What inspires true success in high school?
** An environment that allows you the peace to focus on learning.
** A place that encourages you to challenge yourself.
** Honoring thoughtfulness and understanding as much as excellence and achievement.
** A culture of working together to create a better society.
Baltimore Youth Initiative High School is such a place. Built by students, parents, teachers and community members, we’re turning high school education upside down. And you
can help us thrive so we can share what we learn with the world.
You can Like us on Facebook
here.
Why Make High School A Catalyst for Change?
We need true champions to transform our future: young people with courage, heart, intellect and compassion. The prevalent belief today is that teenagers are either volatile or apathetic but we believe that teens have a deep seated sense
of justice and unconstrained creativity. When the positive traits inherent in young people are brought to the forefront they have immense capacity to make change in the world.
"Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel." -- Socrates
Why is BYI Needed?
We need more than information and skill to build a sustainable future. We need to develop a level of compassion and love for one another and our environment,that compels us to create vibrant solutions to new and longstanding problems, resilient communities determined to thrive and the courage to dismantle systems and practices that divide us. BYI is devoted to developing and leveraging the capacity of young people to be their best and work toward a better society.
We recognize that some classes are afforded unfair power and privilege in our society. Young people trained both to recognize the root causes of inequity and to use their inherent powers to address social concerns will instinctively dismantle injustice, no matter their field of activity in the future. BYI provides a transformational learning environment that aims to topple racism and postiviely transform community by raising up young people who are champions of equity, who have learned that peaceful, thriving communities are more than possibilities and have practiced the skills of social change.
“Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education.” -- Rudolf Steiner
What Makes BYI Different?
"Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday." -- Bahá'u'lláh
We walk our talk. We practice equity in our model, from student recruitment to community engagement.
** BYI has no set tuition. We are a nonpublic school, yet we have no economic barriers to attendance. We encourage students to work to contribute to their schooling in order to reduce our families to share their resources and skills as payment. We ask our community, including families with more resources, to support us so that money is never a barrier to success.
** BYI fosters individual transformation in a safe social climate. Faculty, students and, to a lesser extent, parents are encouraged to be always improving and creating a harmonious social climate so that, collectively we all learn to improve ourselves daily. Adults show their growing edge to encourage and inspire students by being flexible, trying new approaches and admitting mistakes. We use the five strategies of the Virtues Project (tm) intentionally to hep us bring out our best in everything from school projects to our social interactions.
** BYI engages community as a laboratory to address real world problems. We give students time to explore social change in real time through initiative projects and bring in passionate experts from every field to inspire and challenge our collective thinking. We explore how exceptional young people are working to change the world and honor effort through our Got Initiative? Youth Initiative Award. We focus on root causes, boldly addressing the problems in systems through intellect, analysis and action.
** BYI seeks inspiration from cutting edge educational and social transformation research and practice. BYI is unique. We also stand on the shoulders of creative innovators in education, learning and practice. We learned the deep benefits of arts integration and honoring the whole person from Waldorf Education. The Baha'i principles linked to education and community building inspire our emphasis on self-improvement and good character. Equity Matters, our 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor, brings us cutting edge practice in health equity and undoing racism and connects us to the place amtters movement. We use the Virtues Project to effectively grow our postive qualities and improve our capacity for excellence. We are inspired by the work on the front line of education, from local schools Finland's systerm, to renowned individuals.
BYI has the freedom to innovate because we are small, however, our true power lies in our commiment to interact with share what we learn with schools and institutions of every size.
Education alone cannot solve the challenges of society. Education must be paired with service, developing the interest and the courage to transform society.
"Educating the mind with out educating the heart is no education at all."-- Aristotle
