Soar Newsletter - News from the Balsam Base
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Eagle View Newsletter - Fall 2007 Edition (PDF Format)
Eagle View Newsletter - Spring 2007 Edition (PDF Format)
The Eagle's View - SouthWest Semester Newsletter
Second Edition:March section 2 (PDF Format)
Second Edition: March 2007 section 1 (PDF Format)
First Edition: February 28th, 2007 (PDF Format)
Opportunities of Adulthood
By Jonathan Jones, Executive Director
As parents, we present our children with many incredible gifts. Some are tangible, but perhaps the most important are intangible. Arguably, the most valuable are self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-advocacy. As parents, we have the wonderful opportunity of nurturing these gifts in our children. Ironically, these intangibles are communicated through tangibles as simple as an affirming word, a pat on the back, or scheduling a play date with our child. As our children grow, the nurturing becomes more elaborate with instruction in skills and strategies that reinforce these gifts. Each child’s strategy set is unique. At the Jones house, the strategy of paraphrasing was critical to our family’s success. It eliminates so many sources of confusion while reinforcing a sense of competency.
One gift to remember, particularly in this period of economic stress, is the gift of childhood. Children need nurturing and support - free of the worries of adulthood. They need a listening ear - an ear that recognizes the concerns of a child are sometimes very different than those of an adult. Children need our attention -even though the size of the “attention tank” varies greatly from one child to another. Day to day, they seek attention though either positive or negative behavior as they work to fill their “attention tank”. Our opportunity, in this fast paced world, is to slow down just long enough to recognize the positive behavior. Children also need opportunities to develop their gifts and stretch their limits. SOAR has been providing such opportunities for thirty-two years.
I want you to consider giving another gift to your children. The gift I ask you to consider is creating for your child a vision of adulthood. In the United States, our society defines a child’s occupation as student and their workplace setting as school. Far too many of youth have learned early they are failures in the workplace. Worse yet, they learn the amount of energy they put into an endeavor at school does not necessarily guarantee a positive result. Why will adulthood be any different? The adult workplace setting provides choices children can only dream about. Adulthood allows the individual to match strengths, talents, and abilities with the workplace setting. I refer to this as finding or creating a “goodness of fit”. I work in a field that thrives on movement, divergent thinking, and flexibility. I experience success as an adult because my strengths match the requirements of my profession. Similarly, my grade school experience was negative because of a mismatch between abilities and workplace expectations.
Why create such a vision for your children? It can create a “light at the end of the tunnel” that allows them to persevere, even when the odds seem stacked against them. This vision also has them thinking in terms of their strengths instead of focusing on their challenges. How to create such a vision? Have them interview adults who enjoy their business or profession. Have them go to work with you or one of your friends and “job shadow”. Have them visit a college or tech school campus and see first hand all of the potential courses of study. You can even introduce the concept of not having to take classes before 10:00 AM. This will surely get their attention!
May each of us continue to enjoy the many opportunities of adulthood and parenthood. Like SOAR, it will
always be an adventure.
Inventiveness |
Compassionate |
Resilience |
No doubt, the successes of our youth is linked to the development
of these innate
talents, gifts, and abilities. Such has been our legacy of the past
thirty years. More important
still, this will remain SOAR’s foremost priority for
the next thirty years.
To download a PDF of the full Fall 2006 SOAR newsletter, click here.
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Philosophy: SOAR believes all individuals identified with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (AD/HD) possess inherent talents and gifts. These abilities can mean incredible success in adulthood once these students negotiate the challenging obstacles of childhood, adolescence, and a traditional education system, usually unable to respond to individual learning styles.
Therefore, the SOAR model is based on two fundamental principles. First, youth with LD and AD/HD flourish when they are encouraged to focus on their strengths in an experiential setting. The second principle acknowledges that success can be generalized by encouraging our students to develop and utilize strategies, enabling them to compensate for those challenging characteristics of LD and AD/HD. To this end, SOAR staff strive to ensure success for each student across a wide range of experiences. Such success, in turn, builds essential self-esteem and self-confidence.
Based on these two foundations, SOAR participants develop problem solving skills, effective communication strategies, increased self-awareness, and social skills. Program activities include a broad base of wilderness adventure experiences that empower students to make healthy choices, learn more about themselves, overcome challenges, and establish relevance from these experiences to other aspects of their life.
SOAR's Specialty Courses are open to SOAR alumni and students with the maturity and experience level to be successful on the course. Acceptance is conditional on the approval of the course director. Most specialty courses are led by one of SOAR's year-round staff including Jonathan Jones, John Willson and Logan Walters.
SOAR’s programs are designed to allow students the opportunity to increase their independence while away from home. Independence is gained through self-motivation and life skills instruction. With this in mind, we involve our students in many decision making processes, such as setting individual goals, developing group guidelines, as well as trip and meal planning. This also comes into consideration when developing SOAR’s communication policy, detailed in our Parent Handbook.
SOAR is dedicated to serving the needs of individuals with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (AD/HD) and is proud to be the finest: