When we go to school, we get excited about learning things. History, Law, Foreign Languages – we want to learn it all! But we forget to learn about the most important thing:

Ourselves.

How we think. How we react to failure. How we overcome adversity. These are all things that we experience at life, from our teenage years through the end of our days. Adversity, problems, and obstacles never go away.

And the younger you begin this process of introspection, the more valuable it will become to you as you move through life. Using John Maxwell’s book "Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn (for Teens)", we will think through these very topics and how we should face them.

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Here’s a quote from page 12 and 13 from "Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn (for Teens)" that I think summarizes this idea perfectly:

“How Do You Talk To Yourself?

Losing can make us compare ourselves to others, but that just makes it worse because we rarely do it evenly. We tend to compare our worst to someone else’s best. For example, we can compare how we feel on the inside with how someone portrays him or herself on Facebook. That can lead to a negative cycle of self-talk, meaning the conversation we all have with ourselves in our minds. But there’s something you need to know:

	The most important person you ever talk to is yourself,
	So be careful what you say.
	The most important person you will evaluate is yourself,
	So be careful what you think.
	The most important person you will love is yourself,
	So be careful what you do.

With that in mind, make sure you treat yourself kindly and speak positively about yourself. Then you’ll be in the right frame of mind to learn and grow, no matter how big the mistake.”

As a teacher of high school age kids for over ten years, I think that quote is spot on, and something that all teenagers need to think about.

That’s what I hope to accomplish with this short course.

This class is entirely discussion based. Your learner will be responsible for reading the chapters for each week and being prepared for discussion. 

Here are the chapter titles and how each chapter connects to learning:

Humility: The Spirit of Learning
Reality: The Foundation of Learning
Responsibility: The First Step of Learning
Improvement: The Focus of Learning
Hope: The Motivation of Learning
Teachability: The Pathway of Learning
Adversity: The Catalyst of Learning
Problems: Opportunities of Learning
Bad Experiences: The Perspective of Learning
Change: The Price of Learning
Maturity: The Value of Learning

When I look at that list, I can tell you moments in my life when I realized the importance of each of these things - sometimes way too late! I hope to help your student learn the importance of these lessons much sooner, and begin to apply them to their lives and move them closer to success.

As the facilitator, I will ask questions that will allow the learners to explore these ideas and how they apply to their lives. This is not a class where the teacher talks a lot – this should be the students talking and processing.

Each week, there is an opportunity to journal based on questions within the chapter. This will be optional as each learner will get to decide if there is value in that exercise.

During each class, we will read the chapter (first 15 minutes), we will share a sentence or two that struck as as important and why (5-10 minutes depending on the size of the class), and then I will have some questions prepared that can lead us into small group discussion to better understand the topic, and finally, we will identify an action step we can take based on the topic we read that day. 

The next week, we will talk about if we were successful with our action step before we dive into the next lesson. The goal is to show growth over this process.

Here is the schedule for the class:

Week 1 (August 20 - August 26): Class Structure - Chapter 1 - When you're losing, everything hurts
Week 2 (August 27 - September 2): Chapter 2 - Humility: the spirit of learning 
Week 3 (September 3 - September 9): Chapter 3 - Reality: the foundation of learning
Week 4 (September 10 - September 16 ): Chapter 4 - Responsibility: the first step of learning
Week 5 (September 17 - September 23): Chapter 5 - Improvement: the focus of learning
Week 6 (September 24 - September 30): Chapter 6 - Hope: the motivation of learning
Week 7 (October 1 - October 7): Chapter 7 - Teachability: the pathway of learning
Week 8 (October 8 - October 14): Chapter 8 - Adversity: the catalyst for learning 
Week 9 (October 15 - October 21): Chapter 9 - Problems: opportunities for learning 
Week 10 (October 22 - October 28): Chapter 10 - Bad experiences: the perspective for learning
Week 11 (October 29 - November 4): Chapter 11 - Change: the price of learning
Week 12 (November 5 - November 11): Chapter 12 - Maturity: the value of learning
Week 13 (November 12 - November 18): Chapter 13 - Winning isn't everything, but learning is (Class Wrap Up)