PROGRAMS:

Giving Americans Motivational Education for the Real World - GAMER

As most of you know, I have been interested in motivating inner city youth to obtain higher education and to obtain better life skills for the past several years through the basketball camp, Slam Dunk for Life. This past year I have experimented with a field trip program and motivational speaker program for children in Kindergarten and first grade. The results of these programs are very impressive, as documented in the letter from Patty Mathis, the first teacher who coordinated the first 2 events.

The program consists of 3 Educational Economic Expeditions per year where students go to various work sites in the city. They will actually see that the fun jobs in life pay more money, but to get them, one has to have education, proper behavior, and proper appearance. Seaworld, Randolph AFB, UTSA and St Phillips College have agreed to support the program fully. In the very near future, we will add additional sites so the program will not be redundant.

The second half of the program is a speaker program consisting of five, 30 minute talks given to the students in their home room classes. The purpose of the speaker program is to communicate the non-academic qualities that are necessary for success in life. Some examples are the importance of being ontime, the importance of avoiding drugs and alcohol, etc. In all, the students will be exposed to the positive messages on how to succeed in life, each and every month of their entire academic career (8 interventions per year).

The speaker program will be structured in the following manner. First, a volunteer speaker will attend an education briefing to make prospective speakers aware of the rules and regulations regarding the public schools. Second, the volunteer speakers will fill out a form describing their work and education history. Third, this form borwarded to the principal at public schools interested in fostering the speaker program. Fourth, the principal will give the speaker's form to 2 teachers in the school. These two teachers will arrange mutually convenient times for the speaker to address their class. They will inform the speakers as to which educational talk they will be giving.

The curriculum for the talks will be on the MOST Web site, For example, if your speaker information sheet is given to Mrs. Smiths 2nd grade class and she says you are the 3rd speaker for her class, you would go to the Web site and look up the curriculum for the 3rd talk for second grade. You can also see an example on video of another individual giving his or her talk to use as a template for your message.