Winning Futures – Inspiring and preparing youth to succeed through mentoring.

Archive for April, 2012

Many of Winning Futures’ lessons and activities are designed to help students develop long-term goals. A session held with high school students last week stressed why financial independence and earning potential should be important factors when setting their education and career goals.

Studies show that more education leads to bigger paychecks; i.e., the more you learn the more you earn. To demonstrate this, students were shown average salaries for American workers based on the amount of education they had attained:

• Less than a high school diploma – $9.47 per hour/$18,000 annually
• High school diploma – $12.50 per hour/$24,000 annually
• Associate degree – $15.24 per hour/$30,000 annually
• Bachelor’s degree – $19.28 per hour/$38,000 annually
• Master’s degree – $24.04 per hour/$48,000 annually

Throughout the lesson, mentors worked with students to explain other benefits of continuing their education and setting achievable career goals other than earning power, including:

• Having a lifetime of increased opportunities
• Being more empowered as an agent in your their own lives
• Being better able to weather adversity
• Increased personal marketability

Many lessons like these that you can implement in your own classrooms and youth programs are outlined in Winning Futures’ “Achieving Success” workbook. Click on the “Purchase Books” button at left to learn more.

Winning Futures students from Warren, Michigan’s Community High School recently visited Oakland University (OU). This annual tour illustrates Winning Futures’ Achieving Success workbook lessons on the benefits of continuing education and career goal-setting.

While at OU, students went on a peer-guided tour to experience college’s academic and social environment, including:

• Lecture halls and science labs
• Campus bookstore and library
• Student newspaper and radio station
• Financial aid and admission offices
• Student Union and dormitories.

Students rounded out their day by dining in the campus cafeteria.

“This experience opened a lot of students’ eyes to the fact that college is an option for them,” said Winning Futures’ Vice President and Program Facilitator Laurie Tarter. “In fact, while on our visit, I bumped into four Winning Futures alumni who were currently attending OU. They told me they’d never considered continuing education past high school before taking part in last year’s tour!”

Education and career goal-setting are just a few of the important lessons taught through Winning Futures’ Achieving Success workbooks. To learn more about this unique curriculum, click on the “Purchase Books” button at left.

Winning Futures’ students at Detroit Public School’s Cass Technical High School discussed the importance of attitude with their mentors last week. Groups talked about how developing and projecting a positive attitude can benefit all aspects of their lives, from forming successful personal and professional relationships to increasing general health and well-being.

A fun activity that demonstrates this is building a spaghetti tower! Here’s how it works: Break students into teams of three or four. Give each team a box of uncooked spaghetti and a bag of regular size marshmallows.  Tell them to build the tallest FREE STANDING tower they can with just the spaghetti and marshmallows.  Give them 10-15 minutes to build their tower and award a prize like a bag of candy to the team with the tallest tower!

Close out the activity by explaining the purpose of this exercise: To show that the key to developing a positive attitude and achieving success in life is building a strong foundation. Those that build a strong foundation are then able to stand tall, strong and independently, just like the spaghetti tower.

Lessons like this are outlined in Winning Futures’ “Achieving Success” workbook. Click on the “Purchase Books” button at left to learn more.