自由领导

成绩单在自由学院，我感觉在我们30年的生命中，我们已经与1500多名学生合作过。我的一些校友跟我说，如果没有他们在这里参与的这些机会，他们就不会有现在的成就。我们经常谈论学生的机会和机会。为他们提供学术工作是一回事，但我们的许多学生来自于他们看不到很多可能性的家庭，我们所做的就是为他们提供可能性。那些来找我们的家庭带着一大堆的韧性和力量来找我们，他们已经拥有了成功所需的所有技能。他们没有的是获得资源的途径，这就是我们所做的。如果有人真的激励你，真的相信你能成功，你会觉得自己真的能做一些你认为自己做不到的事情。在课堂上，他们确保我们理解事情，确保每个人都很尊重，这让我觉得我在这个环境中很安全。对我来说，这是自由主义最伟大的成就之一。我们雇佣了关心青少年的员工;他们知道青少年处于学习曲线上; that if they've got whatever it was that they needed, they would succeed. They needed a lot of support. They needed guidance and the staff provided all of that. The best thing that we do in terms of empowering students to succeed is by not only looking at the child within their school. We look at the child within their home life within their life outside of school, outside of their home, their social life. With Liberty, you can make a mistake and they won't like judge you for it. They'll take a negative and turn into a positive and it gains more confidence for me because for me I was always scared to make mistakes. In the past I would blame myself for many things that I shouldn't get blamed for and they just taught me that not everything is my fault, especially what happened with the passing of my best friend, I lost confidence ever since then and then when I came to Liberty, like I said it was like a platform for me to express my feelings. I used to just like doubt myself and stuff because he was special to me and it seemed gone. It was like bad, but with Liberty, they made sure that I was okay, that I was fine, and now I just try my best sometimes to make him happy because I know he's looking down on me right now. Not a lot of kids feel they can be in an environment where they just feel safe as who they are you know. And Liberty does that. This program revitalizes young people. You know, at one point they would label this program as a program for at-risk students. I don't think that's quite right. I think that this was a place that allowed you to dream, this was a place that allows you to imagine; this was a place that truly listened to everything that your heart was saying and everything that your young seventh grade angry frustrated self was saying as well and they would take all of that energy and they would redirect it into something positive and those positive aspects for the programs, for the classes… that’s Liberty LEADS. Many of our students are first gen students. The families understand the importance of higher education but they don't have a roadmap on how to get there. I'm a senior now so I kind of have an idea of what I want to study and that's architecture. So I came to Liberty and they begged me back a full scholarship for a summer experience at Columbia to take an architecture course, which I did. No one would have ever thought that Tristan Kier Francis, the person that sits that's here, would have ever gone to college let alone go on to graduate school. But I truly believe that it's because of liberty LEADS that changes that trajectory.