FreeFlight Launchpad for Life

A supportive community for teens in middle or high school and their families

Is FreeFlight right for you?

Teens

Do you want to explore what you want from your life, what actually makes you come alive?

Do you worry sometimes that you are not adequately prepared for adulthood?

Parents

Do you wish for your teens to successfully carve their own unique path, and become multi-dimensional, happy adults?

Do you want to support and guide your teens wisely, but sometimes don’t know how?

Join the Community!

FreeFlight is a unique parents and teens membership club that meets on the second Saturday of each month to share experiences, wrestle with important questions and strategize solutions to common problems.

Each session provides members opportunities to learn and practice common life skills within their parallel peer groups.

Parents learn how to best support teens on their chosen pathway.

What You Get in a Specific Session

Outline

Each session begins with an outline of the agenda about that month’s theme after which parents and teens break up into separate groups.

Date & Time

Sessions are 90 minutes long and are held on the 2nd Saturday of every month.

Facilitators

A parent volunteer or expert leads the parent session, youth moderators lead the teen session.

Energizer

The parallel tracks begin with a mindfulness/energizing exercise followed by a fun game or activity.

Theme

The theme of the month is introduced through several activities/games followed by discussions. The parent and teen parallel tracks have identical content.

Reflections

Each track ends with a reflection on the session.

Social Time

Sessions conclude with pizza and social time.

Takeaways

A couple of days after each session, you receive a support sheet with resources and key takeaways to help you apply the concepts in your own life.

FreeFlight 2021-22 Sessions

Touchdown Confirmed!

Dr. Swati Mohan, Guidance Lead for Mars Rover Mission (bonus session)

Aug

Orientation and FreeFlight Core Values

Ready, Set, Fly!

Sep

Foundations of Living

Making choices aligned with individual core values

Oct

Communicate with Intent

What you say is not what is heard

Nov

Money, money, money!

Needs and wants, cost of things

Dec

Role Model Selena Pistoresi

Young founder of Cultivate Music Studio

Jan

Role Model Sowmya Bhat

Unusual journey to becoming a Web Developer

Feb

What’s all the fuss about food?

How to eat
What to eat

Mar

Embody your own power

Defend physical and emotional safety (taught by Personal Safety experts)

Apr

Time can be your friend

Ways to make your time matter

May

End of year celebration

Recap learnings and celebrate community

Jun

What Makes FreeFlight Unique?

Role Play

Crystallizing core values

Parent Ice Breaker

Teen Game

Parent Energizer

Geared towards teens and parents

Parent and teen parallel tracks have identical content, to encourage healthy communication on critical issues

Teens cultivate a broad set of life skills

Mindfulness practice, reflection, self-advocacy, critical thinking, financial literacy and personal safety are some examples

Exposure to role models in non-traditional careers

Teens learn about financial viability of different career paths, and engage with different possibilities for their future

Organized as a multi-year curriculum

This allows for spiral learning, and deeper age-appropriate exploration of different topics

Key Attributes of FreeFlight

FreeFlight Multi-year Themes

FreeFlight is a mindfully-crafted, multi-year structured curriculum of activities (including community building) and talks, addressing soft skills, life skills, and awareness of careers and academic paths

Soft Skills

Mindfulness practice
Critical thinking
Resilience
Accepting and embracing differences
Asking for help
Self advocacy
Negotiation
Team work
Dealing with failure
Empathy
Executive functioning
Emotional self-regulation
Handling peer pressure

Life Skills

Cooking Basics
Financial Preparedness – Balancing, Budgeting
Emergency Preparedness
Who Am I – writing exercise
Safety
Time Management
Fitness
Knowledge of community resources
Wellness (emotional, social, physical)
Diet and Nutrition
Housing Basics

Career Paths

What is a “successful life”?
Identify interests, passions, strengths and challenges
Unusual careers
Role models in diverse careers
Gap year options
Exposure to careers via summer internships
Vocational training and colleges that provide support
Resume Workshop
Job seeking skills

FreeFlight employs a spiral learning approach, with topics being revisited over multiple years from 7th to 12th grade, to allow for an age-appropriate understanding of the different topics.

Shown here are examples of how the topics of Wellness and Financial Literacy can be explored with increasing depth over several years.

Wellness

Financial Literacy

DISCLAIMER: Information provided in FreeFlight sessions represents the collective wisdom, based on experience and research, of many parents. They are meant to serve as a guide and not as a substitute for professional expertise.