News:
"Strategies for Success Curriculum" creator Marianne Douglas has been named a
finalist for
Cable's Leaders in Learning Awards
Cable
in the Classroom has announced the 2007 Cable's Leaders in Learning
Awards finalists!
43 of the most innovative educators,
administrators, policy makers and community leaders in the country
are being recognized for their vision, innovation, action and
transformation of learning in schools and communities.
Read More...
Recipient of Certificate of
Special Congressional Recognition by the United States Senate
"I have seen our
students grow in confidence, maturity and responsibility
as they accepted your challenge. The success of
your program is further apparent in the positive
atmosphere created not only in your classroom but in the
community as a whole."
Nancy Vorro
Former
Dean of Students, Mt. Hope High School
Bristol,
RI
“Good teachers never teach
anything.
What
they do is create the conditions under which learning takes
place. “ S. I.
Hayakawa
“My
years in high school have been tough because of problems I was
having at home and everywhere else. At the beginning of the year I
was ready to give up, I didn’t know what to do. All I know was that
I was struggling to pass school and I had no support from my
family.
A
week into this class, I noticed that everything was slowly
changing. It helped me create a vision for my life, change my old
ways, become aware of my own negative thoughts and how to replace
them with new positive ones.”
"It
teaches things that aren't usually taught in school but are
necessary to be successful."
"It
helps with my and others self-esteem because it's a group of
different people in different ages/grades thrown into one class that
need to learn how to work together and get along as you would at a
new job."
“I still can’t believe how much I’ve changed since the class. I’m proud of myself
since I stepped up. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!”
Sophomore
“Now I have a positive attitude wherever I go. I took this
class because I was forced to (I didn’t want a study) and it was
the greatest class I have ever taken in my life.”
"I
absolutely love this class and it's outrageously awesome. I
recommend it to every student. This class is always the highest
point of my day and basically makes my life better."
"Many of my music students found
techniques in 'Strategies for Success'
that help them as musicians. More importantly, I have seen many
students gain leadership skills, self-confidence and positive
energy."
Vicki Boyle, Choral Director
“This will be the class that students will still be talking
about ten years from now.”
Junior
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"Beside
the student progress and reactions to this course, the best part
about teaching it, is the ability for me to incorporate my own
personality and personal experiences.
I was
concerned at first that I could not take Marianne’s creation and
mimic the results she has achieved. What I failed to realize is
that the message is imbedded in the curriculum and the daily
activities. That added to each teacher’s own unique style,
makes it work with the students."
Michael Almeida, Current 'Strategies
for Success' Teacher at Mt.
Hope High School
“I should also say thanks because I certainly
haven't forgotten everything I've learned in
"Strategies for Success" and there's no way I'd be
making it through college without all that you
taught me."
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"You don't just do the usual study from the text book but you
get involved in everything you do in class. It is by far one of
my favorite classes because we are taught skills and strategies
that will stay with us for the rest of our lives."
“Taking ‘Strategies
for Success’ was one of the best choices I’ve ever made.
‘Strategies’ can best be described as more than a class. It’s
more like an opportunity to gain tips and advice that you can
use your entire life.”
Sophomore
“The importance and need for rich sensory and
hands-on learning continues throughout our lives.
However, many of our educational practices derive
from the unexamined assumption that people will learn
best if given lots of information in either lecture or
two-dimensional written form. We have only to look at
the glazed eyes and vacant stares of students in a
lecture hall or classroom to know that this is a belief
that needs to be abandoned.”
"I would encourage students to take "Strategies for Success",
as I have seen over the past several years the positive impact
this course has had on students. Some began the course as shy,
non-advocating adolescents and emerged more self-assured with a
better understanding of themselves and others.
Students have come back to thank me for telling them to take
"Strategies for Success". What they learned became a part
of them. They seemed to be enthused, active participants of the
class."
Van Chase, Department Chair Special Education, Pupil Services
“Thank you for dedicating your life to designing your own course
to better the lives of high school students. That is remarkably
admirable. I find this to be very important because school is
too interested in giving book smarts and teaching us things we
don’t really need in life. Your class really prepares us for the
outside world.
Another thing that has impacted me is the environment your class
provides. The feeling I get when I walk into the room is one of
positive energy. It makes me feel like I belong. Most
importantly to me, I feel safe in your class."
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They
said it couldn't happen...
-
A
high school class with eager attentive students and
virtually no discipline problems
-
A mixed class with students of all grades and
abilities and as diverse as the population of the school
-
A class where students learn the tools they need to be
successful not only during the school year but for the rest
of their lives
-
A high school program
that can positively change the climate of the entire school
while supporting all the aspects of the school - courses,
extra-curricular activities, and staff
But it has.
A
program that achieves all that and more does exist and is
ready for your high school. And with all that is
happening in the world today, it has never been needed more.
Created in the wake of the tragedy at Columbine and the tragic
suicide of a student after repeated bullying, this program has
been changing the lives of the students who have taken it since
2001.
While there
are no simple
answers to address all the
issues that face teens and schools at this time in our history,
this program is making a marked difference in many of the issues
facing teens in high schools now.
A high school in Rhode Island
addressed these issues with a course created specifically to
tackle the educational and social needs of teens today.
The course entitled "Strategies for Success" was created by a
veteran award-winning teacher and has been taught to over 3000
teens of all ages and abilities in the past eight years with
extraordinary results.
Student
achievement increased as did attendance. Discipline referrals
declined and an overall positive attitude began to permeate the
entire school complex.
Why
should I choose this curriculum?
Strategies for Success
provides students with multi-intelligence, whole brain based,
and team building sets of lessons that allow students to gain
tools for coping with issues both in and out of school.
The energizing classroom environment created in this course
allows students to actively participate in building strategies
that will last a lifetime.
Students who have taken this
course have shown marked improvement in the following areas:
-
grades both in class and on
state assessment tests
-
relationships with peers, school staff, family members,
employers and friends
-
ability
to handle the stress of life both in and out of school
-
financial
literacy
-
leadership qualities
This course was
written to address some of the elements missing in the education
of teens in the twenty-first century. Parents, business
owners, teachers and teens themselves have expressed concern
that students are not exposed to as many positive influences as
in years past.
With fragmented families and both
parents working, teens often find themselves with an
overabundance of time on their hands and a scarcity of
empowering resources at their disposal. For many, advice
comes in the form of the omnipresent media or a fellow teen.
They need and want assistance in creating a good life for
themselves but often don’t know where to turn for reliable
information.
Schools have
ramped up their academic curricula to address new laws and
national testing. Teachers have been asked to rise to the ranks
of ‘high performing.’ Parents have struggled to find
solutions to help their children
But students
still seek a cohesive framework to link their educational and
social issues in a meaningful, engaging and inviting manner.
And they would like to find a way to enjoy school or at least
have some classes that are fun to attend while being
inspirational as well as educational. Strategies can be
that course for your school.
“Many of our young people have been so
soured by their experience in today’s
classrooms that the joy of learning has all
but died for a lifetime.”
“The 7 Secrets of Learning Revealed: What
Your Teacher Never Taught YouBecause Your
Teacher Never Knew”
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Strategies for Success provides the kind
of learning and material that are often only seen in the charter
schools.
But all students deserve to know the simple yet
effective ground-breaking lessons that this program provides.
The ability to offer Strategies as a semester elective
course allows that to happen.
Students who have
taken this course not only have improved academically but also
have achieved goals that they, their parents and their teachers
have set for them in varied areas of their lives. The
students carry the positive attitude attained in this course
throughout the school complex creating a change in the
atmosphere of the school at large.
This unique
curriculum has everything a teacher needs to duplicate the
phenomenal success this course has achieved to date with over
3000 high school students of all ages and abilities.
Strategies for Success helps fill the missing pieces in
the puzzle that represents the life of the 21st centrury high
school student.
Why
should a high school consider adopting this program?
Here's what
teacher/author Marianne Douglas says:
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1. This curriculum is not from a big publishing house.
It is written by someone who
was in the classroom
recently.
So often I’ve heard educators say that speakers and textbooks
are out of touch with what schools are truly like. Since I
am a very recent classroom teacher, my experiences are as timely
and as relevant as I could make them.
2. This curriculum
although certainly not perfect has been tested with over fifty
classes and
although it appears simple, it's not easy.
Although the concepts taught here are simple, they are not easy
to achieve. The success of the course is a result of the
building of trust between instructor and students and in turn,
among students. Each lesson builds that trust while
sharing a simple but highly effective technique used by the most
successful people in the world.
Click
here
to see what some recent students thought about the
Strategies program.
3. This
may not seem like a traditional textbook or course but maybe
it’s time to think outside the box.
What we’re doing in schools as a
whole is not working as well as it should. As a business
owner as well as educator, I didn’t feel that we were training
high school students as well as we could or should. They
needed more than the traditional education. But with busy
parents, teens were not getting as much of the common sense
advice that many of us experienced growing up.
This course helps to fill in the gaps that are not being
provided by society as a whole.
“In order to learn, think or create,
learners must
have an emotional commitment. Yet schools
by and large deliver knowledge in piecemeal,
segregated subject areas in an unemotional,
unsocial environment.
The connection to the students’ own
personal concerns or future survival is
usually remote.
And teachers complain about of having
to be disciplinarians, instead of
educators.”
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4. It's
written so
any
teacher can have success with this program.
Many people wonder if the reason the
course worked was because I was teaching it. As much as it
flatters me to hear that, it’s the material and the way it is
taught that makes the course shine. My replacement has
done incredibly well and he had the memory of my place in the
school to contend with. Since I left, several other
teachers in my school have taught the course successfully.
I strongly believe that any teacher
with a good attitude about teens and a heart can take the words
I’ve written and make them come to life. Teaching is one
of the toughest jobs I’ve ever had so I wanted to make the
materials available for teaching this course
as complete and easy to use as possible.
Plus, whoever teaches the course will have a year of email
support to help
them achieve their goals with their students.
Teachers who want additional resources may purchase the book I
wrote detailing my teaching style entitled,
"When Am I Ever Going to Use This?
101 Ways to Survive and Thrive in the High School Classroom"
available as an downloadable E-Book.
5. Students
have fun in this class.
When was it decided that school
should
not be fun? Why would kids want to go somewhere
every day for twelve years that is so inherently serious all the
time?
We live in an entertainment driven
world and as a society we seem to honor most the people who
entertain us – actors, musicians, athletes. But we expect
our kids who are constantly bombarded with the media in all its
forms to sit and listen to one human speaking. We as
adults have problems doing that!
Think of how it feels to sit in a
long after school meeting or professional day with a less than
inspiring speaker. And as stressful as life is for most of
us these days, most of us don’t have the types of emotional
challenges that many of our teens have to overcome.
There's enough research now that shows that learning in a
sterile and often harsh environment does not empower students to
shine or even retain what they're learning Research has
also shown that we learn best in a fun, positive supportive
climate Strategies creates on a daily basis.
Let’s lighten the load a bit for our
students while challenging them to do their best. Let’s
add a little fun to their learning. You’ll
be amazed when you see how much students thrive when they begin
to enjoy school!
“There is recent brain research that
shows that the
frontal lobes of the neo cortex which are
responsible for empathy, consideration of
others…do not mature until the late teens,
early twenties.
This might explain why anything in
learning that is immersed in positive
emotions, with love, fun, joy and high active energy tends to have
more success than the traditional drudgery
of high school classrooms.”
“When positive emotions and joy
are brought
into the rational process,
downshifting to the R-complex part
of the brain (the fight/flight part
of the brain) does not take place.
The sullen, bored, and
anxious student who seeks to flee
from school can become an obsolete
experience in an enlightened
school.”
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6. This
course sets the tone for the rest of the school if given the
chance.
Within a very
short time, it becomes ‘cool’ to be positive and everyone will
realize something special is going on.
This attitude begins to permeate the hallways, the other
classes, and after school activities.
7. This
course is filled with
activities
that fit all learning styles so that all learners have a chance
to shine.
My favorite
quote about teaching from Eric Butterworth is “Tell
me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me
and I understand.”
It’s important to
involve
students in the substance of our courses. How will they
remember otherwise?
“The mere imparting of information
is not education.
Above all things, the effort must result
in making a man think and do for himself.”
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Speaker and businessman Alex
Mandossian said at the recent Mark Victor Hansen (co-author of
the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series) “Mega Speaking Seminar”
that according to a study at Yale University, his audience:
-
Will forget 40%
of
what he told them in the following forty minutes.
-
They
will forget 30%
more in the next 24 hours.
-
A week from the date
he spoke, another
20% will
have been forgotten.
-
They will lose 90% of what
they had heard that day. 90%!!
The cure for that memory loss? Activity. Learning
with activity aids retention. Some of the most well known
motivational speakers in the world have taken this knowledge to
design seminars for their audiences that are filled with
activity. They recognize the value of this style of
learning and realize that it's part of what brings people back
over and over and keeps their business thriving.
8.
The curriculum is written so current events in the news or the
media can be woven in to the lesson to make it more relevant.
Kids today want what they’re learning to connect with their
lives NOW. They can’t see far enough into the future to
understand where they’ll need to know history or the Pythagorean
Theorem. But if you can show them how it connects with
their lives now, they become eager students.
Many say that students of
previous generations had to learn seriously and that may be
true. But those generations didn’t have the distractions
that kids today have. We can either keep trying to make
them like we were and keep losing them to all the things that
interest them more than school or we can find a way to use those
things to connect with them and entice them to learn.
9. It honors the fact
that students want to know why they're learning a lesson.
Seeing the reactions students had to knowing their learning
styles taught me an important lesson. Students want to be
in on what’s going on. They want to know why we
do what we do. The little two year old who asks “Why” has
evolved into the high school student who asks, “Why do I have to
learn this?” or “When am I ever going to use this?” If we
can answer that question convincingly, we move closer to having
them become active participants in their own education.
Awareness of that simple
distinction changed the way I taught. I had always been pretty
forthright with my students but I now began to share the ‘why’
of everything I did or at least made it comfortable for them to
ask. It was more than students knowing which standard the
lesson addressed. It was knowing why this mattered to
their lives now and later.
10. The
instructor who teaches this course will learn new teaching
techniques which they can share with others in the school.
And they can make this course their own.
Many of the methods I used to
teacher this course were discovered in business seminars.
People who speak at these incredibly large and expensive
seminars are very effective at educating the members of the
audience as well as keeping them motivated and entertained.
If they don’t do a good job speaking, they’re done
professionally.
A business closes if it’s not
successful. Classroom teachers who are boring and don’t
have the ability to teach are still in the classroom for the
most part. It’s not that they’re not trying their best.
It may be that they were never trained to be great speakers.
Whatever the reason, they’re still there. That’s the way school
systems are set up.
I know this because I certainly have had
my boring days. I even bored myself so much that I took a leave
of absence! I only wish I had learned these techniques
earlier in my teaching career! But I had the distinct
advantage that I got to test these techniques daily with high
school students from all walks of life and when I did, the
results were stunning. I've captured these in a new book,
"When Am I Every Going to Use This? 101 Tips to Survive
and Thrive in the High School Classroom" which is now available
in immediately downloadable E-Book format
here.
“The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher
is that he or
she transcends accepted educational methods.”
Margaret Mead
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How can I use
this program in my school?
This course was designed
to be
used as a semester course. It was originally placed
in the business department as an elective but it could be placed
in other departments as well.
A
school could use this program in other ways besides as a
self-supporting course.
They include:
-
As an after school program
for schools that have to lengthen their school day.
At the recent
American Association of School Administrators conference in
San Diego, a video was shown to superintendents relating the
benefits of after school programs for teens. This program
would be an ideal addition to schools looking for meaningful
ways to extend the school day.
-
As the character component
for senior project programs.
Senior projects are becoming commonplace in the school
course of studies. Students must enroll in at least
one course where character is studied. This program
encompasses character and ethics among other topics
-
For personalization or
advisor/advisee programs.
Schools and parents recognize that many teens feel isolated
and disconnected from their peers. The personalization
and advisor/advisee programs were developed to address this
problem but often schools are unsure of what materials are
available to put these programs into place.
You can have this
course in the high school in your district. The detailed
curriculum is now available to schools around the country. It is
written so that any teacher can duplicate the process that
achieved such amazing results.
What's included when I purchase this program?
The
curriculum packet contains:
-
The Teacher
Edition
-
The Student
Journal Book which is copy ready (one copy is included
with the packet. Schools may opt to purchase
individual books for students)
-
A CD
with all Student Journal pages should a teacher want to
personalize the work along with supplemental materials
-
A copy of
the teen book written by students titled, "How To Deal
When Your Middle Name is Stress - Real Teens, Real Advice"
-
One year email support
from the creator and original
teacher of the program
What is the purchase price?
Price: $1695 plus
shipping
New price for 2011! With all that's happening with
bullying in our country, we want to make this program more
affordable for every high school!
Now receive the full program for only $997!!
(Plus
shipping of $20 or $35 for overnight delivery)
Can I take a look at the program before purchasing?
Absolutely! Email us at
Info@StrategiesforSuccessCurriculum.com
for
a perusal copy in PDF format.
It includes the
following:
-
Three of the 56 lessons
-
The Student Journal pages for each lesson
-
The introduction to the course
-
What to expect as the teacher of the course
How can I purchase this program?
There are three
ways to purchase this program:
1. Use this
PayPal link (Use Paypal or your favorite credit card)
2.
Send a Purchase Order to Kaleidoscope Theatre either by
FAX at 401-246-2298 or by mail to:
Kaleidoscope Theatre
PO Box 356
Barrington, Rhode Island 02806.
3.
Send a
check made out to Kaleidoscope Theatre to the address
above.
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