Our Issues & Choices class provides tremendous opportunities for students to explore their identity in conscious ways while lifting voices, sharing stories and values rooted in identity and pride.
Sense of Belonging
Develop Self-Awareness
Relationship Building
The “Issues & Choices” course aims to provide middle school students with age-appropriate lessons and activities to explore their identity, build relationships, and develop social and emotional skills. Activities include weekly community circles, team-building exercises, wellness exercises, and restorative conversations. A Future Success unit within Issues & Choices aims to help students explore college and career options, set goals, and identify a pathway to reach those goals, including middle and high school success skills, self-efficacy development, and connecting to college access resources. Our program has short-term outcomes of students learning wellness tools, forming relationships with peers and adults, and increasing self-efficacy and awareness of college and career options. Long-term outcomes include improved academic success, engagement, attendance rates, and college enrollment, as students learn community structures, social-emotional skills, self-management, relationship skills, and critical thinking.