Glen Lake sophomore Grace Daniels knows what she wants and has tools to reach those goals. She is one of more than 250 students in grades 9-12 who heard motivational speaker Chris Willertz at Glen Lake last Thursday.
“It really opened my eyes to things I could do to achieve my goals and that achieving these goals is possible,” the 15-year-old girl said.
The importance of making good choices was the focus of a special program presented by Willertz, a former coach and teacher. He works full-time for SportsLeader, a virtue-based mentoring and motivational program. SportsLeader's messages are usually directed at student athletes, but apply to everyone.
“The biggest thing I wanted to get across was the importance of making good choices. By thinking a little more deeply, you can establish habits to make good choices and help do the right thing more often,” he said.
In four separate sessions, students were given gold cards and asked by Willertz to think of one goal and write it on the card.
“Only 3 percent of Americans write down their goals,” he said. “Start writing down and tracking your goals and that is a tremendous edge over others.”
Willertz shared two handouts with students: “Habits of the Wealthiest People!” based on Thomas C. Coley’s study of the daily habits of 233 wealthy and 128 poor people; and “The 14 Habits of Top College Students.” Coley found that 81 percent of the “wealthy” defined as earning at least $160,000 annually and holding at least $3.2 million in assets, maintain a “to do” list. In addition, 67 percent in this category watched less than an hour of television per day.
“Remember, following these traits won’t necessarily make you rich … but they are worth a shot,” the speaker said.
Students were asked to pick two things off the handout that they’d be willing to do for 30 days. “That’s how many days it takes to develop a new habit,” he said. They were also asked to pick two items from the 14 habits list fromuniversityparent.com (setting goals, dividing up tasks) and make it part of their “action” plan on the gold card, which they’ll use to track their daily habits.
“Once they do something for 30 days, they can discover that it’s easier to do than they thought, and the good habits become second nature,” Willertz said.
He said that everyone — school, grade level, family at home and community — are family. As such, they should treat one another better and hold each other accountable. Students were challenged to do three things to strengthen “their family”:
---Praise one person in public daily. Not via text, social media but face-to face spoken praise.
_ ---If you need to criticize, challenge or encourage another person, do it privately, face-to-face and with kindness. Not via social media.
_ ---If you do make a mistake, apologize face-to-face within 24 hours.
Students who took the challenge signed their name to Glen Lake banner that will be hung in school as a daily reminder. In January, students will be asked to review their gold cards and discuss them as part of their ASC (academic service center). Additional gold cards will also be available at this time.
Willertz is scheduled to make a follow up visit to the school next spring.
Last week’s visit was the third time he had spoken with Glen Lake students.
Willertz met with the Laker football team during pre-season training this fall and returned to talk with the student athletes after the fatal accident, Aug. 23, which left two people dead — including one Glen Lake student.
Half of the cost of the $3,000 Sportsleader program will be paid by the Glen Lake Educational Foundation, and the remaining $1,500 will come from $4,000 allocated to the recently formed “Student Safety Awareness” committee.
