Dear Parents, Educators, and Yellow Parachute Families,
As we ease into autumn and refresh our routines, I want to extend a warm welcome to the new school year, and a new stage in Yellow Parachute’s evolution.
We’ve spent the last eighteen (Eighteen?!? Joyfully, yes!) years curating a team of extraordinary learning coaches—educators whose passion fuels student learning, and whose responsive hearts ensure that we recognize and support individual student needs and gifts. The relationships between students, learning coaches, and families are pivotal to our collective success, and we at Yellow Parachute are so grateful for the opportunity to continue nurturing these relationships, as well as cultivating new ones.
Our vision in 2017 is to knit families, educators, NGOs, and Yellow Parachute learning coaches into a single online community focused on innovation and excellence-with-kindness. To help achieve that vision, we’re launching a blog that honors and amplifies Yellow Parachute’s commitment to spreading hope through education. Yellow Parachute blog posts will be designed to inspire students, engage and support parents, and share our collective successes.
To ensure our blog content accommodates your family’s interests and needs, please take the time to respond to this six-question survey. Carolyn Byrne, our new communications strategist, will welcome additional comments and suggestions at any time at carolyn@yellowparachute.com, or in the comments section below.
At Yellow Parachute, our philosophy has always been that great minds don’t think alike. As an educator and CEO, I’m constantly surveying the educational landscape to ensure that we’re adapting to shifts both major and minor—revisions to student achievement metrics, market-driven changes to educational priorities, or discoveries in pedagogical best practices. We’re thrilled to be innovating in a time when, more than ever before, technology is allowing educators to personalize students’ learning experience by adapting to their talents.
Helping students discover their unique gifts—and the passion and perseverance to hone those gifts—is an important step in preparing them for an unpredictable job market. Which is why we’re dedicating our first series of posts to the subject of grit—the sum of passion and perseverance over time.
In keeping with these exciting developments, I want to take a moment to introduce our new student connector, Jenny McKeand. Jenny has been a learning coach with Yellow Parachute for eight years, and is a tremendous asset to fellow educators and YP families for her versatility, compassion, and depth of experience.
New to Yellow Parachute and want to learn more? Reach out to Jenny any time at studentconnector@yellowparachute.com. Jenny is also available to assist with our new referral program, which offers a $20 session credit each time you refer a family who begins with Yellow Parachute Learning Partners.
We look forward to being the bright spot in your educational story.
-Cara
Cara B. Thorpe, M. Ed.
Founder & CEO
Yellow Parachute Learning Partners
