Membership in Community
Community
Our Community
We have a collaborative IYD community that we affectionately call "PHlock Talk." This collaborative space emphasizes and allows for deeper inquiry and learning through meaningful interactions with other folks to see in Full Color.
This fun group of people will encourage challenging the status quo through group discussion and analysis.
Agora College understands that people exist in human and natural ecologies that can be maximized to ensure resilience and thriving.
This complex ecological lens demands that we integrate research, wisdom, and knowledge accumulated from every academic discipline, wisdom tradition, and personal experience to understand—and ultimately grow—the Web of Support created through the human experience as it is acted upon.
Those certified within our community will appreciate the interdependence and intersections of people, communities, and all forms of life to be able to support resilience in themselves and others, extending well into the future.
The Agora College community prepares learners to be lifelong competent youth development practitioners.
It expects students to continue learning to maintain their role as artists of young people's lives within the full-color context of the world that surrounds them.
Our task is to free young people to create safety nets, filters, and launch pads for themselves and others in their communities, and practice sharing their knowledge with others, to allow them the same privileges.
You live upon a Web of Support already, and you will need to thicken your Web to fulfill the obligations of your certification.
Your Web of Support competence and certification needs to be cultivated rather than purchased. You need to think like a gardener rather than a consumer. A curator rather than a collector. An entrepreneur rather than an employee.
Agora College has identified four Core Attributes
that embody our Promethean Enterprise:
1. Web of Support (ROY BIV)
Youth Developmental Ecologists (YDEs) will build and sustain their own Web of Support to better guide others in their own process of weaving themselves in a web of life. YDEs will understand that "one size" fits very few and see that each person benefits from creating and sustaining the Web they need at this point in their lives.
2. Balloon (Green)
Youth Developmental Ecologists (YDEs) will attain the knowledge and skills to expand themselves personally and professionally. Through periodic Johari window reviews, learners will reflect upon their acquired knowledge and skills and their own and others' values, biases, and behaviors.
3. Context
Youth Developmental Ecologists (YDEs) will understand that Webs of Support are created, maintained and sustained by Infrared - (Rule of Law) and Ultra-violet - (Attachment to a place that has a clean environment that supports healthy life.)
IYD turns to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child to ensure that every young person lives within laws that allow them full access to a Web of Support of their choice.
This has become even more urgent as children around the world experience the consequences of forced migrations due to pollution, war, and changing climates. (They are being dislocated from their climates, geographies, lands, cultures and communities. This is Ultra-Violet in our Full Spectrum Approach.)
4. Trauma
Youth Developmental Ecologists (YDEs) will understand the impact of Sinkers (trauma) on the life of the teen and the lives of Anchors who support the teen.
They will be able to use their Full-Color lens to place trauma in a developmental context and create pathways for young people who are ready to mitigate their trauma through the creation of their Web of Support, as well as to eventually experience Post Traumatic growth.
Practice
YDEs will apply the knowledge, skills, and practices to take constructive action in supporting people to see themselves and others in Full Color. Agora College provides learner-centered opportunities that empower individuals to use their knowledge, lens, and self-agency to lead interesting lives and to Anchor others in doing the same.
A beginning of agreements and understandings:
01
Online learning
Online learning through real-time Zoom, telephone, and social networking exchanges with 24/7 access to content and resources.
02
Groups
Individual or tiny study group sizes.
03
Portfolio-based
Instead of academic transcripts. (A portfolio will enable you to show everyone interested in your work's quality and credentials.)
04
Accessibility
Agora College promises to keep content and learning processes attainable, affordable, relevant, and current.
05
Affordable
Agora College will be affordable and incorporate the principles of value for value exchanges.
06
Credibility
Agora College will be legitimized through the competence of our certified PHaculty and PHellows. The effectiveness of their practices in increasing the life trajectory of any child and youth they Anchor will be evidence that their learning was worthwhile.
07
Graduates will be competent in 5 primary areas:
a) youth development,
b) resilience,
c) written word,
d) public speaking, and
e) review of research.
08
Learning contracts
Learners will be responsible for setting up individual learning contracts with instructors/guides/local experts. (Learners should anticipate having to arrange a value-for-value exchange with their guides.)
09
External classes
In some cases, it may be best for learners to take a class or two at a local college or university to expand competency. For example:
University of the People
The Open University
The Open University - Courses
The Open University - Free Course Catalogue