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.
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.
Kathy Beland, M.Ed. (executive director) is the original author of the award-winning Second Step, A Violence-Prevention Curriculum series (grades preK-9), which is implemented in over 20,000 classrooms in the U.S. and Canada and in 21 other countries, and is the subject of many research studies. She is also lead author of the Eleven Principles Sourcebook, How to Achieve Quality Character Education in K-12 Schools (2003) and the writer/executive producer of 12 award-winning educational videos, including Yes You Can Say No, Facing Up, and Choices, all three of which won regional EMMY awards. Kathy has served as director of School & Beyond in Bethesda, MD; program director of the Character Education Partnership in Washington, DC; research and development director of Committee for Children in Seattle, WA; and assistant director and ninth grade teacher at the Santa Barbara Middle School, which she helped found in Santa Barbara, CA.
Julea Douglass, Ph.D., M.Ed. (associate director) is lead author of the Character Education Evaluation Toolkit and has been a consultant to several school-based intervention programs and research projects. She served as research associate and program coordinator at Character Education Partnership (CEP) in Washington, D.C. and assistant to a senior advisor to the Secretary of Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Julea received her M.Ed. specializing in human development and psychology from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Virginia's Curry Programs in Clinical and School Psychology.
Barbara Luther, B.S.Ed. (trainer/classroom consultant) is a classroom teacher with 32 years of experience. For the past 14 years, she taught high school special education classes in a school of 3,000 students. In addition, she established a school-wide character education initiative that was honored with a 2002 National Schools of Character (NSOC) award and now serves as an NSOC site evaluator. Barbara was chosen twice as the Special Education Teacher of the Year at her high school and received the 2003 National Leadership Award from the Community of Caring. An experienced trainer, she speaks at regional and national conferences on character education and smaller learning communities in high schools.
Eva Kokopeli (research assistant) graduated Spring 2006 with a major in English Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She has written for Pittsburgh Magazine and Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and served for two years as editor-in-chief of Collision, an Honors College literary journal. Eva provides editorial and research assistance to School-Connect and serves as part of our youth sounding board.