Choices

CHOICES, a partnership with the North Coast Builders Exchange and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, is an interactive decision-making workshop that empowers teens to achieve academic success in pursuit of their career and life aspirations. In two hour-long sessions, business and community volunteers take students through real-world exercises on academic self-discipline, time and money management, and goal setting. Developed in Seattle in 1985, this innovative program has spread to over 40 states and this year alone will reach approximately 140,000 students. Volunteer business and professional people are sent into classrooms and offer straight talk to young people about jobs that will be available to them (based on their educational achievement), goal-setting, time and money management, factors influencing their lives, and the consequences of the decisions they will make over the next four years.  One characteristic is stressed repeatedly: the key to success in anything they do is self-discipline. CHOICES has no hidden agendas, but simply encourages kids to think very carefully about the importance of graduating on time. Students are shown that being a high school graduate and getting further education or training will increase the number of opportunities available to them, have a positive effect on their career, and enhance their level of fulfillment over a lifetime.