'Get Focused Stay Focused' Initiative Helps Students Pursue Education and Life Goals

Wouldn't it be good to help your children know their life goals for the future and help them work on it? A new educational initiative would want to work on that.

The initiative, named "Get Focused... Stay Focused," helps students to 'get focused' on their life goals, and then 'staying focused' on it until it is achieved, reports the Sacramento Bee. This initiative has been adopted by various high schools in different areas, and has been working to help many students who have different ambitions.

The program reportedly began 2009 with Santa Barbara schools, says program co-founder Diane Hollems. More than 130 schools in California, as well as another 25 in Kansas, Oregon and Arizona use it too.

Last fall, Sacramento also enjoyed the program through a state grant administered through the Los Rios Community College District for 54 freshmen at Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High School and 70 at New Technology High School. These students learn college and career planning as early as the freshman year, get the chance to hone their strategies whilst in high school, all the while earning credits in the Sacramento City College for achieving good A or B grades.

Lauren Aleaja Bean, a freshman at the Health Professions High School, said that the program helped her think more seriously about her future.

"I have a different mindset," Bean, who wants to be a general surgeon, said. "I've been really researching what I want to do and I am more engaged into my career."

And while some may think that this is just another program to help push students to do better in school, it actually helps young students think seriously about life.

"Freshman Seminar isn't like other classes," a student named Kristina from Carpinteria High School said, according to the GFSF website. "It doesn't teach us fancy equations, grammar, or any scientific formulas... it teaches us about LIFE."

Teachers, such as Health Professions' Jennifer Clemens, said that students have been enthusiastic about the program. Not only that, teachers also benefit from learning through the program as well.

"My sense as a teacher is there have been a lot of 'aha' moments in terms of budgets," Clemens said.