Program Description
Compass launched in September 2023 and is Victory’s newest programmatic innovation to support Victory graduates and other young adults as they move forward in life beyond high school. Compass is intentionally designed as a full-day, year-round program offering participants a varied menu of enrichment classes, activities, and work endeavors. The program will have a distinct and separate home on the Victory Campus (building completion scheduled for Fall 2024) with carefully designed spaces to enhance group learning and dynamics.
Compass is centered on three overlapping Core Principles:
Connections
- Building connections with classmates, peers, family members, teachers, direct support workers, medical providers, and employers
- Learning skills to sustain meaningful connections with others and strategies to disengage from individuals when necessary
- Understanding the connection between self, others, and the greater world
Communities
- Maintaining current community connections established through previous work experience placements, recreational activities, and community-based instruction
- Expanding community connections beyond Victory through the Principle of Discovery: Finding and trying out new jobs, classes, groups, clubs, activities, programs in a student’s home community
- Utilizing a direct support worker to access activities and programs located in a Compass participant’s home community and to serve as a job coach, when appropriate
Continuations
- Employment (Compass [student-run] business + new work placements)
- Self-care + household tasks
- Courses (psychology, people, politics, and perspectives, personal finance, culinary)
- Electives: Expressive arts + music
- Recreation
- Community outings
