As our partners in education prepare to get back to school, UP also gears up for a busy year of facilitating and coaching teams through addressing their school community’s most pressing concerns around creating more equitable and just learning communities. At our UP staff summer retreat, we practiced many of the community and relationship activities through which we lead youth-adult teams. This summer, the UP team welcomed three new employees: Liberty Belote, Program Associate, and Kate Merrigan and Susannah White, Program Directors. As our new team takes shape and settles in, our grounding in strong connections becomes more vital. Especially as we include our amazing team of 12 Youth Program Specialists (more on that program in a future newsletter)! Along with an introductory circle, the UP team participated in our version of the Olympics with competitive flag creation, Scrabble, and medal crafting.  Our day continued with revisiting and revising our group agreements and staff contributions. Our practice of beginning every staff meeting with a renewed commitment to our goals and values reminds us of our shared understanding of our work and appreciation for our individual and collective strengths. As part of recognizing our shared responsibility for success, we reflected on our internal communication, met with our goals partners, and discussed how we maintain our work/life balance.  In all of our work, internal and with partners, we routinely return to our core values and beliefs that lead us to seek Equity and Justice in all of our work.  We do this by: 
  • Sharing Responsibility 
  • Starting from Strengths
  • Creating Open Dialogue
  • Employing Data to Drive Change
UP appreciates the transitions happening at this time of year, and hopes that everyone is feeling as positive as our team about the year ahead!