middle schoolers sorted types of trash on a beach and wrote to politicians to advocate for coral reef protection.
Above left: Learners applied the arts to honor elders for sharing wisdom in the community.
Above right: On MLK Day, students gave public speeches and performances at a site where Gandhi’s ashes are buried, to inform the public about the shared peacemaking strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi.
Above left: Students projects linked tree planting and food security, exchanging information with Zambian peers planting fruit trees in every yard.
Above right: Hypothetical conflict resolution challenges help learners understand the similarities of solutions to local, community-based, and global disputes. Some students have turned former gang rivalries into best-friendships over time by then applying this process to their personal conflicts.
Summary of Benefits Full-Circle Learning’s Project-Based Program:
- Builds leadership capacities
- Heightens the motivation to learn
- Instills positive habits and socio-emotional skills
- Reinforces literacy and critical thinking skills
- Teaches processes for collaboration and conflict resolution
- Strengthens innate altruistic identities
- Exposes student to practical application for learning
- Applies the arts to generate community awareness
- Inspires students to embrace a greater sense of purpose
- Connects local and global schools in wisdom exchanges
- Serves learners from preschool through high school in multigrade programs, while presenting age-appropriate learning goals and life skills
- Offers professional development for working administrators and teachers, as well as for university interns, faculty, and volunteers, who implement the program and cultivate the skills of onsite program leaders.
For more information, visit www.fullcirclelearning.org. For the most recent annual report, see https://fullcirclelearning.org/friends/annual-reports. Or contact info@fullcirclelearning.org.
