Learners Shine under the Sun: Three Takeaways from the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum

Imagine this: I’m standing on a gym floor in front of 700 high school students staring at me from the bleachers. I swear this isn’t the start of a recurring nightmare, it was the exact opposite. It was a dream opportunity to introduce our organization to young people from across Southern Nevada last month.

I’ve been a moderator at the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum for seven years now, just a small slice of a 70-year tradition that’s remained a proud beacon of possibility in our community. It’s genuinely my favorite day of the year.

At a time when all of us, especially young people, are bombarded with bad news, isolation, and nonstop doom-scrolling, the Youth Forum feels like exhaling. It’s a day rooted in hope, dialogue, and inspiring action. It’s a reminder that when you bring young people together, listen deeply, and create space for honest conversation, something powerful happens: you see the future of learning right in front of you.

Here’s what stood out to me the most: 

1. Young People are Ready to Redesign the Future of Learning

   In my session, School Days, young people wasted no time diving into what’s working, what’s not and what needs to evolve. Their debates were thoughtful and respectful, exploring topics like cell phone bans, project-based learning, the importance of real-world experiences, and the growing influence of AI on their education.

   
   

   Some argued that AI should be restricted because of the environmental costs of server farms, while others pushed back and said the real problem was that AI literacy is missing from classrooms, leaving them unprepared for the world they are entering. These young people debated how to balance creativity with academic accountability and questioned why school structures created decades ago still define their daily lives.

   
   

   Their conclusion was clear and universal: the system needs to change. Every student in the room believed that learning should feel more relevant, connected to the world, and designed around their needs.

   
   

   In the business world, teams would never design a product without user testing and direct feedback from the people who will use it, and yet, young people, who are the “users” of school, are often excluded from designing the learning experience itself. Their insights are sharp, their ideas are practical and their lived experience is data. If we want education to become what it needs to be, young people must be co-creators, not occasional consultants.

   
   

   My Learning and Recommendation: Don’t let the persistent magnetism of the status quo keep us from reimagining learning experiences. In other words, question why we do things and why our schools and expectations for students are what they are. Most importantly, bring in young people as the user of the experience to truly understand what’s working and what’s not. We cannot tweak a system over and over and expect radically different results.

2. Young People are Leading 

   My official title for the day was “Moderator,” but it was the students who shaped the direction, tone, and results of the experience. They offered changes to the rules and came up with different approaches to self-governance that ensured a balance between swift dialogue and equity of voice, modeling civil disagreement better than many adults do. The young people pushed one another to clarify ideas and to think about tradeoffs and consequences.

   
   

   When was the last time you got to hear a group of young people talk about important, real-world topics? 

   
   

   If you haven’t had the chance, I implore you to listen beyond the way we can sometimes tokenize youth voice. The Sun Youth Forum proves that adults can create spaces where this is possible. The day is an annual reminder that “leader” is not a title that magically flips a switch when a young person turns 18, earns a specific degree or starts a certain job. Leadership is the ability to influence a room, ask the questions others are afraid to ask, and to speak from a place that feels authentic. So often we create spaces that stifle youth voices and force them to conform to adult-created limitations, but our job is to see them, support them, and make space for more of their brilliance to surface. 

   
   

   My Learning and Recommendation: Don’t just think of young people as users of their educational experience. Let’s learn from the Sun Youth Forum and lift the voices of the next generation of leaders. In our work, I imagine young people as leaders ready to redesign the learning experience alongside us. Let’s create that space to illuminate what young people are saying. This summer, doing that led to the creation of the Almanac for the Future of Learning, one small example of what’s possible. 

3. Young People Deserve Ongoing Spaces to Shape Their Community

   Walking out of the Forum, I kept thinking about its history. For more than 70 years, the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum has created a day that students talk about long after it ends. It is one of the few moments in our city where young people’s ideas are treated as civic contributions.

   
   

   This tradition deserves to last another 70 years. It deserves to grow and remain a special day on our community calendar.

   
   

   But, we cannot wait for one annual event to carry this work. We should be finding ways to bring this level of youth agency into every month of the year and every major decision we make about learning, opportunity, and community. We should be scaling this spirit to more schools, districts, and cities.

   
   

   There is something remarkable happening in Las Vegas. In a place where we often hear discouraging news about education, this forum is a bright light. It reminds us what is possible when we trust young people with real responsibility and if we commit to scaling this energy, we could build a future where every city in America has its own version of this day. 

   
   

   My Recommendation: The Sun Youth Forum began in Las Vegas in 1955. It’s special. Let the Sun Youth Forum shine a spotlight on student success for years to come. If you don’t already support the event, think about sponsoring, donating scholarships to students, or becoming a moderator. Beyond Vegas, if there’s a town or city in America that doesn’t have something similar, let’s scale those opportunities for them. 

The Forum is a reminder that our community has everything it needs to build a stronger future: curious young people, dedicated educators, and adults who care deeply about what comes next. If we continue to nurture these connections and give young people meaningful ways to shape their own learning experiences, I’m confident that the future of Southern Nevada will be brighter, more connected, and more full of possibility than ever before.