YPP Alumni as Present Day Educators

Lori Zami 0:00
You have to trust that the young people's project is ahead of the game Already. My name is Lori Zami, the principal at Pierce school in Chicago. Like Phil said, I learned as an educator Ypp was doing over 20 years ago, I learned about restorative practices by working alongside of Omo, with our high school students that first summer, and we didn't call it restorative practices, but that's what we were utilizing.

Tasheka Nelson 0:27
If it weren't for Ypp, I think I would have fell out of love with math.
I've been in love with math since I was in first grade. And even like, up until this day, my when I when I'm working with my students, that numbers I get excited about and that energy spills out onto them.

Lori Zami 0:49
It has had a tremendous impact on me as a school, now school leader, but it impacted me as a teacher, it pushed me into into my work with teachers when I was a math coach

Latavia Hinton 1:03
YPP, made me aware that I should implement exploratory learning divergent thinking hands on activities.

Lori Zami 1:14
By using some of the training and support systems that YPP had helped me be a better teacher, and kids coming to life when you when you created a less structured math environment where the teacher holds the math knowledge kids, kids know, they have the math within them, is creating the environment for them to demonstrate their knowledge and their skill.

Latavia Hinton 1:41
Now, allowing the people talk to transition into the feature talk or the academic language or the vocabulary, the terms that we need our students to know, it leads to the formulaic and computational language that is required within mathematics. And so this process of the five step curricular process has aided me in so many ways, and my students and my colleagues because not only did I use it in mathematics, I also took it into my civics courses. It has benefited and makes you also look at the student as an individual.

Lori Zami 2:27
Just like the relationship, the community development, young people being leaders in their classrooms that so much more powerful, and it's so much more realistic to what to what life is

Latavia Hinton 2:40
Within this class within our community. And that's one of the biggest things too, I can say that Ypp has aided and making sure that there's a community, and we don't all have to be the same within that community. Having a voice making sure my students realize they have a voice how to utilize that voice, not only within the academic world, but outside. So that social emotional component. Those are huge factors.

Lori Zami 3:08
There's a power of that community and youth organizing and mobilizing young people to take charge of their education now's the time to do that. Now's the time where schools are reimagining what education can be.

Latavia Hinton 3:23
Those are things that I realized that now within education, there's a huge push for SEL and I was experiencing that in the early 2000s with them and here it is now. 2023 and everyone is pushing.