Leading Visioneers to another learning dimension – Learning Experience through Artistic Performance (LEAP)

The Bronze Visioneers had a role-playing game regarding bullying

LEAP coach was explaining the bullying issue to the participants

 LEAP, an abbreviated form of Learning Experience through Artistic Performance, is an experimental learning strategy which allows young adolescents to learn leadership skill and other good attributes in an interactive learning environment. A female professor of York University first raised this idea as she thought that teenagers could learn virtues and good attributes through drama and thus character imitation. Such an interactive learning strategy breaks the traditional unilateral learning model, and allows a greater flexibility and propensity for the teenagers to learn good characters. Vision Youth recruited two experienced coaches to hold the course for the Bronze Visioneers last Thursday.

The coaches

The theme for this time is “responsibility”. Before that, two themes (i.e. communication and history) were featured in the course. For instance, the Visioneers learnt about early Chinese Canadian history in the course regarding railway construction as well as immigration. The coaches encouraged the participants to ask their parents and grandparents about their immigration stories so that they could learn the history in a closer proximity. For the theme “responsibility”, the coaches explained the theme and thus the concept of school bullying through role-playing and games. By role-playing, the participants had a chance to taste the feeling of being a victim, a bully, a bystander, etc. and hence they could think about the bullying issue in a more objective and comprehensive sense. Besides, the coaches tended to train the Visioneers with critical thinking skill by learning to analyse the issue from multiple perspectives. Many participants enjoyed the course and had actively participated in the discussion. Many fruitful discussion outcomes came up after the course.

Mr. Eric Li, the chairperson of Vision Youth Leadership Program, mentioned a remarkable LEAP experience happened in the past. For instance, the coach that time asked the participants to shape the characters of a “leader” and a “hero”. He vividly remembered that the participants made the character of a “hero” like a god-like figure, who was being worshipped, while the character of a “leader” was like more humble and considerate. He also mentioned the presence of York Region Character Community, which is a means of civic education aiming to spread the message of good attributes like integrity and perseverance within York Region. As a side note, Vision Youth belongs to this community as well.

LEAP has been part of Vision Youth’s program for 10 years. Before that, a unilateral teaching model was adopted to teach the participants about leadership and good attributes. However, many of them were uninterested in the way of teaching. Therefore, LEAP has been adopted and the learning effectiveness of such kind of character building course has been greatly enhanced.