Posted on

Life Skills: Confidence Raises Self Esteem

When you think of confidence what people, words or images come to your mind?  I see a person with a smile who is working on something that they know they do very well.   I have watched my wife working in the kitchen preparing a meal, with what seems to be a thousand things happening at the same time and in the end the meal is perfect and served together.  She does it with an easy concentration and with confidence of the outcome.

When you are confident you have a special energy about yourself, you are not easily distracted from the task at hand and if an obstacle does come up, you deal with it without being flustered by the challenge.  Since we cannot be confident in everything that we have to do in a day sometimes we have to put on the face of confidence, we must have the “I Can, I Will” attitude.  How do we accomplish that?

We start with our physical self first.  Our body will stand straight and tall, look others in the eyes and walk in a manner that looks like we know where we are going and that we will not be stopped, with a strong assertive voice. Continue reading “Life Skills: Confidence Raises Self Esteem”

Posted on

Life Skill: Confidence- The Definition

Each month we define and discuss a word of character development and life skill with all of our students.

This month the word is Confidence and will be defined this way.

Young students: Confidence means: I believe in me!

Older students: Confidence means: Complete trust in ourselves or others.

Here are the worksheets for our students:

Confidence TT project confidence 5- 6 project confidence 7-12 project Confidence Teen Adult project

If you would like to see how we will deal with this subject with our students please follow our discussions here during the month of March or come in and TRY A CLASS.

Posted on

Grants 4 Teachers: Balanced Life Skills Community Project

The winter cycle for grant applications is now complete and we will be meeting on Tuesday March 1, with the Advisory Board to award grants for applicants.  We are looking forward to being able to meet some of the needs of our dedicated teachers in Anne Arundel County along with Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County.

If you are a teacher that would like a grant to accomplish something special in your classroom be sure to make application.  If you are a person or business that would like to support and build the morale of teachers in our county please investigate what we are doing and consider contributing to the Grants 4 Teachers Fund.

Posted on

Ryan R. supports Kidsico Orphanage in Kenya

toys sent to orphanage in Kenya

My service project was to help collect gifts for the Kidsico Orphange in Mongomu,Kenya.  Our youth group at church made denim bags for each of the kids and we filled them with little toys and school supplies.

students receiving gifts

I picked out the animals in the picture.  We made flash cards with the names of the animals in English and Swahili.  The pastor in Africa sent us pictures of the kids with the presents we sent.   I think they really liked my gift!

Posted on

Fairness: Listening to the whole story

Teaching children about listening is more than just getting them to listen to us as their parent or teacher.  If we would like to help them to develop good leadership skills, then we must also teach them to listen to the whole story.  Listening to the whole story prior to coming to a conclusion will save ourselves from embarrassment and our relationships with others.  Here is one way we may be able to do that.

To start conversations with a child you may want to use what I call, “What if”  questions.  “What if I walked into the room and I saw _______standing in the middle of a big mess?”  Who would I might think made the mess?  If I saw that I might want to say to ________ “clean up!”  Is that fair?  Would it not be a better question to ask, “what happened?”  and hear the whole story?  We may find out that someone else made the mess, or that the person was in the middle of cleaning up the mess.  Listening makes things fair.

Practicing this ourselves and taking the time to help our children see how and why we ask such questions will help them to do the same as they come into situations with their friends.