The Curriculum

Spanish translation here

The National Youth Leadership Network has created a curriculum [a set of learning activities] unlike any other. This event is for young people, parents, siblings, friends, allies, teachers, community support providers, and more.

The curriculum shows teams of young people and allies how to build support systems through self-determination. The curriculum uses a popular education approach. (See: What is popular education?) The curriculum includes interactive tools like a self-advocacy rap video, storytelling circles, and skits.

Here are a few things that make this curriculum different than most:

• Youth, family members, and adult allies learn together.
• It was created by youth with disabilities with input from family members.
• It is 100% hands-on!
• It looks at the “big picture” and talks about power, community, and systems of society.

The curriculum comes in two parts:

1. Self Determination: This part of the curriculum covers all the things that shape our self-determination. It looks at the self-determination of individuals and communities. After this section, we hope young people with disabilities will see themselves as valuable contributors to a larger community. Young people will learn how to seek the supports they need so the community can know how to include us.
2. Building Our Support Systems: Often times our support systems look different from other people’s support systems. This may be because we are in foster care, because we grew up in different kinds of families, or because we have people outside of our family that support us. In this section, people map out the support network they have. Then they plan ways to make their support systems bigger and better. Everyone will plant and care for a “garden” that represents his or her support systems. We will all go through the “5 Ps” of “growing” a support system: Planning, Prepping, Planting, Producing, and Profiting.

What Are Support Systems?

Everyone has people in their lives that give them some kind of support. Sometimes for youth, our parents or family members give us a lot of support. A lot of people also get support from people outside of their families. For example, groups of friends support each other, people from your community who you see on a regular basis can support you, or maybe a teacher or neighbor helps you out with certain things. Support comes in a lot of different forms.

Many times when people talk about support systems for people with disabilities they are just talking about the people who help that person. NYLN wants to think about support systems in a different way. We know, as youth with disabilities, we have people in our lives that support us. However, we support people in our lives, too. We want to think about support systems as interdependent. That means that your friends and family help and support you, and you help and support your friends and family. The support is reciprocal. Everyone is giving support and everyone is receiving it.

Sometimes support systems happen naturally, but other times it is hard to find the support you need. This is especially true for youth with disabilities. Having a disability can make you feel like you are all alone. Oftentimes youth with disabilities rely on family or paid supports. We think that is important that youth with disabilities, with the help from family members, spend time thinking about what kind of support systems they want to have. This may include making changes to the way their support systems have been set up in the past. The best kinds of support systems usually don’t just happen. Bringing them together means making a plan for creating your support system. It also means spending time shaping your support system to make it work the best for (and with) you. The Reap What You Sow: Harvesting Support Systems curriculum takes youth and family members through that process. The Institute will give you an image of how that can be done.

What is Popular Education?

Popular education is a way to teach and to learn. It has a history connected to a lot of social change movements where people needed to teach each other what was unfair about the way their community was being treated. We think popular education is a good fit for The Reap What You Sow: Harvesting Support Systems curriculum because it is accessible for many different learning styles. It is also a kind of learning that is fun and not anything like school.

Popular education is:

• An active way to learn. Everyone learns from each other. There isn’t a teacher, just a facilitator who helps things run smoothly. Instead of the teacher being the expert, everyone is the expert. Learners teach each other from their own knowledge and lived experiences.
• A way of learning that’s hands on. Instead of learning from textbooks, you learn through activities. You share experiences and interact with other people. That means that every learning experience is different depending on who is there.
• Learning that uses a lot of different kinds of tools like poetry, art, storytelling, and acting. It involves creativity!