PHlight Club: The Why from a Student’s Perspective

By: Caitlin Aspery

As a 16-year-old high school student, I believe PHlight Club is an event that everyone should experience at least once in their life. The first time I attended PHlight Club was the spring of 2018 at Klawock School. It was a three-day, two-night "lock-in" event, and I had no idea what I was walking into when I applied to attend.

“Flying” activity at Klawock PHlight Club

Entering the gym was overwhelming; there were so many people talking, hugging, laughing, and playing games. It was a lot to take in. I felt really out of place in the beginning, but within five minutes, someone befriended me. The following hours were a blur of people, trust falls, and lots of activities.

Speaking of trust falls, I was soon standing with my back to a group of strangers, about to fall into their arms with the hope that they would catch me. As I stood there questioning every choice I'd ever made leading up to that moment, a calming voice spoke to me. He was a student I had never spoken to before, assuring me that I wouldn't hit the ground and that I was safe. At that moment, a lot of my distrust in people melted away, and I allowed myself to fall backward. As I fell back, I felt a fear-induced pit in my stomach, but it disappeared the second I landed in the arms of the people who were there to catch me.

Before the end of the first night, the founder of PHlight Club, Derek Peterson, told a story. He described a girl with adults in her life who saw and treated her as though she was "broken." The girl spoke up and said that she wasn't broken. She explained that she needed support from caring adults in her life, called Anchors, who would encourage and guide her to reach her potential. The story made me cry, because I needed the same thing. For the first time in forever, I felt like I wasn't crazy for feelings I had been experiencing. It was a powerful night for me. It was one of the most influential nights of my entire life.

The rest of that weekend was amazing. I mean, it wasn't perfect by any means - I was exhausted, and I had lost my voice - but I was happy. Happier than I'd been in a very long time. Since that first PHlight Club in 2018, I've attended every PHlight Club since, a total of five. PHlight Club is a life-changing experience filled with inclusiveness, support, and joy. The youth who attend do not leave the same; they leave transformed.

It doesn't matter who you are or from where you come. At PHlight Club, everybody is loved and valued. As a PHlight Club veteran, I can honestly say that it is so much more than a bunch of teenagers doing activities in a gym. When you attend PHlight Club, you become a part of something bigger than yourself. You become a member of a family who will catch you during your hardest fall. You form lasting connections and friendships. You help unite students and adults to create happy and thriving environments and relationships. You empower other youth and your community. PHlight Club helped transform me from an insecure teenager into the confident, authentic leader I am today.

Caitlin is a junior at Hollis School in Hollis, Alaska

From California to Amman and Back – How Brightways Global Academy Helped Me Succeed

By Maryam Khan

Maryam Khan

It was August 2015 – the summer before my sophomore year of high school. I stood in the midst of family and friends who had gathered to give their tearful goodbyes. I was leaving behind the life I had always known and beginning a new one across the world in Amman, Jordan. My stomach churned with nervous excitement at the thought of what lay ahead – a new culture, new language, new friends, new school… new everything.

Until tenth grade, I was like any other teenage American girl. I attended high school, spent time after school in extracurricular activities, and spent the weekends with my family and friends. When I was 14 years old, my parents decided that our family needed to experience life outside of our “comfort zone.” My brother and I had already been learning to speak Arabic and my parents knew a few people who had moved to Amman, Jordan's capital city, and enjoyed it. So, it was decided: we would move to Jordan for a year.

Having never lived even outside of California, much less the United States, I was lost and afraid at first in Amman. Gradually though, the warmth of the community and the beauty of their culture helped me overcome my homesickness and appreciate the opportunity set before me. I enrolled in a small private school in my neighborhood and made friends. I learned how to play the frame drum, or the daff, how to dance the dabka, and sing traditional songs called anasheed.

My greatest fortune, however, was my time spent with the Syrian refugees. Those who had once been only numbers and statistics on the television became my neighbors, classmates, and friends. I heard their stories firsthand and witnessed their grief and heartbreak. As a result, I spent much of my time dedicated to their cause – raising money through bake sales, collecting and distributing donations of household items and clothing, and – when I had achieved enough fluency in Arabic – translating for English-speaking doctors who had come overseas to treat them.

After a few months in Amman, my family had adjusted to life there and we all agreed to stay longer than a year. At that point, we decided to investigate better educational opportunities. The academics at the private school in which I was enrolled were not at American standards, especially in English proficiency. A friend of mine, who was also an American living in Amman, told us about Brightways Global Academy. It was the only online private school for Americans living overseas I could find that would provide me with an American high school transcript. It seemed the perfect fit for me, so I enrolled.

From day one, my Global Academy support teacher, Terri Beede, was a constant source of advice and support. Ms. Terri looked into our private school’s curriculum and determined whether each subject was up to par or not. If a subject level was not high enough, she provided us with online resources or other alternatives to keep my education on the level of my American peers. She also applied my work with refugees and other activities into academic categories that fulfilled some of my educational requirements. When I reached my senior year, Terri helped me look into colleges and advised me on what they would likely expect of me.

Because of Brightways Global Academy, I was able to complete high school overseas assured that I would not experience any drawbacks as a result. I graduated in June 2018 and, after taking a gap year, moved back to America for college.

Today, I am studying at Scripps College in Claremont, California. I have not yet declared my major, but I plan to pursue an education in writing and/or literature. In the future, I hope to use my experiences and education together to give voices to those with whom I formed such close bonds thousands of miles away. My dream is to shed light on the situation of those Syrian refugees and present them as real people who are suffering, instead of the faceless sound bites so often depicted in media today.

I would like to thank Terri Beede and Brightways Global Academy for the great role they played in bringing me to this point – for supporting and advising me, and for helping shape me into the person I am today!

To learn more about Brightways Global Academy visit https://www.brightwayslearning.org/brightways-global-academy.

The Life-changing Power of PHlight Club

By Leigh White

Leigh at PHlight Club

Cultivating connections with youth is at the heart of my practice as a child and family therapist. I provide counseling services at Community Connections on Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, primarily for children in foster care.

I attended my first PHlight Club in April 2019, and it’s challenging to put into words how powerful it was. It was truly a life-changing experience.

When I began working on Prince of Wales two years ago, I met Amy McDonald, a school counselor at Southeast Island School District and a leader and trainer for Brightways Learning. Amy invited me to attend PHlight Club, a youth-centered event being hosted in the island community of Klawock. She told me that PHlight Club helps kids build resilience and social-emotional skills by learning to develop connections with caring adults they call Anchors. I had heard positive things about PHlight Club from a colleague, so I decided to attend with two of my clients, a 13-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl.

My clients are soft-spoken, shy, and experience considerable anxiety. Spending three days and two nights with 100 teens and 25 adults took courage. To see them blossom over the course of PHlight Club was amazing. Not only was it remarkable to watch their personal growth, but also my relationship with them now is so much closer since experiencing PHlight Club together. 

I’ve been working with my male client for about a year. He has been through 10 different foster homes and many different clinicians. His trust in adults was non-existent. I have a small tent in my office, and when we first began working together, he would sit in the tent and tell me how much he hated me. He refused to even look at me. PHlight Club transformed our relationship in merely three days.

At first, he didn’t participate in the group activities. The PHlight Club leaders made it clear that he was welcome to join in, but they respected his decision if he felt uncomfortable. They didn’t push or force him. If they had, it would have been a very negative experience. Instead, he sat back and observed, interacted informally, and built connections on his terms. He struggles with friendships and relationships, so to see him making those connections as the time and activities progressed was astounding.

On the second day of PHlight Club, the students began completing the Student Support Card surveys on mobile devices. My client allowed me to sit next to him and help him with his surveys. While answering survey questions about Anchors in his life, he said he wondered what it would be like to have a mom like me and to be part of a family like mine. To connect with him on that level was phenomenal. I had made a promise to be there for him at PHlight Club, and I was with him the entire time. I didn’t give up on him, and it built a trust that lasts to this day. We continue to have a very close relationship, and I know that he will be a part of my life forever. More importantly, I witnessed him learning and using skills that makes me confident he will find success in his life.

To watch my female client flourish throughout PHlight Club was also incredible. During one of the activities, she was asked to draw wings on a large, cloth sheet, and then color them in. Her artwork was so beautiful that she received a standing ovation. She was so overcome with joy and happiness that she had to leave the room. No one had ever expressed that kind of gratitude and appreciation for her. It was wonderful. Her confidence continues to grow, as does our relationship. PHlight Club built trust between us that otherwise may not have formed.

Now, whenever I see these clients, they ask me when they can go to another PHlight Club and if I will go with them. I’m looking forward to attending as many PHlight Clubs as possible!

PHlight Club helped me realize that I, too, need a web of support. The relationships I built with other adults at PHlight Club have made me feel more comfortable as a relatively new community member and helped me realize that I have resources. I know that I can reach out to those other adults if there’s something that I need.

As a clinician, I want to recommend PHlight Club to all my clients. As a community member, I want to recommend it to all teens, so they can share the experience and learn vital resilience and connection-building skills. I hope more community adults will attend the next PHlight Club, and I’m brainstorming ways to include them. If we have more Anchors, then more kids will feel confident and comfortable reaching out when they need help and support. Ultimately, it will enable our youth, and our community, to thrive.

Leigh White had just finished her master’s degree in Florida when she accepted the job at Community Connections as a child and family therapist. She lived in Fairbanks as a kid, and knew she wanted to return to Alaska. In addition to traditional counseling, she practices non-directive, child-centered play therapy where the child has total control and is able express themselves in their natural element of play instead of using words. To view a video of the Klawock PHlight Club, visit https://youtu.be/_VkmU2RnJBc.

 

Connecting Colors and Community

STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN A PHLIGHT CLUB RETREAT AT SEELEY LAKE ELEMENTARY ON MAY 22 BY LIFTING THEIR CLASSMATE WYATT STOUT IN AN ACTIVITY MEANT TO DEMONSTRATE THAT STUDENTS CAN ONLY "FLY" WHEN THEY ARE SUPPORTED BY OTHERS. - PHOTO BY ZOIE KOOSTRA, PATHFINDER

SEELEY LAKE - Strings, anchors, balloons, the colors of the rainbow: To hear students and teachers talk about the Kaleidoscope Connect program's lessons sounds like listening to attendees of a New Age carnival. But to the seventh and eighth graders at Seeley Lake Elementary, each color and code word represents a concrete aspect of what each student needs in order to be resilient and healthy.

Kaleidoscope Connect is a program Seeley Lake Elementary uses to help middle school-aged students build resiliency and healthy relationships. It is intended to strengthen the services the school can provide by providing students with the tools to develop good relationships with stable, healthy adults.

The program has been in place in Seeley Lake for two years, but it is still in its beginning stages. It's been shown to make a difference in students' mental health too, but once they move on from middle school, students no longer receive education in the program.

Jacquie Brown, an assistant professor of psychology and a researcher on a project studying the effects of Kaleidoscope Connect in Seeley Lake and other small towns said rural youth can have higher rates of depression and substance use than youth in urban communities. This can be due to distance from health care resources, the negative stigma surrounding mental illness, poverty and isolation.

"Although there isn't necessarily a formula, years of research in the area of resilience has emphasized the importance of youth-adult relationships," Brown said. "The program that we are implementing in Seeley Lake focuses specifically on building youth-adult relationships both within and outside of the school setting."

Angela Harris, Seeley Lake Elementary's director of student support, selected the program because of its proven success in other rural communities, especially in Alaska. She saw a lot of similarities in the disadvantages students face in the two states, including isolation from mental health services. However, Harris said small towns in both states have strong relationships between people, which Kaleidoscope Connect builds on.

"This is how we can enhance [those relationships] so the youth can see that we do have people right here for them," Harris said.

The program doesn't require any special preparation or skills. Adults participate in training and receive curriculum tools from Brightways Learning, the publisher and facilitators for the Kaleidoscope Connect program.

The Kaleidoscope Connect curriculum pairs key ingredients for resiliency with a color and a symbol. For example, red symbolizes the need for healthy relationships with five trusted adults. These adults are called "anchors."

The other ingredients include tangible and intangible needs that anchors can provide for students to lead a healthy life. The tangible needs include a safe home, food to eat and appropriate clothing. Intangible needs can be things like a sense of humor, positive attitude and faith. These are symbolized by "strings," which connect with the anchors to form a "web" of support for a student's sense of self and resiliency, symbolized by a balloon. The balloon is a symbol for a student's resiliency, what makes each student strong.

These positive symbols can be affected by other things, however. Scissors represent anything in a student's life that can make "cuts" to the strings that tie them to their anchors.

Phlight Club retreats, based on the Kaleidoscope Connect curriculum, reinforce the students' understanding of these concepts through games and team building activities that connect to different pieces of the metaphor.

The eighth grade class at Seeley Lake Elementary is the first class to have gone through the full Kaleidoscope Connect curriculum. This means they have participated in multiple Phlight Club retreats as well as learning more deeply about the skills it teaches in health class on a bi-weekly basis.

Chase Haines, 14, says that his experience in the program has helped him develop more trusting relationships with adults and has also made Haines and his friends re-evaluate some of their relationships with other students.

"You might think 'I can have friends who do certain things and I can be friends with them without doing those things' but the truth is, you kind of can't," Haines said. "Look at what friend group you're in and if it's a bad situation, it's okay to start again."

According to Brown, previous studies have found that when young people have effective adult support, they exhibit decreases in problem behaviors and increases in social and school engagement.

Other students agree that support from adults has helped them make better choices in social environments. Tara Cahoon, another eighth grader, said that although it can be difficult to leave a friendship that isn't healthy, the trusted adult anchors in her life have helped her make those choices.

"It's a lot harder than it sounds,'" Cahoon said. "It's a lot more helpful [to have adults around] just to talk it out and because they can understand both sides. They'll help you make the right decision."

Although Seeley Lake resident Rachel Homen homeschools her children, she volunteered to be an adult participant in the program. She learned about the program after talking to Harris, the school counselor, about a student who was potentially in an abusive situation.

"[Harris] said they were in the process of learning how trauma is affecting the kids in school," Homen said. "That's when she invited me to the first Phlight Club. They're trying to bring this program into the school so they can help kids [who faced trauma]."

Homen chose to bring her daughter to the Phlight Club retreats. She feels the skills taught in Phlight Club are valuable to all youth.

Many youth, like Homen's children, who participate in the program already have a strong support system at home. However, it also gives kids who may not have good role models a chance to learn more about healthy relationships.

"For these kids that come from trauma, and a lot of them do, they have never had any sort of say in anything," Homen said. "When you grow up in abuse, you think that's normal. You think that it's normal to be treated like crap. You don't know there's another way until someone teaches you."

Originally, the program was an optional summer retreat, first offered in the summer of 2016. Now, Kaleidoscope Connect's main tenets, symbolized for students' easy retention by the colors of the rainbow, are a regular part of the school's health curriculum. Phlight Club retreats now occur during the school day and are held twice a year.

"We wanted to implement it as part of the curriculum so it wasn't just a camp they could participate in, but to try and expose youth from all different walks of life to these concepts," Harris said.

Seventh and eighth graders at Seeley Lake Elementary go to health classes every other week, where the Kaleidoscope Lessons curriculum covers topics ranging from healthy relationships to self-care and healthy eating. Although students at Seeley-Swan High School also attend health classes, the curriculum is not related to the Kaleidoscope Connections program.

Harris does not see this as an ending to the program's ability to benefit students.

"I think the concepts [of the high school curriculum] are the same," she said. "We need to do work in the future on what the connection look like. We just have to make extra efforts to connect the dots between the schools' programs."

So far, the program is showing results. From the fall of 2016 to the fall of 2017, students in the program increased the number of adults they considered to be "caring and connected" from 4.4 to 5.5. The students also reported that the number of tangible and intangible benefits of their relationships with those adults increased in the same period. This means that the overall resiliency of the students increased as well.

According to Harris, the annual surveys the school conducts of the students showed an increase in the students' average percentage of connectedness with adults from 49.7 to 65.3 percent. The percentage of students who reported a school staff member as one of their anchors increased from 18.1 to 21.3 percent.

Eighth-grader Sara Stevenson identified her mom, a woman from her church and Harris as some of her adult anchors. She said she has noticed the adults already present in her life more and was able to get to know them better after being encouraged to do so by the program.

"Before, it was mostly my friends who I relied on," Stevenson said. "It's good to have those, but it's also good to have adults to help you. It's like a weight lifted off my shoulders, because I know there's someone to help me."

Stevenson's ability to rely on adults in her life fit the goals of the program exactly.

"Through programs like this we're opening up the channels for kids to navigate the difficult decisions they're making daily," Harris said. "We live in this world where technology is at our fingertips but socially it's difficult to ask people for help. This is giving them tools to really use those relationships to become successful."

Article and photo by Zoie Koostra from Seeley Swan Pathfinder

PHlight Club helps POW students learn life skills while having fun

Listen to Amy's interview HERE.

A couple times a year, students in different parts of Prince of Wales Island are locked up together for three days. It’s PHlight Club, a program that aims to increase kids’ ability to cope with challenges and improve their support system.

ROY G BIV is the common acronym for all the colors in the spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Those colors also represent seven components that PHlight Club – spelled with a “PH” rather than an “F” – works on with kids.

Amy McDonald is a facilitator with Brightways Learning, a nonprofit that coordinates PHlight Club events in Alaska. Speaking from Thorne Bay School, she described what each of the colors represents.

Red is the “rule of five.” McDonald said all kids need at least five caring, connected adults in their life.

“Oftentimes, teenagers don’t have five caring and connected adults,” she said. “We celebrate whatever they have. If they have one, we start with one.”

Those adults don’t have to be relatives. So, McDonald said they decided to call those adults “PHamily,” with a ph, rather than an f. That PHamily makes up a student’s anchors. The connections – anchor lines, so to speak — are represented by colored strings.

Prince Edwards Island PHlight Club

“Orange is tangible strings. Tangible strings are things like safe home, safe school, nutritious food, appropriate clothing. So, things you can see, smell, taste, touch, that you know you have or don’t have,” she said. “Yellow are intangible strings, which are more of those values, like curiosity, respect, or sense of humor or faith.”

More strings mean a thicker, stronger web of support.

Green represents the balloon students sit on in the middle of their web. Different factors determine how big that balloon is. Girls generally maintain their connections longer. And more social people have larger balloons.

“That means, not that you’re the most popular person, but that you’re comfortable walking into a room full of people,” she said.

A natural sense of curiosity also increases a balloon’s size, along with an optimistic attitude, and the ability to recognize your own strengths.

Blue represents scissors, which are things that happen in life that cut your strings and weaken the web of support. Indigo reminds students to show their appreciation to their caring and supportive adults.

“And then violet is social norms. Social norms in our story are like wind. If it’s a positive social norm, it can blow and lift your web up,” she said. “If it’s a negative social norm, it can blow and blow your web apart.”

McDonald said they focus on the positive norms, and ways to amplify those within a community.

Whew. That’s a lot of really important, deep stuff; how do you get kids to participate in something like that?

Well, McDonald said, you make it fun.

“We lift people up and fly them around the gym, we do trust falls, lots of relay teamwork, kind of team-building activities that are really fun,” she said. “And for our small rural schools, we start sometime on Thursday, stay up until midnight or 1 a.m., get up early in the morning Friday and do it again, get up early in the morning Saturday and we’re usually done by Saturday afternoon. So it’s a lot of really fun time with a whole bunch of kids and adults who are excited to be there.”

Some of the kids on Prince of Wales have been to six or more events, she said. And while they initially came for fun, they came back to learn.

“Then they’re actually like sponges, right? Learning all that stuff about finding more anchors, adding more strings,” she said. “Kind of looking at the world with a different lens, we call it a full-color lens. So they can set their futures up for success.”

The most recent PHlight Club was this fall in Hydaburg. They’re planning another one on the big island this coming spring. McDonald said there have been around 10 so far on Prince of Wales. And they don’t just work on POW.

“Galena, and then YKSD, Project Grad, which is part of Kenai; Chatham School District, which is Angoon, Gustavus, Klukwan and Tenakee Springs,” she said. “And then we’ve done a few elsewhere like Houston High School outside of Wasilla, we’ve done one; we’ve done a couple in Ketchikan, Russian Mission.”

And a few out of state.

McDonald recalls a couple of specific students whose lives were affected by PHlight Club, one dramatically.

“We had a girl here a few years ago who had been sexually abused in a community prior to moving here. Very traumatic. She was very withdrawn, contemplating suicide” McDonald said. “She started to come to PHlight Clubs. Her mom made her come at first. She will attribute PHlight Club to turning her world around.”

McDonald said that young girl learned to trust adults again and learned how to advocate for herself. That girl is now in college.

Another participant – a boy – is naturally independent and has a really big green balloon. But because he relied on himself so much, his web wasn’t very strong.

“The first time he failed at something, he realized how much a web of support was important to him, because when he failed he was all by himself,” McDonald said. “(He) had to really work at finding people and finding other avenues in order to get back up on his feet again. Had he had that web of support built prior to that, he thinks it would have been easier to step back up.”

McDonald said it’s not only youths who are struggling that benefit from PHlight Club; all kids – and even adults — would benefit from more support in their lives.

PHlight Club has organized a couple of events in the Ketchikan School District years ago as part of Challenge Day. They’re working with some local organizations to offer another event in Alaska’s First City.

Growing Great Teachers: The Best Reason for Teacher Evaluation

By Lisa “Kersch” Kerscher, Brightway Learning's Education Director

What is the purpose of evaluating teachers? Most would agree that at its base level, it’s about making sure teachers are performing their minimum job requirements. But at the highest level, it’s about helping teachers self-reflect on their practices and supporting them to grow their best professional selves.

In many cases, reaching the high ground has obstacles due to the nature of how evaluations are done: top-down, with little or late input from the teachers themselves. At statewide teacher conferences, I’ve heard teachers recount how they only see their evaluator once a year for a one-hour formal observation session. “And that’s what I get judged on,” one teacher lamented. “I have to be perfect in that one random hour out of the whole school year! How can I show all the great stuff I do during the rest of the year?”

So, it always gives me a boost to hear and see how this “old mindset” is shifting to truly polish best practices in our schools. It’s especially rewarding for me that our own software system - ClassBright Evaluate - is helping to lead the way.

Recently during fall in-services, I was training school staff on ClassBright Collaborate. A couple of veteran teachers - new to this district - were clearly apprehensive about the evaluation process. It was refreshing to me - and comforting to them - to hear others share their experiences from last school year.

“I found that [the evaluation process with ClassBright] actually validated my practice,” one teacher said, while her colleague nodded next to her in agreement. From there, a great and open discussion unfolded among the teachers and administrators. Veterans in the district talked about how ClassBright Collaborate allows them to give input in a variety of ways throughout the school year:

• Adding evidence and examples of their practices to their own portfolios, shared with their evaluator; this is especially important for categories in the rubric where classroom observations aren’t applicable

• Immediate transparency of observations made by their evaluator, often triggering in-time discussions together

• Active reflection on and interacting with the evaluation rubric, sometimes leading to deeper discussions about best practices

“I feel like the evaluation process is something we do together,” another teacher noted, “rather than having something done to me. It actually helps me think more about what I’m doing.”

Every true professional, regardless of their career field, desires and needs the time and commitment in order to get better at what they do. In the education world, why not optimize the evaluation requirement to grow great teachers together? I’m proud to be part of the movement to help educational professionals do just that!

Learn more about ClassBright Collaborate>>>