Our Mission
School-Connect® is dedicated to fostering academic engagement, enhancing social and emotional competencies, reducing risk behaviors, and facilitating supportive relationships within high school communities. Our ultimate goal is to prepare adolescents for adulthood both personally and professionally.
Our History
School-Connect® was incorporated as a small business “with a big heart” in Fall 2003, but the seeds of what would become the School-Connect curriculum took root nearly 20 years before. In the late 80’s Kathy Beland was writing and piloting what would become the award-winning Second Step, A Violence Prevention Curriculum (PreK-grade 9), and Julea Posey (now Julea Douglass) was beginning high school. Kathy dreamed of eventually developing a high school program that would reach the kids who either “destroyed or faded into the lockers,” and Julea discovered her life work through a positive youth development workshop that transformed her experience of high school and her goals for the future.
Fast forward to 1998 to the Character Education Partnership in Washington, DC, where Kathy and Julea worked and discovered their mutual goals. Through discussions with national leaders in character education, positive youth development, and social and emotional learning (SEL); visits to high schools across the country as part of the National Schools of Character program; and attending presentations on high school reform on Capitol Hill, they became convinced that a high school program that addressed students' personal and interpersonal skills was long overdue. By this time, Kathy’s own two children were in high school, providing a window into the challenges adolescents face today, and Julea was beginning graduate studies in psychology with a focus on adolescent development.
In 2003, Kathy and Julea finally had the time and resources to start School-Connect. They spent a year researching and writing School-Connect®: Optimizing the High School Experience and then piloted the curriculum in high schools in and around Washington, DC during the 2004-2005 school year. In the process, they consulted with and enjoyed the support of leaders in the fields of SEL, character education, and positive psychology. They also welcomed Barbara Luther on to the School-Connect team. Barbara, with 32 years of classroom teaching experience, serves as a classroom consultant and trainer for School-Connect.
Located in Bethesda, MD, School-Connect published School-Connect: Optimizing the High School Experience in Spring 2006 and plans to develop additional modules. The staff is open to the varied paths this educational adventure might take and welcome suggestions from educators, parents, and students on what is needed in our high schools to help young people succeed and flourish.
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