What an exciting journey we are on! 17 years ago I began developing the “Life Skills for Teens: Personal Empowerment” curriculum after having taught Biology and/or Chemistry my entire career.
Here we are 17 years later with a student created and operated network of social mentoring teams that are helpingn younger children manage the sometimes complex and confusing social-emotional journey to adulthood.
This year, with the development of the “Kids Are The Solution Project” and “Social Mentoring Teams” we have taken a quantum leap forward. The idea came to me as my students were presenting their PSAs (Public Service Announcement) projects to the class last year and I knew that the kids themselves were the ones to take this entire project to the next level. They took to it like proverbial ducks to water!
I was stunned the first time we took our “Alpha Teams” to one of our feeder schools and they took over the room, made sure that they connected with every student in the class, interacted with them in powerful ways, and even had them up in front of their classmates running “Role Playing Situations” to practice and demonstrate the strategies that both targets of bullying and the bystanders can use to drain the power from the bullies and even end up inviting the bullies into a world that is safe and happy for everyone.
Beginning with our Middle School students, Our goal is to have a high functioning student created and student given network of “Social Mentoring Teams” involved in grades k-12 in each participating district.
Specific goals are:
For each feeder school that we visit to have a lead teacher and a counselor or Principal at that site step up and and arrange to invite our teams to train younger teams to take the message to younger and younger students.
Barb Wagner (Founder "Kids Are The Solution Project")