Components | YBEC

Academics

YBEC is licensed as a Private Special Educational Academic School by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s State Board of Private Academic Schools. All of our core academic teachers are certified in Special Education under the Pennsylvania private school requirements. The classes have no more than a 1 : 6 staff to student ratio, which fosters more individualized instruction, attention, and less distraction. These small classes promote a more positive social and academic learning environment for our students.

Our program uses an effective and highly regarded alternative to traditional methods of instruction. This approach is well-suited to meet the individual educational needs of students, especially within the context of a comprehensive Individual Educational Plan (IEP).

All of our core academic teachers are certified in Special Education under Pennsylvania private school requirements.
YBEC provides instruction in a departmentalized fashion, meaning our students rotate through a typical class schedule very similar to students in the public school setting.
Our instructional support professionals (support staff) are a critical aspect to the student’s education at YBEC. These individuals often hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Adventure Education, as well as certifications in boating, climbing, and Wilderness First Responding.
YBEC offers full-time emotional support services for students with a disability who require services primarily in the areas of social or emotional skills development or functional behavior.

Experiential Education

Experiential education is at the heart of Yellow Breeches programming. Our engaging themes, hands-on learning in the classroom, and interactive experiences outside of the classroom draw in reluctant learners. Our unique experiential trips take words and concepts on a page and transform them into something tangible students can work with, bringing learning into a real-life context. Experiential education allows our students to interact with concepts from various perspectives and modalities. In addition, experiential education creates opportunities for students to build character, emotional capacity, communication skills, and the ability to connect and effectively interact in public with community partners.

Adventure Education

YBEC utilizes an adventure program in conjunction with experiential activities. The greatest benefit of the adventure-based program is the reframing or rethinking students may experience. Adventure trips place students in a dramatically different environment from their daily lives, breaking up their normal frame of reference and creating opportunities to see things in a different way. Carrying this ability into the classroom can free students from old restrictive frames and enable them to take on new roles and explore different behaviors.

Wilderness adventure activities offer opportunities to combine physical action and endurance with reflection. During these experiences, students are taught how to handle the environmental variables that include learning how to work with their peers and manage personal and group struggles. These activities teach students to choose appropriate responses to variables that are out of their control. By learning to choose their responses students can take this new heightened sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy back into their classrooms or to life after school. These experiences are impossible to provide solely in a classroom setting. That is why at YBEC, learning may begin in the classroom but it never ends in the classroom!

Service-Learning

Service-learning combines both community involvement and learning goals in such a way that both occur and are enriched by one another. This approach to learning meets actual community needs and fosters partnerships between schools and communities. This ultimately provides students the opportunities to use academic skills and knowledge in real-life situations, as well as develop a sense of caring for others. Service-Learning activities and partners include Community Aid stocking and sorting, Habitat for Humanity, Bethesda Mission soup kitchen, American Red Cross, Appalachian Trail Conservancy trail maintenance, Wild Wood Park clean-up, and many others.

Transition

YBEC strives to ensure that our students have the tools and resources to be successful members of their communities. One of the ways we can achieve this goal is through a collaborative cross-curricular approach to transition skills training. In the classroom, through a variety of elective classes, students receive instruction in social skills, life skills, career exploration, health education, first aid and CPR, character development, leadership development, and vocational skills training. Students are then given the opportunity to apply their newly acquired knowledge in real-world scenarios on our experiential trips. YBEC has spent the last 2 decades fostering relationships with community organizations that share a common vision for our students. Here are a few examples of our transition based trips:

Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology
York Technical Institute
Conservation and Recreation Projects
HACC
Shippensburg University
Habitat for Humanity
Project Share
PA Food Bank
Local Banks
Local Car Dealerships
Local Farms
SkipJack Sailing Trip
Youghiogheny White Water Trip
New York City Trip
Chattooga Whitewater Trip
Everglades Scuba Trip
White Mountains Ski Trip

Positive Behavior Modification System

Change does not happen overnight and neither does becoming a Level Three student at YBEC. Every student who enters YBEC begins as a Level One student. Through demonstrating the pillars of our character education: courage, respect, responsibility, trust, and effort, they earn accumulating points. When a student acquires a set number of points, determined by their YBEC campus, they receive their Level Two presentation. Once the presentation assignments are completed, they earn Level Two status. This process is again repeated, but with a higher total point target, a more difficult presentation, and an interview with teachers and staff. Upon completion, they are granted the honor of Level Three status. Our Positive Behavior Modification System gives daily built-in incentives for students to offer their best and serves as a means of behavioral progress monitoring. With each upward level change, students earn more privileges, rewards, and responsibilities.

Our Level Three students are expected to be the pinnacle of what represents YBEC. They are the leaders and role models for their peers. No longer accumulating points, they must maintain at least 85% of their points, in order to avoid probation or a possible level drop. However, the biggest rewards for progressing, towards, achieving, and maintaining Level Three status are our amazing trips.

Level Three students are given the opportunities of a lifetime. By maintaining their status they have the privilege of participating in outstanding adventures such as Atlantic Ocean fishing voyages, annual trips to the Florida Everglades, expeditions to ski and snowboard in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, we week of exploring New York City, as well as amazing experiences all along the east coast of the United States. When a student returns from seeing the ocean for the first time, boating next to dolphins, or learning how to ski and snowboard, their mental and physical stamina has been improved. This flows over to other parts of their lives, empowering students to achieve more. They begin to wonder if they can successfully rock climb 100 feet in the air, what else can they do accomplish? At YBEC we believe they can do more than they have ever imagined!

Family Involvement

Involvement of family members in the educational experience of their child is encouraged and expected. Individual Education Plans (IEP) that may include behavioral expectation contracts are developed with the direct involvement of the parents of each child. Regular phone contact is made with all parents to update them on their student's progress at YBEC.

Program Components

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

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