Real Life Skills Program
What is missing from your child’s education?
Real Life Skills was founded to make student’s educational experiences complete. We designed a curriculum that would prepare our students for the world they will become responsible for when they graduate. We collaborated with students, parents, business leaders, and teachers to discover what additions to the standard curriculum would make a true difference in the quality and success of our students’ lives. What missing skills would create the next generation of leaders prepared to rise above and make a difference?
Real Life Skills is a program where children learn the necessary skills for an ever-changing world.
We have designed and tested a 10-part program that gives our students an advantage in life. In our ever-changing world, creativity, adaptability, and diversified thinking are the missing links in the education system. Simply gathering knowledge is not sufficient for success in life. Our students learn to apply that knowledge, take action to fulfill their goals, and develop key skills that create the lives they want based on their passions and desires.
Based on our own experience with our 5 children, we knew that our students required a fuller curriculum to prepare them for the modern world and its new global economies.
Together with our dedicated team, we began speaking with students. The overwhelming message we received from them was that the world was a frightening place. Anxiety, stress, and unhappiness defined much of their school lives. They felt they were unprepared to deal with the expectations of school, how to study, how to learn, how to even express their dissatisfaction without being chastised for showing disrespect. Dealing with the fast pace of their lives, changing and uncontrollable emotions, conflicting priorities, and other unknowns require new skills that they traditionally have not been taught.
Our Real Life Skills Program fills in that gap with such skills as Emotional Intelligence, study skills, and meditation.
Our collaboration with business leaders demonstrated how far the new world economies have changed. We have clearly moved into an entrepreneurial economy where, in each of the three main world economies (Western, Emerging, and Developing Countries), small to medium sized business are driving the growth in Western economies. Smaller firms, led by creative, self-disciplined men and women, are thriving in a collaborative atmosphere. Emerging countries like China and Russia are sustaining their growth through innovative entrepreneurship. In developing countries, aid has been found to be totally ineffective in creating a sustained economy. A new breed of entrepreneurial philanthropist has emerged, creating and training local entrepreneurs to develop sustainable economies less dependent on aid. In all cases, small business are driving the economy.
That same mindset is taking over the corporate offices as well. When asked, CEOs of the top 500 companies in the world say they are looking for employees that are creative and adaptable, who are able to find collaborative, innovative solutions. Meanwhile, the go to solution of the education system (better trained, more tech savvy students) ranked 7th in the list of important skills.
Real Life Skills was designed to give our students the skills to become valued employees or to take the reins themselves, leading others in their own companies, depending on their desires and passions.
Finally, we spoke to parents about what they felt they had missed out on in life. We discussed what challenges they have faced, what might have slowed them in achieving their goals, or even the fact that they had never been taught about the important skill of setting and achieving goals. We became the students and learned from the needs and mistakes of the previous generation by asking a simple question. What skills or knowledge did you wish you had when you were younger that would have given you a better, more fulfilled, and happier life?
The answer is simple … Real Life Skills
Once we put together the Real Life Skills Program, the most common reaction from those same parents was exactly what we expected: “I really wish someone had taught me that when I was a kid.”
And that is exactly what the Real Life Skills Program does – teach our students the skills they need for a more productive, happier life full of success and enjoyment.
From a business woman in London Ontario:
“I have read about your Real Life Skills Program and probably think I should go to your school and start over. I had a terrible time at school when I grew up. The teachers were very mean which frightened me and then I was just paralyzed mentally and physically so couldn’t learn at all. I remember being stood up in front of the class because I couldn’t rhyme off the times tables perfect, ALL of them. And then a teacher threw chalk across the room at me because I didn’t get something he felt was important. I eventually grew up thinking I was dumb and couldn’t do anything, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So to hear your commitment to turning out a student that is not just good at school but a student good at life is really wonderful!!”