Today, we are highlighting and reminiscing about River City High School. River City High School is the only high school in the Washington Unified School District. No, we didn’t travel to the state of Washington (we will soon). Washington Unified School District is right across the river in West Sacramento. Early settlers created the town of Washington where West Sacramento is now, hence the name of Washington Unified School District.

River City HS started their school climate enhancement journey 3 years ago. Thanks to the generous funding support of the Trustees of the Arata Brothers Trust, we brought our Youth Development Institute (YDI) to the high school. Our YDI focuses on how adults can create a safe environment where young people can effectively make a change in their community for the better. Ultimately our goals from completing a YDI are that participants can:

*create quality environments for youth

*make sure that youth receive the essential experience now that will contribute to their development into successful and healthy adults.

From the Youth Development Institute we proposed that to sustain the climate shift a team at River City HS needed to be trained on how to lead their very own YDIs. We call this process “Train the Trainer”. 6 teachers from River City HS volunteered to lead this effort and become certified YDI Train-the-Trainers for the River City High School Campus. Train the Trainer trains (say that 5 times fast) people on how to deliver relevant and engaging meetings for students and staff while paying respects to the original content. Of course trainers are allowed to put their own flair on the delivery, but the final goals are usually the same.

For the past 2 years, the YDIs at River City High School were facilitated by River City HS teachers with YDN trainers in the background to provide support. We want to send our deepest gratitude to these YDI Certified  trainers that are consistently creating an environment where change comes from the participating experts in the room. In this instance, the experts are the staff, teachers and the students that spend 6-8 hours a day on campus.

We are excited to see where this year’s YDI takes the staff and students at River City High School as they continue their journey with YDN to enhance the campus environment for future generations to come.