How Growth Planning Can Add To & Reinforce Your Youth Programming

As a nonprofit, our strategy is to actively share our growth planning process, website, and curriculum materials at a very limited cost with schools, colleges, youth-serving organizations, churches, corporations and other organizations already serving @risk-w/high-potential and other 8th grade and high school youth and college age young adults.   

[NOTE: To download a PDF version of this page, click here.]

Before describing how growth planning could possibly add to and reinforce your work with youth, here's some background.

What's growth planning?

Simply put, growth planning is a self-identity, mindset & lifestyle change and development process that helps @risk-w/high-potential and other youth and young adults to avoid or move away from what we call a “Street Survival Mindset & Lifestyle” *** … and to develop and measurably move towards what we call a “Growth Planning Mindset & Lifestyle."  Specifically, we define growth planning as:

"the learned art and skill of having a lifelong continuous growth mindset and a proactive, self-motivated, and self-disciplined lifestyle that uses the three skills of (1) visioning, (2) goal-setting, and (3) step-by-step benchmarking to continuously improve our self as a person and to achieve our vision and goals."

*** IMPORTANT NOTE: It is our firm belief that the “street survival” mindset & lifestyle has played a very positive role in enabling many teens to survive family, neighborhood, or other problems. But, to truly succeed in all aspects of their everyday life, we also believe that they now need to move beyond “street survival”…towards living with a growth planning mindset & lifestyle.

[Click here to view or download a 12-page PDF that identifies the specific Street Survival and Growth Planning mindset patterns and lifestyle behaviors used in our process.]  

3 DELIVERY OPTIONS to choose from

There are 3 basic options for how schools, youth-serving organizations, and individual adults could deliver the growth planning experience to their youth.

        1) Use Website Only. In this option, youth from your organization would use the “back office” of our website to build and begin benchmarking a personal Growth Plan in their own private Growth Plan Data-Center.

        2) Use Website Plus Curriculum. In this option, youth would use our website as stated above … plus use our extensive curriculum materials to help youth learn and measure their progress in making the mindset & lifestyle changes needed for them to succeed in school and throughout their entire life.

      3) Use Website With Curriculum Plus Incentives. In this option, youth would be able to earn future-use college scholarship money and immediate-use cash payments for building and successfully benchmarking their Growth Plan ... and for demonstrating a growth planning mindset & lifestyle in their everyday life. [Note: Click here to see a description of our Incentives Program.]

    5 sets of services & resources

    As an individual or organizational user of our growth planning service, you would receive the following 5 sets of services and curriculum resource materials:

    1) Multi-year 24 hour access to Growth Plan Data-Centers on our website.  Each of your participating youth and their Growth Plan Coaches will have access to their own private Growth Plan Data-Center in the "back office" of our website.  Each Data-Center contains everything needed to build and benchmark a Growth Plan and to develop and measure a growth planning mindset & lifestyle, except for the CD Tutorials and the DVD films.  The website allows Growth Plan Coaches and Support Network Members to view and track the progress of each of their youth as they build and benchmark their Growth Plan.  Once a Data-Center is created, program participants can update their Growth Plan goals and benchmarks as long as they want.

    2) Initial training and ongoing support for Growth Plan Coaches.  Your staff or volunteer Growth Plan Coaches will be initially trained and then supported with hands-on help through the entire first year of coaching your youth as they build and benchmark their Growth Plan, and demonstrate a growth planning mindset & lifestyle.  Training and ongoing support can be provided on site, or via phone or online video conference.  [Click here to see or download a PDF Job Description of a Growth Plan Coach.]

    3) Four sets of Growth Plan Coach support materials.  These materials include:

    1.   A Growth Plan Coach Resource Binder that contains print copies of all the materials needed to guide youth in the building and benchmarking of their Growth Plan ... and to develop and continuously measure their progress in developing a Growth Planning Mindset & Lifestyle.  These materials include The Research Foundations Of Growth Planning, a detailed description of the adolescent youth development research upon which our growth planning process is based; the instructions for the 12 Worksheets and their supplemental Worksheet Charts;  the 10 Life-Skill graphics, explanatory articles and related assessment forms; the 30 Bio-Sketch articles and analysis forms; and materials explaining the online assessments.  

    2.  2 PowerPoint CD Tutorials for each of the youth in the Growth Plan Coach's group.  One is The Growth Planning Fundamentals and the other is The Ten Growth Planning Life-Skills.  Each tutorial helps youth learn, understand, apply, develop and demonstrate the growth planning mindset & lifestyle in their everyday life. 

    3.   A Guide to the online Brainology tutorial that 8th grade and high school youth use to help them understand and utilize the changes going on in their teen brains.  The animated tutorial follows two 9th grade students having problems with their homework (Chris and Dahlia) as they visit the lab of Dr. Cerebrus who teaches them about the care and feeding of the adolescent brain.

    4.  Copies of DVD films, Coach's Discussion Guides and Analysis Forms that help youth graphically see and candidly talk with one another about where they see examples of the Street Survival and Growth Planning mindsets & lifestyles in their everyday life.  Current films include John Singleton's Boyz N The Hood and Poetic Justice.

    4) Certified online assessment services.  Each growth planner takes and receives professionally certified results of the Myers-Briggs and the Strong Interest online assessments during the Growth Plan building process.  [Note: college students also use the FIRO-B assessment.]

    5) Continuous easy-access customer service.  This ongoing customer service is provided via phone, email, and (if needed) in an on-site consultation to jointly come up with creative solutions to program effectiveness obstacles.

    possible ways you could use growth planning

Finally, here are just some of the ways schools and organizations could use our growth planning process to add to and reinforce what they are already doing with their 8th grade and high school youth and college age young adults.

        • If you are an 8th grade, high school or college teacher or athletic coach, you could make growth planning a distinct module (or as an ongoing integrated part) of a course you are teaching, such as a high school intro module for graduating 8th graders, a first-semester general intro course for in-coming high school or college freshman, a career planning course for high school or college juniors and seniors, or as a part of an academic support program for members of a sports team or a cheerleader group.
  • If you are a high school or college guidance counselor, you could make growth planning a regular part of your guidance "toolkit" that you use with youth, or as a strongly encouraged "requirement" for the really interested youth you work with on a continuing basis.
  • If you are in a college multicultural student services or academic development department, you could have growth planning as an ongoing option for your youth ... or have a fun-yet-productive weekend retreat that enables your students to build and begin benchmarking a personal Growth Plan.
  • If you are a youth worker in a nonprofit or governmental juvenile justice organization working with adolescents and their families, you could offer growth planning as a vital part of your mentoring, tutoring, career exploration, or job training program ... or as a way to help youth and their families make the mindset and lifestyle changes needed to successfully envision, plan, and achieve their desired future.
  • If you are a corporate community relations staff member, you could add growth planning to your existing mentoring, tutoring, or career exploration program.
  • If you are a member of the clergy, you could make personal growth planning a regular part of your religious education or teen program.
  • If you are a member of an adult sorority or fraternity, or a service group like the Rotary, you could provide growth plan coaching services for youth at a nearby school or youth organization.  Or, growth planning would be added to your existing mentoring, tutoring, or career exploration program.
  • If you are a parent, grandparent, relative or family friend of a teen, you could use our resources to become a personal Growth Plan Coach to the youth you care about the most.

WHAT ABOUT COSTS?

As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, we try very hard to not allow costs to stand in the way of fulfilling our mission. So, please contact us to discuss ways that you or your organization can use our growth planning process.

interested in using our process?

if so, click here to send us a message

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* We define "@risk-w/high-potential youth" as . . . "8th grade, high school or college age young people in danger of not successfully completing high school, college, a trade school, or skill training program ... thereby limiting their ability to live up to their high potential for success in all aspects of their life."  We actively seek opportunities to work with all @risk-w/high-potential youth, with a special emphasis on working with youth and young adults of color.

We have identified Six @Risk-w/High-Potential Youth Early Warning Signs, any one or a combination of which could put a young person severely at risk:

1) A severely disruptive family life, without several caring adults significantly involved in their child & youth development

2) A history of poor grades or repeated behavior problems at school

3) Risky sexual behavior that could result in disease or a teen pregnancy

4) Repeated incidents with the law

5) Frequent use of drugs or alcohol, and

6) Allowing society's prejudicial barriers or what others think of them to keep them from succeeding at school or in other aspects of their life.