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 | The Missing Piece |
Franklin's Philosophy of Life
in His Own Words
312 Pages
About ChoiceSkills™, Inc.
Contact Information
Mission
Goal
Philosophy
History
Hello, my name is George Rogers. I am the founder and President of ChoiceSkills™. If you are like I am, you like to know something about the people you do business with, and especially you want to be able to contact them if you have a question or problem.
Hopefully, the following will give you the information you need. But if not, please feel free to contact us.
OUR MISSION
The mission of ChoiceSkills is to empower our young to safely navigate the troubled waters of a rapidly changing and increasingly challenging world by supplying the missing piece in education
The missing piece in education is a highly developed set of emotional, social and thinking skills that endow them with the ability to consistently make sound, responsible choices in environments of commotion, confusion and contradiction
Because this piece is missing in education, there are critical missing links in the choice making processes employed by the vast majority of the human race.
In essence, what we do is teach young people how to connect the dots. . .
OUR GOAL
Our goal is to provide Mothers, Fathers, Teachers and others who work with youth with the tools and resources resources to effectively help young people develop the emotional, social and thinking skills necessary to think rightly.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
The guiding philosophy of ChoiceSkillsTM, Inc. may be summarized in the following quotes from Benjamin Franklin.
“There can be no happiness but in a virtuous and self-approving conduct.”
“. . . .as the happiness or real good of man consists in right action and right action cannot be produced without right opinion, it behooves, us above all things in this world to take care that our own opinions of things be according to the nature of things. The foundation of all virtue and happiness is thinking rightly.”
The ability to think rightly lies at the root of all human happiness and well being. It is the fundamental character trait on which all other character traits rely for their development. In turn, the ability to think rightly is dependent upon what Daniel Goleman calls emotional intelligence and social intelligence coupled with a set of highly developed thinking skills.
Like any other form of intelligence and skills, one's emotional intelligence, social intelligence and thinking skills must be carefully cultivated and developed. Since this is not currently happening in any consistent form in society today, it is our obligation to do all in our power to create educational resources and a community of like minded individuals to teach and expand these concepts.
Click on character trait, emotional intelligence and social intelligence to be linked to pages on our web site explaining them in greater detail.
OUR HISTORY
ChoiceSkills™, Inc, began in 1980 as Acorn Publishing, Inc. with the publishing of Benjamin Franklin’s The Art of Virtue. A teacher friend gave a copy of this book to her father who, after reading it, said the ideas contained in it should be taught in school. I agreed with him.
The concept of Character Based Learning grew out of my experience in working with over 150 teachers, and several administrators and parents in Minnesota and Utah to develop lessons for teaching character education and social skills. Early pilots found that while teachers and students very much enjoyed the lessons, and teachers felt they were truly teaching something important to their students, they had difficulty fitting them into their daily schedule.
In weighing how to make these lessons more curriculum friendly, I realized that embedded in every field of study are natural opportunities to create Character Based Learning experiences. All that is necessary is the ability to recognize these opportunities and know how to take advantage of them. It also became obvious that moral, mental and emotional development, are inherent elements in learning any body of knowledge. Ignored, the development of any of these qualities is meager, but with proper attention, development is not only significant, but also highly synergistic to learning any useful subject.
While this is a valuable concept, in practice it is difficult to know what to do with it. Also, my primary focus was on public education where there is little energy or resources to devote to much beside core curriculum.
With this in mind, we have simplified our approach to a few core concepts that can be generally applied and are focusing on mothers who are homeschooling. Nonetheless, these ideas and resources can be beneficially utilize by anyone involved in teaching youth,
As a result, several teaching strategies utilized in The Seven C’s of Thinking Clearly are not only applicable to the stories and activities contained therein, but may also be utilized in teaching from any homeschool curriculum or other resources used to teach children. Each lesson in The Seven C's of Thinking Clearly is a mini-tutorial on how to teach children the emotional, social and thinking skills necessary for thinking rightly and making sound, responsible choices..
Mailing Address: ChoiceSkills, Inc.
P.O. Box 54
Midvale, UT 84047
Phone Number: 801-352-7141
The imaginative activities and examples make the teaching fun and that's when teachers and students get excited.
Media Specialist
Eden Prairie, MN
. . .by far the most creative social skills program I have ever reviewed.
School Social Worker
Terre Haute, IN
Extremely appropriate for my students. Skills they are lacking and need desparately. They stayed involved and were able to participate.
Elementary Teacher
Lindon, UT
The students were very attentive. They enjoyed the subject matter and were able to bring their own experiences into the discussion and relate to it.
Elementary Teacher
Highland, UT
I really liked them.
I think it was important
I liked it. I liked it. I liked it.
3rd Grade Students
Eden Prairie, MN