AP Life

AP Life (Aware and Prepared for LIFE Beyond the Classroom) is an experimental 8-week tutoring program I developed to see if Personal Development should be part of the high school curriculum.

Charlie Brown:

“Life is just too much for me. I’ve been confused from the day I was born. I think the whole trouble is that we’re thrown into life too fast. We’re not really prepared.”

Linus:

“What did you want…a chance to warm up first?”

— Charles Schulz, ‘Peanuts’ Comic Strip

The Problem

The numbers speak for themselves: 3 out of 4 students are not ‘college & career ready’ by the time they graduate high school — that’s over 2.5 million students annually. Students are graduating from both high school and college unprepared for the world of work. Fewer than a quarter of the more than 400 employers recently surveyed for a major study of work-readiness reported that new employees with four-year-college degrees have ‘excellent’ basic knowledge and applied skills. Among those who employ young people right out of high school, nearly 50 percent said that their overall preparation was ‘deficient’.

Clearly, there is a gap between where most high school students are today and where they need to be in order to experience long-term success & happiness in life. Simply put, the preparation students are receiving for life as independent adults — referred to throughout the program as ‘life beyond the classroom’ — is incomplete.

This widespread problem is rooted in our outdated education system, especially at the high school level, where “there is a profound disconnect between what students are taught and tested on and how they are expected to learn, versus what the world will demand of them as adults and what motivates them to do their best”. So, in addition to meeting the traditional challenges that are emblematic of adulthood — such as those attached to a suddenly heightened level of freedoms and responsibilities — today’s high school students are also tasked with pioneering the yet unexplored global ‘knowledge economy’. In this emerging new world where knowledge has become a commodity — practically free and easily consumable to anyone with internet access — what is more closely tied to their long-term success and happiness in life is not so much what they know, but what they can do with what they know.

An evolved world demands an evolved form of preparation.

The AP Life Program was created to fulfill this need.

The Solution

A ‘window of opportunity’ is currently wide open for today’s high school students — that is, their minds are still highly impressionable since they are still within the developmental, formative years. But this window is closing fast. By the time students are off to college, the chance for parents and educators to leave as significant an impact on their outlook and approach to life will have already passed.

Fortunately, The AP Life Program offers a timely and convenient solution.

In today’s evolved world, the key to ensuring high school students are best positioned for long-term success & happiness in life, is supplementing their academic preparation with the proper non-academic preparation — a powerful combination of key insight & foresight:

1. INSIGHT
   Equip students with a solid Personal Development foundation centered around the set of knowledge & skills needed to independently navigate one’s way through an increasingly complex and unpredictable global environment.
2. FORESIGHT
   Mentor students about early adulthood’s common pitfalls so they have the unique opportunity to prepare ahead of time, leading to their better decision-making in the future.

The AP Life Program provides the missing non-academic piece to student’s preparation, delivered in 8 individual sessions that have been proven to produce real results. The curriculum is taught within the familiar 1:1 tutoring environment (1 hour per week for 8 weeks), where each student can receive the individualized attention and mentorship needed to effectively grasp and apply the program’s traditionally adult-level content.

By shortening the learning curve to adulthood, we can help today’s high school students make better, more informed decisions especially during the critical college & early-career years. With a refreshed outlook and approach to life, our younger generation of leaders will begin their next chapter wiser and truly empowered to lead a life of constant growth — never ceasing to learn, ever eager to serve, and optimally positioned to ‘go further’ and to ‘reach higher’ than we ever could.

References:

1. College and Career Readiness Standards, CCRS: *Visit https://www.ed.gov/k-12reforms/standards for more information.
2. NCES: National Center for Education Statistics. *Visit https://nces.ed.gov/ for more information.
3. “Are They Really Ready to Work?”, report sponsored by The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management.
4. The Global Achievement Gap, Tony Wagner, p. 264.
5. The Age of Discontinuity, Peter Drucker.

If you enjoyed this and would like to learn more, or have any ideas on how it could grow, feel free to connect with me!