Growing in self-confidence

"Self-confidence is often the key to students' success, both when they are adolescents and when they become adults. Confident students tend to exhibit more positive social behavior, participate more in school, and demonstrate greater academic achievement than students with low self-confidence" (Lions-Quest. Skills for Adolescence. Introcuction to Unit 2)

Parents are the most significant people in a child's life, therefore, we need to understand that the way we treat children, our attitudes, and example, will either interfere or promote a healthy, high self esteem and confidence in them.

Skills and abilities learned also influence self-confidence. this is why it is so important to let kids do things on their own, after we have taught them the essential ways to do things; for example, letting a teen cook dinner for the family would be an excellent way for her to display her cooking abilities or to learn them.

The vacation will provide us with many opportunities to promote love, confidence and generosity to enjoy the Holiday Season.

I am pleased to let you know that students in Middle School have the opportunity to participate in the Lions-Quest Skills for Adolescence program. This is a semester program and focuses on seven specific areas:
1. Understanding the many changes of adolescence.
2. Building self-confidence and communication skills.
3. Managing emotions in positive ways.
4. Improving friendships and resisting negative peer pressure.
5. Strengthening family relationships.
6. Making healthy choices.
7. Setting goals for successful and healthy living.

Your involvement as parents is essential to the program's success. We hope you will take advantage of our blogs to keeps yourselves informed about the course.

The teachers in charge of the classes for each grade level are as follows:
☼ 8th grade: Mrs. Marielos Quesada
☼ 7th grade: Mrs. Carolina Martinez and Mrs. Iris Borjas
☼ 6th grade: Mrs. Nena de Alvarado

At the moment, students in 6th grade are learning a step-by-step process for setting effective goals. Based on what they have learned so far about important changes and challenges of early adolescence, students are identifying a clear and measurable personal goal to work toward the duration of the course.
I'm attaching the link to a good video from www.watchknow.org, that illustrates very well this issue. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=12564



On the other hand let me tell you that we had a values parent presentation this week, which was a complete success . The presentation was entitled "La Sexualidad y el Adolescente", by Mrs. Marielos Quesada and Mrs. Yoly Aviles. 78 parents came and they left satisfied with the information and orientation received and most of all with good ideas to help their kids in this important aspect.