Teach and learn Resilience
up to the challenge
by jay Jackson
Drive students to confront life's challenges and move toward excellence. This timely resource lets educators take a deep dive into self-awareness, integrity, courage, commitment, and grit to explore how a deliberate commitment to building character informs student success. With passion and purpose, author Jay Jackson blends personal challenges and achievements to equip teachers with tools to improve their students’ resilience.
“Jay Jackson does an excellent job emphasizing the importance of key topics and skills educators should cover in schools to ensure preK–12 students develop performance character to address their challenges and understand strengths regarding academics, social and emotional needs, and career and college readiness.”
----Rachel Geesa, Associate Clinical Professor of Educational Leadership, Ball State University, Indiana
““If we want to see these performance characters play out in the lives of our students, they must first begin with us educators. This book gives great tools but also challenges every educator to make sure we are being the best we can be.””
----Kelli Fuller, instructional facilitator, Howard Perrin Elementary School, Arkansas
About jay
Jay Jackson graduated from Stanford University in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. He was an All-American wrestler and assistant coach of the Stanford team before a near-death experience led him to reevaluate his life, leading him to acquire a Master of Arts in Education at Pacific Lutheran University in 1999 so he could pursue a career in education. Since then, Jackson has been in the field for over two decades as a teacher, coach, and assistant principal, consistently pursuing his purpose of helping young people learn how to best take on challenges in their lives. To this end, Jackson has created a series of tools to use in his own classes and to help other teachers introduce and integrate performance character concepts to students. Jackson has presented his process to individual teachers, departments, schools, sports teams, sports leagues, and businesses across the United States and Canada.
Presentations and Workshops
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Educators, Schools and Districts
Jackson’s passion is helping young people learn to be more successful and happier as they take on challenges in academics. With lessons, papers, projects, and assessments, students face challenges daily; however, many don’t think about why they’re doing the challenge or how to persevere when the challenge becomes difficult, leading to a lack of success, anxiety and depression. To help improve this, presentations include a modeling of practical and effective tools that educators can use to foster student discussion about how to best take on academic challenges. Longer workshops add activities that bolster understanding of these concepts along with brainstorming of lesson ideas that will teach content while also allowing students to assess how well they attacked the challenge.
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Coaches, Sports Teams and sports orgranizations
The mental aspect of sports is huge, but how often do coaches take time to allow athletes to deeply think about the best ways to take on challenges in practice and competition to be both successful and happy. A presentation for coaches or sports organizations would offer ways for coaches to be very intentional about character traits that lead to success and happiness in sports without taking too much time from practice. A multiple-day workshop would have coaches participate in activities that enhance discussions that they could use with their teams. Additionally, a workshop would have time for coaches to think of ways to embed character trait acquisition into their practices to help athletes learn to take on challenges on and off the field.
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Employees, Business Leaders and Businesses
Challenge is inherent in any area where someone wants to improve. If a business is looking for employees to increase their potential and feel satisfied at their jobs, learning why and how to pursue challenges is critical. A presentation would get employees and/or business leaders to think about how to be more productive at work and to make tasks more enjoyable. A workshop would include activities and discussion that encourage employees and business leaders to take a deeper dive on how they are currently taking on challenges, how they can improve both productively and emotionally and how their workday might change by reflecting on character traits like self-awareness, integrity, purpose, passion, positive mindset, courage, commitment, grit and flow.
presentation and workshop testimonials
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Commitment, Perseverance, Mental Toughness and Tenacity…Jay challenged me to search out and cultivate these things inside myself as I worked to integrate his values into my K-3 classroom. Far from being just a fun, one-off, physical program, it evolved into a much more meaningful year-round practice that has helped shape the culture of our school and the way I teach. I could not have met a better mentor, despite our very different professional backgrounds. Jay is a great communicator, keeps an open mind and can connect the dots. He modeled exactly what I needed to learn.”
Jen Brazier, Founding Director Clarksburg Children’s House
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“My favourite session of the weekend! Jay was SO personable, engaging, vulnerable, and gave real tangible advice. I also loved how he focused on images/diagrams + discussion to figure out how you personally relate to the concept. I would love to have him as a mentor and have asked to see if Jay can lead a virtual offsite session for my team.”
Feedback from Lazaridis Institute Conference
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“Jay Jackson has been the foundation of our in-practice character development curriculum. His diagrams have helped our athletes overcome obstacles and work towards flow state. The lessons we are able to implement through his work also help our coach/mentors to promote the translatable skills they are learning in wrestling to life.”
Daniel McCune, Executive Director Bay Area Beat the Streets
Contact
If you are interested in an interactive session about successfully and happily taking on challenges in the areas of school, sports or business, please submit the form below. Presentations and workshops can be altered to suit your needs. Additionally, if you have questions or just want to discuss performance character, please contact below.