Summary
courage17) to review resources and lesson planscourage17
Notes
Transcript
But I would like to impart on you that Their education is probably one of the most important things elements that you shouldn't shy away from. And I do, while I do absolutely appreciate your trust in us, that makes you feel so comfortable in taking a step back from this experience. Um, I want to ask that you all lean in this year. Um, we, we don't want to parent your children. We don't want this to be only our lane.
And so on top of that, we're committed to our value system includes providing exceptional experiences, always with integrity, taking ownership and initiative, loving what we're doing because when we love what we're doing, your children can feel it. Doing it all with humility, ensuring that we're leading by example, and ultimately, honoring truth, respecting parental rights, and honoring family values. So that encompasses the foundation of what we're doing behind the scenes and everything that I hold our team accountable to. And so I also like to start off by saying I'm not just the founder of Live Well.
The fact that we hold our value system so strong and that we are so family focused, I think that there are a lot of things that make us extremely unique and your feedback helps us remain on that path. So, Thank you. Thank you for being a part of this and being here tonight. Many of you may have heard this, but I like to kind of go through it every, I like to go through it every back to school night, but our pillars start with leadership and character development, immersive and interdiscipline self-directed learning.
And what this means, it sounds like a mouthful, but it's hands-on learning that's multi-subject, through multi-subject projects that ultimately lead to self-directed learning. And when a child is a cub and they come into our program, it starts with us trying to teach them how to be responsible and how to be independent. And that independence leads to autonomy and that autonomy leads to self-direction as they come in. You know, that autonomy comes into the lion studio, which leads into self-direction and ultimately agency over their their own learning journey.
You know, the things we don't cover that you want your children to learn, we encourage you to do. fill those gaps where needed. And then our third pillar is future readiness and real-world skills development.
We're hoping they would be. And so that means your involvement in projects, your volunteering, your talking to the guides and finding out what behavior challenges, where your child is thriving, where their growth edge is.
You're partnering with us on the challenges that you're having or that we're having. We're partnering with you. Your child is in the middle and you're one bookend and we're the other. So we're a true partnership and team.
This year, coming into 26 and 27, we have three new team members, and you've met them all, but we have our legacy guides. We have Miss Jenny and Jamin, and Miss Jenny runs the Cub Studio, and Jamin is there for enrichment and working alongside Miss Jenny and Mr. Carmel, and he's a steady guide that has been in our community for going into four years now. just provides so much heart. into our program. And Mr.
Carmel, we welcome him as our Lion Guide this year, comes with a lot of experience in the traditional model, but has always felt like education needed more creativity, more hands-on, and so it feels like a very natural, what I'll call legacy opportunity for him because he's always, you know, I imagine that this is something he can pour himself into and into the proper pedagogy that he believes so much.
And then we have Mr. D. He's our new sumo sensei. And Miss Cindy, she's our cub assistant guide.
And we are also looking to bring in another assistant guide as well this year so that we can always make sure that we're supporting your children at the highest level.
Miss Cindy will have a part-time schedule, and so having somebody else is important.
With that $50, you get four half-hour sessions a month, which I think is so valuable, whether you want it to talk about academic. You could do it for one month. You could do it for 10 months. If you wanted to talk about your academic goals, you wanted to talk about where you see your child's academic gaps are, they could support you with tutoring, support you with homeschool documentation and recording.
Just a wealth of knowledge. And I think if your child is, I would say, elementary age, ages maybe eight plus, this might be something that you want to explore.
Of course, we have our sumo math advisors, Sasha and Terry. Terry is presenting tonight with our sumo sensei. I encourage you to take in everything that he's saying.
And if you want your child to thrive and excel in math, we need your partnership. And so he's going to talk about that a little bit more and what that looks like.
In the Cubs studio, session one is... called Who Am I? And session two is they're building a city inside of the Cubs studio. So they still have two six-week sessions under the People and Places overarching theme. The Lions studio, their project will be, will, will, will run the span of two sessions. And so Their showcases will always be... Two weeks before the end of the trimester. So session one, their showcase will be session 10. So that's when they are going to wrap up their project.
They'll have 10 weeks of an arc of a project to go significantly deeper than they did before. in previous years. Six weeks, we always felt was so much of a cram session. And so by expanding it to 10 weeks, they get to go deeper. There's so much more learning that takes place. And also where we were, a gap that we had is we were never able to properly dive into reflection. The last two weeks of session two will be reflection and transfer. So that transfer means how do we transfer the knowledge that we learned in that project based learning unit?
And then we have a standalone of December, which is going to be philanthropy.
That is when the children are going to in both studios are going to study and look into where's. There are social needs that the children might have a passion for wanting to support, dive into, or give back. And so how we're switching it up from last year is December is going to be a month of identification and an introduction of philanthropy. And then they're going to find ways to support that organization or that need over the course of the rest of the year.
being for the rest for the entire 27 balance of the school year so it's not just a three-week session now they will get to learn about giving for a longer period of time And then trimester two is going to consist of sessions Four and five, that trimester theme is the built world that is going to lean into STEM, engineering, robotics, coding.
Session five will be Kidpreneur, Kid and Cubpreneur. No, sorry. Session six will be Kid and Cubpreneur. And session seven will be after the sale in the Cub studio.
So they're going into a little bit of financial literacy about how much money did you make? What do you want to spend your money on? Are you going to save? Are you going to give? Are you going to donate? So going into that. And so there's more reflection on ending the year on reflection of Cubpreneur.
studio it's going to talk about taking their businesses to the next level, taking their businesses to the real world.
And then also reviewing financial literacy, reflection on Kidpreneur and their actual live business.
So instead of getting seven session summaries, feedback from parents was that it was a little too much.
As much as they loved the information, they felt that a lot of it was the same information because it's hard to tell growth in such short spurts. So we are going to now change the name from session summaries. to progress reports and you will get those three times a year at the end of trimester one trimester two and trim and the third trimester Okay, so let's lean into sumo math a little bit and parent partnership. You know, sumo math has quickly become part of the fabric of Live Well as it very much supports everything that we're about.
I mean, there's so much that goes into our sumo practice daily, and that comes down to concentration, mindfulness, character development, leadership, progress, problem solving, focus. And then, oh, by the way, math is a beautiful benefit of it all. And many have asked, how does sumo math transfer to real math? Well, sumo math is real math. It's addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In very short order, as your children get through their skill training, skill training is beetle, ladybug, spider, bee, dragonfly, grasshopper. those levels.
That's when they get into the what I'll say, the real, what you might consider the real math, where they're doing the addition of two, three, and four digit numbers really quickly.
And then also multiplication, two, three, and four digit multiplication and division. And so that very quickly leads into that. And the more support we get from you, the quicker your children will get there. And like I mentioned, last year, we didn't get the support from parents that we were hoping. Hoping we can get your support a bit more. And while we don't provide homework, we do feel that 20 minutes of sumo math a day at home is not a lot to ask. And it will make a huge difference in the development of your child's progress of sumo math.
We do have children that did practice at home and they have made fantastic strides.
So if respect, let's say, is not important to you at home, don't. They don't... Display respect at Live Well. Now, thankfully, we know that most of our families here, they parent well, and the children display that here because your value system conflicts. comes, it bridges at home. to live well and so it's the same thing your encouragement and excitement about sumo and ensuring they do it at home will also not only by giving them double practice practice that live well and then practice at home will ensure they progress faster although it's not a a race but everybody wants their child to progress and improve against themselves not against other children um But I'm here to tell you the children that have done it at home regularly are the children that are are doing, making great strides in sumo.
Let's talk about a couple of events coming up. We have annual parent dinner that's on January 16th. It's going to be a great parents night out. We have it on a Saturday this year. We will have a little bit of live entertainment and some great food, a little bit of a live well update, but it's also an opportunity for us to come and have some, you know, great time, great connection together as well. So, Keep in mind, please note on a previous version of the Live Well calendar, this parent night was mentioned in December and in January.
Also, another important date to put on your calendar if your child is age six right now and older and you are filing, if you are filing a PSA, we're hosting a PSA filing class on September 16th at 7 p.m. It's on Zoom.
And we walk you through how to file a PSA right then and there.
We don't have that date yet, but as soon as we do, you will be the first to know. Something else exciting that I want to share with you is that LiveWell has partnered with a school in Usnak, Switzerland, and we will be... completing two projects with them asynchronously. We will probably meet them and the children over Zoom, the Cubs studio and the Lions studio. For one, there will be a pen pal project.
So your children will get the opportunity to have a a writing relationship with another child in, uh, across the world in Switzerland. And then we are working on a class project or we're defining a class project that each studio will get to do and work on asynchronously with the children in Switzerland. Now, this school is a wonderful program. It's extremely similar to Live Well. I vetted this program.
We're going on our sixth year. They are now a sumo school as well. So, so many beautiful similarities. And because of that, we are also... launching an abroad program that is out is is in addition to the two projects that I just mentioned but this one is optional where and it will it will carry a fee with it because it's outside of the the live well schedule and it will require some at-home work project work but The children that opt in to this will have a project that they work on with the children in Switzerland and also a second language program as well.
And then the children, the project, the program culminates in spring. where the optional children go to Switzerland with their families and we finish the project in Switzerland. And then we also get some sumo math games and experience with them as well.
So we are mapping all of that out right now.
I'm super excited. I think that this could be a great family opportunity as well. And just about teaching our children how to be globalized Citizens, too. So that's exciting. And I think also within that trip, I am trying to create a connection with a school in Italy, not far.
a lot of exposure and it could be a lot of fun. So more details on that coming soon. Please also mark your calendars if you haven't already, June 6th to June 8th for our family retreat in Costa Nova.
We have a lot of fun activities and we also just as families come together. and potluck, share meals, games, and we just have so many fun things planned. So please book your, mark your calendars and book your rooms. It's not too early.
We also will continue our kids night out this year.
This gives parents the opportunity to have a little bit of a date night while your child stays at Live Well. We do need parent involvement and parent volunteer. We only need one or two parent volunteers per night.
We We'll do a movie night, scavenger hunt, obstacle courses, a lot of fun different things. And it varies each kid's night out, and it also varies depending on the weather. But that is something else fun that we do for community bonding.
If we move into communication, I'd like to share with you that we have three annual guide-initiated calls at the beginning, mid-year, and end of year. So in the next week or so, your guide will be reaching out to try to schedule roadmap calls so we could talk about what your goals are for your child this year. And also, it's an opportunity for us to get aligned and and figure out what What you're looking forward to the most this year with Live Well.
And even though we will initiate three calls a year, you can... initiate a parent roadmap call at any time. And you initiate that in the parent portal. There's a link there. You schedule it. You mention who you would like on the call and your guide will be there. These calls are on Zoom. They typically take place between 4 and 5 p.m. at the end of a school day because obviously they are in session with the children during the day.
And if you would like for it to be in person, that is 100% okay as well. So you can do that, but it will just be between 4 and 5 p.m. And this is just, it's a great opportunity to get connected with your guide and also learn of where your child is thriving, where their growth edges are, where the challenges are, what their social dynamic is with other children.
These are strong anchor points into the partnership that we have together. It's a way for us to support each other. A lot of parents have questions throughout the year. We do have a family handbook. You can access this on the parent portal as well. We've also uploaded this into your student's Google folder. Google folders where we house session summaries, progress reports, your annual contract. For now, we're putting in there the first day of school photo, your family photo, so you can download that and use that digital version.
And And the password for that is courage17, all lowercase, and that is where you can access links to schedule the roadmap calls, you can download important documents, you can see daily lesson plans for your child's studio, get...
The most updated calendar. Um, You learn about our approach. You see what's happening in your child's studio, why things are done the way they are. It's chock full of information.
If you have one child, your requirement is 25 hours, two is 35 hours, and three children, it's 45 hours. There is a volunteer spot to sign up in the parent portal, but also our guides will get better this year at giving you a very pointed ask when they need you, when they need help.
So they may ask, hey, Susie, can you volunteer next Tuesday from 8 to 10 in the morning?
Or can you volunteer from 1 to 3.30? So we will take initiative to reach out.
didn't they had they had a balance of volunteer hours that they did not complete and we build build them out on those hours um we would like to or want to help you um Complete those hours so you don't have to pay anything.
You can volunteer on field trips by driving and driving children and being an active chaperone for parents that just come home.
You can lead a course. You can lead an enrichment class. If you own your own business, you can host a field trip.
During our Kidpreneur session and teach the children about your business, you can be an assistant in the studio.
Carmel are committed to giving you at least two updates a week.
And I know you're busy with a lot of notifications and other apps on your phone. So simply acknowledge the text messages, I mean the banned posts that they give, not text messages, the banned posts, even with a thumbs up.
It's just another task for the guides to do that people Don't read them. And we only know you read them if you thumbs up them.
We want to perform better than that. And so That said, we're moving to a full year membership next year so we can continue to support the children and not have the level of learning loss that we are experiencing today.
right now in the beginning of the school year because reading and math have both Slipped back.