Lesson 1

DREAM: What does REACH YOUR PEAK mean to you?

About this Lesson:

This is the beginning process.  This lesson is designed purposely to not have the students think about or create any specific goals, which they will do in Lesson 2, but to inspire an overall thought process creatively and honestly, about what it is to them to be the best person they can be.  This is also the basis for our Essay contest, which will issue grants to the winning student’s schools and communities, based on their execution of the D.R.E.A.M. program and the evaluation of their essays.  Each school will submit their best candidates and Essays to RYP for their committee to chose the recipients.

"It is not the critic who counts:
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles
or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
 whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,
who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again,
 because there is no effort without error or shortcoming,
 but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
who spends himself for a worthy cause;
who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement,
and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly,
 so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
who knew neither victory nor defeat."

- Theodore Roosevelt, 26^th President of the United States

Our Deepest Fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

- Nelson Mandela, 1994

WHAT IS IT TO REACH YOUR PEAK?

Materials Needed:

• none

Facilitating the Lesson:

Generate a conversation about the importance of reaching your own personal heights, and the importance of that for each of our own lives.  Use examples of how other people reach their peaks in different ways, some intellectually (Albert Einstein), Physically (Lance Armstrong), Some helping those in need (Sargent Shriver), Artistically (any musician, artist, etc), and others.

Directions:

1. This should be a pure discussion, using examples and asking the students thought provoking questions, and to define it orally.
• What does Reach Your Peak mean to you immediately?
• What does it mean to be the best version of yourself you can be?
• Do you have a responsibility to yourself strive to find your peaks?
• Do you have a responsibility to your community to reach your peaks?
• How does it make you feel when you are working towards something?
• Is it the end result that matters or the process?  Why?
2. Use examples of those who’ve done their best, some successful, some not.
3. Assign the students the task of writing a no more than 250 word essay on "What Reach Your Peak means to them"
• Explain to the students how, this essay is created to get them to think, about meaning.
• Explain how the Essay contest will work, and how they can help be responsible for their schools or communities receiving a monetary grant.  And how they will also be responsible for its use.  This will help them learn about responsibility.  It will of course be administered by the school.

WRITING

• Go to www.ReachYourPeak.org and read about Michael Davis and others who have told us What Reach Your Peak means to them

READING

• Read an article about somebody who is a good example of someone who reached their peak, and bring it in, and tell the class why.