Brown Middle School Students  Reality:101 is a year long mentoring, leadership training program; designed to increase a student's self-worth and individuality. In part, the concept is drafted from Luke O'Neil's renowned Shackleton Schools model (www.shackleton.org. More detailed information on the curicrulum model is available upon request.) The focus is on fostering intellectual, emotional, and academic growth through nurturing realistic self-images that will create the foundation for educational advancement. There is strong evidence that mentoring, when consistently and effectively administered, can result in dramatic gains not only in academic achievement, but the self-worth necessary to see the benefit of the achievement. Our philosophy at Ezra Project is that there is a leader in us all. Research strongly suggest that socioemotional development is significantly affected by socio elements. Consider this: Socioemotional development covers changes in a person's emotions, relations with others, self-concept, and personality, which is a stable way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. We each have an image of "who we are," our self-concept, or identity. It is made up of different parts; things like ethnicity, intelligence, skills, family, and socioeconomic status. Descriptors that come after the phrase "I am . . . " refer to your self-concept. Thus, it is an overall description of your abilities, traits, and personality. It is the type of person who you believe you are, which may differ from the type of person who you want to be. As you develop, your identity is constantly being modified by experiences and thoughts. - Cambridge Journals "...as you develop, your identify is "constantly being modified by experiences and thoughts." The Ezra Project will administer a classroom leadership mentoring program curriculum - Reality: 101 - with concentration on the socio-emotional elements that constitute educational root problems. Ezra Project is a Atlanta Public Schools (APS) partner, committed to partnering with the Atlanta Brown Middle School 7th - 8th grade class. In conjunction with certain criteria, the students are systematically chosen by the school’s administration to be at-risk of academic and/or social failure. In a non traditional setting, an innovative curriculum combination that, in part, involves identifying students "root" issues, addressing them through definitive teaching [self-worth], self-actualization/role-playing [familiarization with leadership], and "expedition" trips that allow the new self-concept images to be exemplified in various community settings[schools, businesses, and churches, recreation], with vested stakeholders presenting meritorious acknowledgments awards for academic and character achievement. What makes Ezra Project different than any other mentoring program? Simple. Disregard for stereotyping. Through continuously trained mentors, students are met at the point of their individual identities, brought together on a collective front, taught for a common goal. "The whole idea of a stereotype is to simplify. Instead of going through the problem of all this great diversity - that it's this or maybe that - you have just one large statement; It is this.” - Chinua Achebe Our goal is to reshape values, shaping youth of today to be leaders of tomorrow.
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