Who We Are

need overview copy here...
need messaging: school is Steiner-based, small/intimate class size, hands-on investigative learning, engages students in all aspects of the school, encourages students to take initiative in actions, learning, their future etc…


need: Advisory Board list? TBD

need? : inspiration, what we look for in students, long-term goals for students and school (conceptual)

Mission statement??? here?
Our school Location (info and map) and benefits of location; engagement with community & benefits to school and students; local logos and info about the places…
need here?: Weekender and Kaleidoscope (w/ descriptions)
“Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves 
to impart purpose and direction to their lives.”  - Rudolf Steiner

“Only a virtuous people may be free”  - Ben Franklin

“The responsibility for tolerance lies with those who have the broader vision”  - George Eliot

Vision & Purpose
We facilitate individual student talents and personal growth, their imagination and passion and their love of the arts. Our rich challenging course of study integrates academics, the arts, and practical life skills.
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Our vision is to become a vibrant, empowering “Free Waldorf” high school. We find the Steiner view of the developing adolescent useful; this model sees ages 14-18 as a time when young people ideally move from outwardly imposed authority towards individual freedom and personal responsibility. We will create and maintain a vessel, a community where this growth can occur in an organic way while providing students with the experiences and tools (academic, artistic and practical) to find their way to meaningful work and relationships, both social and vocational.

Faculty, students and families are partners in learning; exhibiting mutual respect, shared joy in learning, cooperation and caring. We facilitate individual student talents and personal growth, their imagination and passion and their love of the arts. Our rich and challenging course of study integrates academics, the arts, physical and practical life skills. Our small school community encourages students to become all their individual destinies call them to be.
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The Youth Initiative High School will not discriminate based on race, creed, gender, sexual orientation or age. Youth Initiative High School admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.

History of YIHS
The Youth Initiative High School was founded in September, 1996 through the collaborated efforts of a dedicated group of high school students from the Viroqua area decided to take responsibility for their education, parents, teachers, and community members. Although the idea of a Waldorf or Waldorf-inspired high school for the Viroqua area had been discussed among members of the Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School community for a number of years, the most urgent call that led to the creation of a new school at that time arose from a small group of students attending local public and parochial high schools. They shared a desire for a school that would be academically challenging, respectful of individual freedom and dignity, and rooted in a meaningful sense of community and shared responsibility.

What began as conversations among friends in school cafeterias, at parties, and over the phone, soon grew to include parents and other members of the adult community. There, the dissatisfied students found a surprisingly supportive and encouraging attitude. Many members of the adult community had been personally involved with starting new independent organizations, including local food coops, the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool (CROPP-Organic Valley), Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School, and many private businesses. Thus, the students’ proposal for a new school was very favorably received by a community for whom initiative, entrepreneurship, and innovative social organization were all familiar and highly valued.

The first class at the still unnamed Youth Initiative High School began in September, 1996 in one room on the second floor of the Landmark Center. The first Youth Initiative class was in a sense a throwback to the one-room school. There were eleven students –10 male and 1 female--from grades nine through twelve, all in one classroom. The Faculty who stepped forward to take part in the creation of the new school were a richly talented and diverse group, bringing to light a surprising well of experience for a small rural community. Academically, much of the focus of that first year was on the creation of a Mission and Vision statement and other founding documents for the school, in which the students and school community were led by Jerome McGeorge. In May of 1997, YIHS produced its first drama performance – a musical version of the Medieval morality play Everyman - and graduated its first three seniors.

Over the course of the next several years the school grew slowly, engaging in the difficult work of establishing traditions, organizational forms, and a strong culture of cooperation and shared responsibility in the school. One aspect of YIHS which has remained constant has been the central role of students in the governance and funding of the school. In its first year, YIHS students raised over 1/3 of the school’s budget through concerts, agricultural work, and the renovation of a stained glass window for St. Joseph’s Ridge Catholic Church, which became the emblem of the school. In later years, students operated a landscape mulch business and a main lesson book bindery, grew organic produce, picked stones for local farmers, held elegant dinners, and engaged in numerous other fundraising activities. Meanwhile, students also cleaned the school building and played an active role in the governance of the school on the Board of Directors and on a variety of other school committees.

Enrollment at YIHS grew steadily over the first four years. From the initial eleven students in 1996, the school reached of 32 students at the beginning of the 1999 school year. During the 1999-2000 school year, however, the school experienced a significant and multi-faceted crisis of identity which resulted in the loss of a number of students, knocking the school back to an enrollment of 21 students in September of 2000. A key result of this period was a thorough revision of the school’s “Vision and Purpose Statement,” which came to place much greater emphasis on responsibility, self-discipline, and respect for the school community and recommitted the school to working within the Waldorf model. In order to support this vision of the school, a committee of students, parents, and teachers developed the Care Group Process, partly on the basis of the character education curriculum of the Hyde School in Connecticut.

By September of 2002, YIHS had fully recovered from the earlier setback to enrollment and to its reputation in the local community. Enrollment that fall stood at 32 students, including a relatively large class of freshman students directly out of Pleasant Ridge. From that point, the school has grown rapidly, reaching 50 students in the Spring of 2005. Student enrollment held steady at around 50 through 2013-14, and then grew sharply in 2014-15 and 2015-16 and now stands at 68 students. A major growth in enrollment and in diversity of our student population began in 2013 with the initiation of a home-stay boarding program, which truly opened YIHS up to the world. In the 2015-16 year YIHS is hosting 14 full-time boarding students from across the US, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Pakistan, and Ecuador.

Another dimension of the school’s growth can be seen in the development of its administration. In the second year, math teacher Arthur Bernstein was hired as a full-time coordinator and two part time coordinators were added in subsequent years. This staff was succeeded in 2000 by German teacher Conrad Rehbach and, in 2004, Jacob Hundt, one of the founding YIHS students, was hired as a second full-time employee, with a mixture of teaching and administrative responsibilities. Finally, in 2005, Liz Cox became the school’s first development officer, first as a parent volunteer and soon after as a part-time employee. After a health condition forced Mr. Rehbach to retire in 2007 the school was once again forced to reevaluate its leadership structure. The school responded by strengthening its policies looking to ground itself in constitutionalism instead of personality. Over the next couple of years YIHS created or formalized policies regarding personnel decisions, curriculum requirements, and many more as the institution matured into its second decade. In addition, YIHS underwent an administrative reshuffling in 2008. Liz Cox became the school’s administrator, Jacob Hundt its Program Director and Faculty Chair and two new full-time staff members were hired, Shawn Lavoie and Matthew Voz, both with teaching and development office responsibilities.

In 2012 the administrative core shuffled again. Shawn Lavoie left for a year-long Masters Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education and Dave Hibbard-Rode was hired on as the new Development Assistant. Liz Cox, long-time administrator, parent and supporter of the school, left at the end of 2012-13. So at the start of the 2013-14 school year, Matt Voz took over the administrator role, Jacob Hundt remained the Program Director, Shawn Lavoie returned as Development Director, and Dave Hibbard-Rode took on more Development and teaching tasks. By the beginning of the 2014-15 year Bean Voz was hired as full-time staff, working as the coordinator for the boarding program, office manager, and math teacher and Susan Nesbit, a long-time parent leader, was hired as a part-time administrative support. To start the 2015-16 YIHS hired its first full-time science and math department chair, Vicki Ramsay.

Increased maturity as an organization has given us the stability needed to construct and follow our dreams.  YIHS in 2011 published its first long range plan and we are actively working on making it a reality.  As YIHS reaches it 20th year it continues to be a vibrant school, full of energy and exploration. We continue to grow, to be open to change and evolution and we look forward to the years ahead.

Our Unique Approach
Youth Initiative is about building the students’ character, their ability to think, feel and act with love and purpose. We do this within the context of a community, where people depend on each other and collaborate for the good of the whole. We see adolescence as a transition from outwardly imposed authority to inner authority, as a process of developing autonomy. So, students are asked to take on meaningful responsibility, to help in directing the course, and, in so doing, to step into their emerging selves.
You can see this in our Curriculum and our Community.

Youth Initiative is a place unlike any other high school you’ve ever been to. It’s a place where teenagers actually love being here. There’s a palpable joy you experience when you walk through the hallways. When you talk to the teachers: these are people who are just really alive, they’re excited to be teaching their classes, they have a real say in running the school. Everyone has a hand in running the school. I think that’s what gives it this living feeling: that everyone’s voice really matters.”  - Shawn Lavoie, YIHS Faculty and Development Director

“By taking a role in the day-to-day responsibilities of running Youth Initiative and accepting the accountability that comes with it, students develop skills that have lasting value once they leave the halls of high school.” ​- MARTHA B., YIHS Parent

“Youth Initiative offers a great holistic education and more. It engages the students in the workings of things and inspires involvement and purpose in their work in the world. Students are engaged in every aspect of the running of the school. Because of the commitment and initiative these activities inspire in the students, I think it is a form of education that should be available for more teenagers.”

Guiding Principles of the School
  1. Mutual Respect:
    Students agree to respect and honor other students and their teachers by staying alert, offering respectful challenges and arguments, asking thoughtful questions, listening well and playing their part in the learning community. Teachers agree to honor each student’s individuality, listening well to student concerns and questions, seeking to enrich each student’s learning experience. Whenever possible, students will be given the opportunity to meet prospective teachers and have input into their hiring. Students and faculty both agree that we are all representatives of our school and our behavior reflects on our reputation. We will be good stewards of the resources available to us including the Landmark Center and PRWS.

  2. Self Knowing:
    Our school is founded on the assumption that each being has the right and responsibility to strive for freedom, full self-awareness and self-actualization. We encourage each person to come forth in a full expression of their authenticity combined with a strong respect for the rights of the whole. Students need to be aware of their responsibility to the school community, as well as their inherent rights within it. Our curriculum provides the prerequisites for achieving this state of individual freedom.

  3. Wholeness and Interconnectedness:
    Our school fosters an awareness of the interconnectedness of all life, a curriculum that relates all subjects to each other and to the human being. Academic courses are taught with as much practical application as possible. Art, Music and Movement maximize intellectual development while engendering sensitivity and a rich feeling life, helping to develop the capacity to discern the good, the beautiful and the true. Foreign Languages provide a context for the exercise of memory, a point of entry into different cultures and an opportunity to view reality from different points of view. Through practical application of manual skills we support and help to develop the diversity and sustainability of our local rural culture.

  4. Independent Waldorf School:
    We strive to use the principles of Steiner’s work with spiritual science and the Waldorf School indications in such a way as to personally own them. We are not interested in becoming wedded to an ideology that doesn’t live in us. All our decisions are made from a point of deep consideration, honoring each person’s integrity and personal experience. We seek to maintain an entity, which is an independent cultural institution, “free” from outside control. We seek to make this education available for every student and family who desires it.

  5. Student/Faculty Mentoring of Each Other:
    Students and Faculty will actively foster an environment where all are encouraged to seek and offer help to other students and faculty members.

  6. Financial Co-Responsibility:
    ​Students and families are responsible for participating in the funding activities of the school by designing and implementing various fund-raising projects, or by working to offset costs. Students agree to perform 18 hours of service per trimester. Families agree to assume their fair share of the financial responsibility for the school through a combination of tuition payments, cash gifts and gifts of time and effort.

Goals of the School
Youth Initiative is constantly evolving while holding true to its guiding principles. Committees of the school have clear mandates to fulfill the long and short term goals of the school and the Board is responsible for making sure all bodies of the school are in alignment with our mission. A strategic planning committee meets regularly to update our long-range plan and to help facilitate awareness and communication of developments across the school.

Our Publications
The Youth Initiative community of faculty, students, parents, alumni and supporters stays connected throughout the year, sharing news, announcements, and reflections about what’s happening at the school.

Weekender
The Weekender is our weekly bulletin sent out to the Youth Initiative community with important information on events, requests, reminders, news, and fun happenings at the school.
The Kaleidoscope
The Kaleidoscope is Youth Initiative's quarterly magazine.  We use it to discuss a wide variety of pedagogical topics, communicate with our community, and show the world what we've been up to. 

Kaleidoscope Archive

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