Education 8th – 12th Grades

Focus Life offers our individual courses in the following applications to help educate, equip and empower individuals and students to focus in navigating their future.

Focus Life Institute is an on-line, educational, strategic training curriculum that equips, educates and
empowers individuals to FOCUS on identifying their calling and assignment in life, achieve their purpose
and fulfill their destiny.

Our curriculum provides a personalized experience for students in the following areas:

  • SEL – Social Emotional Learning Support

  • Creating A Personal Vision Statement and Identifying Passion Areas

  • Behavioral Development – Understanding Self and the Motivations of Others

  • Matching Student’s Behavioral Style With Jobs in the 16 Career Clusters
  • Equipping in the Top 10 Soft Skills + Interviewing To Secure Their Desired Job
  • Setting Career, Educational and Personal Goals
  • Values and Character Development for Workplace Success
  • Entrepreneurship in Starting a Business
  • Transition to Work or Post-Secondary Education

This Junior High School development tool was designed for students to help them through a process to make quality decisions about their future education, career path and to be prepared for the workplace.

The Module provides an online personalized experience for Middle School students that provides training on key topics, activities and artifacts of the mandatory program.

Each student will be equipped in the four focus areas of career awareness/preparation, career
acquisition, career retention/advancement and entrepreneurship.

Each student will have ability for
online note taking as well as creating a summary portfolio.

The current career statistics reflect an ongoing concern about career readiness.

  • An estimated 20 to 50 percent of students enter a post-secondary education experience
    without declaring a major course of study. Source: Gordon
  • Over 80% of students change their major course of study at least 1 to 3 times with an average
    cost of over $10,000 per change leading to additional debt of the college investment. Source:
    National Center of Education Statistics
  • Over 30% of students drop out of college within the first two years. The United States has
    lowest college completion rate in the developed world. Source: National Student Clearinghouse
    and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
  • Over 50% of students are not working a job or career in their major course of study. This is a
    waste of time and money if you not working in a job or career based on your time and financial
    investment. Source: CareerBuilder

The Focus Life Institute team with their combined education and Fortune 500 management expertise have developed an online practical, personalized course that has been administered in schools, colleges
and businesses.

The purpose of the online Focus Life Institute is to empower, equip and prepare students in the
following areas:

  • Identify your personalized behavioral style while gaining an understanding of self and others.
  • Craft a career path by matching your personal behavioral style to jobs in the 16 National Career
    Clusters.
  • Discover and research specific jobs that relate to your behavior and interests.
  • Identify passion areas and extracurricular activities that can help you in your future.
  • Set career, educational, and personal goals to help you stay focused on your future.
  • Provide training in skill development in time management, budgeting, and essential soft skills that employers are demanding.
  • Pinpoint values that can help you advance in the workplace such as The HEROES Effect. The acronym for HEROES is H – Honor, E – Excellence, R – Responsibility, O – Order, E – Expectation and S – Servanthood.
  • Create a career portfolio that will combine your profiles and activities in one document that can be utilized as you apply for post-secondary education or training. Let’s begin our journey by getting you career ready and workplace prepared for your future. And remember, your focus determines your future!

This development tool was designed for high school students to help them through a process to make quality decisions about their future education, career path and to be prepared for the workplace. The Career Ready and Workplace Preparation course provides an online personalized experience for high school students that provides training in social-emotional learning support, career readiness, and
transition to work or post-secondary education.

According to a Youth Truth Student Survey:

  • 55% of students do not feel positively about their college and career readiness
  • 87% of students surveyed said they want to go to college, while only 2.8% do not, and 10%
    percent aren’t sure
  • 71% percent of students said they expect to go to a two- or four-year college. students, only

The current career statistics reflect an ongoing concern about career readiness.

  • An estimated 20 to 50 percent of students enter a post-secondary education experience without
    declaring a major course of study. Source: Gordon
  • Over 80% of students change their major course of study at least 1 to 3 times with an average
    cost of over $10,000 per change leading to additional debt of the college investment. Source:
    National Center of Education Statistics
  • Over 30% of students drop out of college within the first two years. The United States has
    lowest college completion rate in the developed world. Source: National Student Clearinghouse
    and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development
  • Over 50% of students are not working a job or career in their major course of study. This is a waste of time and money if you not working in a job or career based on your time and financial investment. Source: CareerBuilder

The Focus Life Institute team with their combined education and Fortune 100 management expertise have developed an online, practical, and personalized course that has been administered in schools,
colleges and businesses.

Listed below are three options to implement our courses – Club, Elective, or Full Year Curriculum:
CLUB OR ELECTIVE COURSES – WORKBOOK OR ONLINE

The HEROES Effect

The FOCUS on HEROES Principles for Success course will help students identify their specific virtues they can develop to be successful in their personal and professional life. The course focuses on six principles underlining values and character development—H for honor, E for excellence, R for responsibility, O for order, E for expectation, and S for servanthood. These characteristics are proven to produce favor and increase their opportunities for influence and advancement. This course comes with the companion eBook, HEROES EFFECT, and successful course completion grants a certificate.

  1. HEROES Effect Personalized Profile and e-book
  2. The HEROES Principle: Operating in Honor at Home, Work, and School
  3. HEROES Leadership Traits
  4. Honor: Operating in Honor at Home, Work, and School
  5. Excellence: Creating Excellence in All You Do
  6. Responsibility: Understanding How To Take Ownership of Your Actions
  7. Order: Being Submitted to Those in Authority
  8. Expectation: Overcoming Pessimism
  9. Servanthood: Learning How To Serve Others
  10. Effects of the HEROES Principles – Favor and Influence

Finding Life’s Direction

Our Finding Life’s Direction course will provide students with a process to
get focused on their career path to be prepared for their future. This course includes creating a vision statement, identifying your passion areas, and discover your vocational sphere of influence. In addition, each
student will identify their personality style, gift cluster and then match their personality with jobs in the 16 career clusters saving time and
money in their career path. Finally, each student will create personal, career and educational goals for their future. The end result is an action plan to achieve your dream and fulfill your destiny!

  1. Identifying Your Passion Areas What Motivates Me Most?
    We identify your passion areas! Extracurricular activities are a critical component of your passions that can be beneficial for advancing in post-secondary education.
  2. Placement – Vocational Spheres
    The 7 spheres profile will identify the specific spheres of influence you are called to impact such as business, education, government, media, family, religion, arts and entertainment.
  3. Personality – Identifying Your Behavioral Style and the Motivations of Others
    We use the DISC behavioral assessment system to identify those traits and qualities that shape our behavior and personality.  Using that information and taking the profile will guide you through practical application examples for daily life, career, and work.
  4. Behavioral Flexibility and Adaptability – Blending and Connecting With Others
    This information will help you learn how to adapt, blend, and connect with others producing a greater level of relationship, increase communication, and be more productive in your personal and professional life.
  5. Behavioral Leadership and Occupational Characteristics
    This DISC recaps your leadership and occupational strengths that will be used to identify your career choice.
  6. Identifying DISC and General Occupations
    Each DISC style has specific general occupations that will appeal to all users and provide a hand-in-the-glove fit for a happy and more creative career path.
  7. Matching Behavior With Occupations in the 16 Career Clusters
    This session includes a personal analysis of the DISC Focus Behavioral Style profile and descriptions of the 16 career clusters. The tool then matches a focus style with specific occupations in the 16 Career Clusters and Tech Prep (2 Year Degrees) that helps save time and money in a career choice. In addition, it offers ways to gain real world experience so you can secure that perfect job.
  8. Spiritual Giftings
    This profile will help you identify your spiritual gift cluster and how you can utilize your gifts in all areas of your life. In this profile, we will help you identify your specific gifts and then provide an action plan for you to begin to utilize them to positively affect the lives of those within your influence. The more you understand and strengthen your spiritual gifts, the more you will find that doors of opportunity open for you.
  9. Creating a Personal Vision for Your Life
    Vision is where you are going in life. Many people do not take the time to identify where they want to go based on their interests, abilities, & personality.  You will write your personal vision statement based upon the learning that you obtain from our course.
  10. Peak Performance Setting Goals – Educational, Career and Personal Goals
    By creating objectives, goals, strategies and measures, you can gain personal fulfillment and greater levels of achievement.

Skills for Success

The FOCUS on Skills for Success course will students gain the edge and stand out in the sea of employees as their career skyrockets. LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report shares that soft skills are the number one priority for talent development.
Employers continue to say graduates coming into the workplace lack the essential
soft skills that are required for success in the workforce. These include people skills, communication, collaboration, conflict resolution, confidence, creativity, character, decision-making, problem solving, time management plus the behavioral interview techniques. Successful completion of this course and exam grants them a certificate.

Skills For Success

According to LinkedIn’s “Workplace Learning Report,” soft skills are the No. 1 priority for talent development. Further, a LinkedIn study found that hiring managers indicated their company’s productivity was limited due to a lack of candidates’ soft skills.

According to World Economic Forum research, there are 10 soft skills that employees should have by 2020: complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, coordinating with others, emotional intelligence, judgment and decision-making, service orientation, negotiation and cognitive flexibility.

“The No. 1 problem with today’s young workforce is the soft skills gap,” “It runs across the entire workforce — among workers with technical skills that are in great demand, every bit as much as workers without technical skills.” Soft skills are key to individuals’ success in the workplace and are a competitive differentiator in the marketplace. “They’re the source of a huge amount of power that is always right there hiding in plain sight — a tremendous reservoir of often untapped value — a secret weapon for any smart organization, team, leader or individual performer,”
Bruce Tulgan

Research shows that emotional intelligence matters twice as much as IQ or technical skills in job success.  Data has revealed that proved factors such as self-confidence, self-awareness, self-control, commitment and integrity not only create more successful employees but also more successful companies. Source: Working with Emotional Intelligence.

The Skills For Success Module was developed to provide solutions for individuals to be prepared for the workplace. In this course I want to provide for you my personal experience as a manager and trainer for UniLever (10 years) and The Coca-Cola Company for over 27 years.  I was able to equip and train multiple regions in both people skills and essential soft skills based on the DISC personalized behavioral profile. What I heard from many of my colleagues before I trained them was that most behavioral analysis they took in the past told me “who” I was but not “what” to do with it in the workplace.

I was able to provide the solutions for them in the workplace when it came to enhancing communication with others, collaboration in teams, reducing conflict, increasing confidence and creativity. This became my passion to take my experience and create the Focus Life Institute to help individuals be prepared for the workplace in the following areas:

  1. People Skills is defined as “the ability to communicate effectively with people in a friendly way, especially in business” or personal effectiveness skills. You will gain an understanding of self and how to identify the behavioral style of others.  This course will provide you with the cognitive flexibility to adapt your personal behavior in response to changes in the workplace environment. You will learn how to “blend” your style and “get in sync” with others by providing the behavioral tactics and methods to be incorporated into their professional and personal life.
  2. Soft Skills are defined as a combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, character traits, attitudes, career attribute, social intelligence and emotional intelligence quotients among others that enable people to navigate their environment, work well with others, perform well, and achieve their goals. The Collins English Dictionary defines the term “soft skills” as “desirable qualities for certain forms of employment that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude. In this lesson, we will utilize your personal behavioral style and provide you with solutions in the following 3 core competencies: communication, collaboration and conflict resolution.
  3. Time Management: This session focuses on your personal behavioral style and helps you understand how you and others value time. We will review your distractions that are currently wasting time and how to reduce or eliminate them. Secondly, we review your individual traits and areas for you to improve on when it comes to time management. Finally, we review how to blend and get in sync with others on a team, at work or in school based on how each motivation values time so you can create a more productive and efficient environment.
  4. Critical Thinking Skills are defined as making reasoned judgments that are logical and well-thought out. In this lesson, we will review how to stay focused in your life by teaching you how to create a focused environment, where to focus your energy and efforts to achieve your goals. In addition, you will gain insight in how to make better quality decision and solve problems in the workplace.

These skills that you will be learn in this course will help you in understanding the positive differences in personal relationships both in your personal and professional life.

Includes:

  • People skills
  • Communication
  • Collaboration
  • Conflict resolution
  • Confidence
  • Creativity
  • Character
  • Decision-making
  • Problem-solving
  • Time management
  • Behavioral interview

Focus On Entrepreneurship

The FOCUS on Entrepreneurship Course helps students determine if the freedom
and flexibility of entrepreneurship is the right path for them. Financial freedom is a
main goal of entrepreneurs, but this is possible only if you understand the basic
principles and are willing to learn from those who have done it successfully. This
course will equip you to be unstoppable—develop the behaviors of successful
entrepreneurs, create a basic business plan, and use the ICES model (Innovation,
Concepts, Execution, and Solutions) to help students chart their course to
entrepreneurial business success!

  1. Basic Entrepreneurship
  2. Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs
  3. Personality Style of Successful Entrepreneurs – What it Takes
  4. Basic Components of a Business Plan
  5. Create Your Business Plan
  6. Insights for Success – Innovation, Concepts, Execution and Solutions
  7. Create a Vision for Your Business

Testimonials

I am truly excited about doing this with our kids!!! It will be fun, and I love that it’s gets them interacting with each other! The biggest thing for me is for our kids to actually SEE what they are capable of instead of just hearing it. Cindy D.

The presentation offers a variety of descriptors and application of DISC personality profiles so different learning styles may understand in many ways. The presentation offers relevant life situations in which the DISC is beneficial. Character, communication, and compassion are essential skills in all relationships even outside work. Michael G.

I learned a lot of new information from the trainings.  I feel that it will better help me to work with my students and for them to understand what type of person they are. I feel the training was done very well.  Jaron P.

I believe the material is essential for the next generation to be able to conduct successful adult lives. The material will be useful for lesson plans. Alex A.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first head of this program, but I am pleasantly surprised.  This is something that helped our students understand themselves and each other, but it also helped us as well in different areas of our lives. Anne P.

Recommendation Letter

To Whom It May Concern:

Greenville Junior and Senior High School, Greenville, Pennsylvania is one of only four (4) high schools in Pennsylvania to achieve National Blue Ribbon School status. We are committed to meeting the wide range of needs of our students, whilehonoringtheir life-long learning, leisure, and career choices.

We have replaced our current 8th grade career guidance material with The Focus Life Institute’s online program entitled Finding Life’s Direction. This educational programming component assists students in finding out who they are, how to understand and work with others, and a career path for their future.

Finding Life’s Direction is a student development tool containing educational materials that meets the requirements of PA Act 339. It is unique in its presentation because of its individualized guidance. possibilities. Finding Life’s Direction uses a personalized profiling system which match students’ individual behavioralstylewith the occupations in the 16 national career clusters.

It was a fun and enjoyable educational experience for our students. The learning materials were easy to
access because of the online format while giving our Career Guidance Counselor the flexibility to pick and choose sections that best meet the needs of our school’s objectives.

Consider our experiences:
• Instructors have the freedom to create own activities to accompany online lessons.
• Students enjoyed the material followed by a hands-on, energetic activity that allowed them to interact with other students.
• Unlike other inventories, students connected with the real-life application and fit to their personality and potential career choices.
• Students thoroughly enjoyed the implanted videos within the lessons; these media break-up the monotony of a full lecture period.

We would highly recommend that you review the online modules from The Focus Life Institute that offer practical tools to help students create their personal vision, discover their career path and set goals for their future.

Thank you,

Mark Ferrara
Superintendent

Mark D. Hogue, PhD.
Principle, Grades 7-8-9
Director of Secondary Curriculum & Instruction

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