ADVOCACY AND AWARENESS

Connecting With Your Boys (Great for Parents or Parent Groups)
These 90-minute sessions are based on the Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian. These sessions are perfect for educators looking to increase the impact of their teaching for young men or​ for parents looking to understand their boys better. Topics covered include recognizing and nurturing a boy’s core nature, the biology of boys, how male biology impacts raising and educating young men, emotional development and discipline, and much more.

"The Boys Are Talking" Forums (An open public forum or can be designed for a private audience) 
​Because it's clear that young men are in a crisis, we as educators, policy makers, parents, school designers, and community activists design "intervention" programs with the best intentions. However, we often get frustrated with the lack of results or outright failure of some of our initiatives when the outcomes are not what we expected.We may find that the problem is in our planning. Too often we plan initiatives for young men without consulting the young men themselves. "The Boys Are Talking" Forum is designed to give the young men a seat at the table with those who design programs, schools, and policies affecting them.  The forum provides a platform for young men to share and describe the structures, in our schools and communities, that have helped them reach their goals and achieve success, as well as those structures that have hindered them. 

CAPACITY BUILDING

FOR YOUNG MEN

A. Empowered Ambition Youth Development Program
(Click here to view a sample of the curriculum)

What is the Empowered Ambition Youth Development Program?
Empowered Ambition Youth Development (EAYD) Program for Young Men is a character development curriculum from the Sims-Fayola Foundation designed to equip young men with the skills needed to make their futures look like their dreams. The EAYD Program engages young men in deep, reflective work using restorative practices, conflict resolution, mentoring, and goal setting practices.
 
What is the goal of the Empowered Ambition Youth Development Program?
The overarching goal of our EAYD Program is to assist our young men in increasing their capacity to be better stewards of their choices, careers, and ultimately their lives, while developing into positive role models.
 
How is the Empowered Ambition Youth Development Program delivered?
Addressing the school to prison pipeline, at the intersection of education and the juvenile justice systems, the Empowered Ambition Youth Development Program is delivered over 18, 60-minute coach led sessions, field trips, and guest speakers. The EAYD Program can be implemented in middle and high schools through a dedicated class, an after school intervention course by our staff or your staff, or as part of an existing class curriculum in collaboration with the classroom teacher. As a juvenile diversion program, the EAYD Program can delivered by our trained professionals over 18 sessions in our training location (Metro Denver Area only). Participants are also matched with a mentor for the duration of the entire course using our e-mentoring framework designed using the Elements of Effective Practices for Mentoring designed by the National Mentoring Partnership.
 
What research is the Empowered Ambition Youth Development Program based on?
Our EAYD Program is designed on the pillars of Restorative Justice, Character Development, and Therapeutic Engagement.
 
A. Character Development: EAYD draws upon the powerful and overwhelming research that building self-efficacy, responsibility, and goal setting are critical to behaviors that are productive and progressive.
B. Restorative Justice: EAYD also uses the framework of  the Restorative Justice approach where taking responsibility for one’s actions and reparing and valuing relationships is an invaluable part of becoming a better steward of one’s life.
C. Therapeutic Engagement: With an eye towards proven therapeutic practices that are sensitive to the traumas our participants may have encountered, EAYD focuses on helping to buid capacity and tools to successfully navigate the challenges of life beyond our program.

B. STARS Mentoring Program

This program offers students a coordinated mentoring program creating the opportunity for relationships to be built with positive role models. It not only helps youth with tools as they go through challenges, but makes achieving healthy relationships and understanding success sequencing priorities (the order in which students finish school, go on to higher learning/trade skill school, or become employed, then create families).  Because of positive peer role models, leadership development, and future focus, the FRIENDS FIRST (FF)STARS Mentoring program and the related wrap around services (assemblies/workshops, community trainings, parent education, a mentor training one-day summit and the national conference) make the pursuit of best possible futures for teens more realistic and attainable.

​The core elements of STARS are:

1. Self-Awareness - teens become aware of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, resources and challenges and learn to more effectively manage these aspects of their lives
2. Future Focus - teens learn that every decision they make today both positive and negative has an impact on their tomorrow (future) 
3. MentorLife -  teens learn to always have someone investing in them in a mentor role, and then to pay it forward by investing in others.

C. Sims-Fayola Summer Bridge Leadership Camp (Summer 2019)

The Sims-Fayola Summer Bridge Leadership Camp (FLC) for young men is a 2-week leadership camp for young men of color in grades 6th, 7th, and 8th by the Sims-Fayola Foundation. The Sims-Fayola Foundation’s mission is to improve the life-outcomes of urban males through direct programming, partnerships, and by increasing the capacity of those who serve them. The Sims-Fayola Foundation has served over 8000 students and 2000 educators in the past 5 years in connection with our mission to improve the life outcomes of urban males.

It is no secret that Black and Latino males are struggling in US schools as they are currently structured. Students of color are markedly underrepresented in the top 25th percentile of students. With graduation rates declining and drop-out rates, suspensions, and enrollment in special education programs increasing, we recognize the challenge and humbly accepts the responsibility of being part of the movement to improve the educational and social outcomes for this student population.

The goals of FLC is to provide leadership training, academic support in reading and math, STEM exposure, the performing arts, and financial literacy workshops to our young men. The Sims-Fayola Foundation will partner with local community, business, and political leaders, other non-profits like Operation Hope, the Jekyl Foundation, and the Denver Center for Performing Arts to deliver a curriculum that directly addresses summer learning loss, lack of exposure to the arts, individualized instructional support, mentorship, and lack of arts exposure to young men of color.

The 2-week camp will deliver 50 sixty-minute workshops in these targeted areas over a two-week timeframe. The camp will include time for lunch, brain breaks, and physical fitness for our young men.

FOR EDUCATORS

Professional Development
Through professional development, we partner with school districts, individual schools, and organizations serving young men to support their efforts to increase their capacity to serve young men. Our specific professional development offerings are:

A. Gender Specific Learning Workshops: Through workshops and individual coaching, we work directly with school districts and schools to increase the capacity of teachers and leaders to create learning environments that are male friendly and learning experiences that are considerate of the natural strengths and brilliance of young men. From boy friendly instructional strategies to lesson development and dealing with behavior, we build the capacity of educators to maximize the performance of their young men using brain based research, school culture, and boys natural biological tendencies.

B. Working With Boys of Color Workshops: Over five, half-day learning workshops, educators will focus on increasing their understanding of working with young men of color in a traditional school setting as well as other social structures. The focus areas will be inclusive of the four multi-dimensional areas of academic engagement, behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, and affective engagement. Each of the learning workshops will also include restorative mediation techniques that educators and school leaders can access when engaging with young men of color. These workshops will also equip Deans of Students with male specific strategies to include in their coaching and support of teachers in the areas of Dealing with Power Struggles in the Classroom, Positive Thinking in Difficult Situations, and Building Relationships with Challenging Students.    

Workshop Topics
Working With Boys of Color: An Issue of Equity
Culture, the Brain and How Boys Learn
Creating the Ultimate Classroom for Boys
Educating Adolescent Boys
Strategies for Improving Instruction for Boys of Color

C. Hardwired By Nature: School Design Through An Equity Lens: This full-day, highly active and engaging equity workshop is designed to increase educator’s awareness of equity opportunities in the learning experiences of students of color. During this workshop, educators take a deeper look at systemic inequalities, traditional educator dispositions about students of color, and community systems that affect the educational outcomes of students of color. This workshop also identifies the characteristics of students of color that are inherent parts of their culture that can add value to their learning experiences in schools. This is a powerful workshop that has impacted many teachers, administrators, and policy makers. It is designed to be an addition to your toolbox of best instructional strategies. This is not a “how to teach students of color kit;” instead this workshop is about using culture to enhance school design and learning experiences to improve the academic and social outcomes of students of color. Using videos, movement based activities, songs, laughter, and sometimes tears, this workshop will increase the capacity of educators who serve students of color to improve the outcomes of this group by creating environments that are designed through an equity lens. Ultimately, it is a workshop aimed at improving the capacity of educators to ensure equity is considered in every decision.  

​D. Essential Elements Academy: (Fall 2020)
​During these 90 minutes of face-to-face online sessions, using Zoom technology, educators will engage in developmentally revealing information on how understanding the physiological development of boys can help them design learning and social supports to help their young men reach their attendance, behavior and course performance goals. Their learning experiences will be inclusive of case studies, videos, discussion, and mini-projects that will allow them to apply this newly acquired information in a professional learning community with fellow educators and receive site specific feedback from peers as well as Global Student Achievement education consultants. The information from this academy can also increase the capacity of school leaders and deans to facilitate academic and effective conversations as well as develop appropriate behavior strategies

EDUCATION 

Sims-Fayola International Academies
The Sims-Fayola International Academies are our public charter school model for young men in grades 6-12. Using project-based learning as the instructional framework, we engage young men in learning using their natural strengths of movement and spatial intelligence. Our total learning environment is tailored to the needs and tendencies of young men. From our strong culture of brotherhood, a culture of high expectations, celebration of academic and socio-emotional growth through our rites of passage ceremonies, movement based classroom instruction, blazer and tie dress code, and addressing each other using surnames, our model is uniquely poised to engage young men in the rigorous and rewarding work of a college prep curriculum.

Learn More

​Charter School Development Support
We provide a variety of services to support the development and growth of high quality charter schools.  Our new school development services are designed to support planning efforts from the time founding groups first meet, through a school's first year of operation. Although we are based in Denver, our work and clients take us all over the country. We can structure support plans that include our consultants being on-site as well as using online support through Zoom and Skype technology. 

Specifically, we offer support in the areas of:

• Charter application writing and review
• Budget development
• 501c3 application writing
• Logo and website development
• Marketing plan
• Student and teacher recruitment plans
• Financial policies and procedures development
• Grant writing
• Leadership development and coaching
• Curriculum and assessment development
• Using data and assessment
• School culture development
• Student discipline plan
• Parent engagement plan
• Board recruitment and development
• Community and stakeholder engagement plans
• Other areas that pertain to charter development. 

We would love to partner with your group to help launch your new school or support your existing school. To inquire about these services, please reach out to us at info@sffoundation.org

Groups interested in bringing a Sims-Fayola International Academy to your city or interested in us helping you design your school, please email us at info@sffoundation.org to set up an appointment.