Learning Starts from Within
37.3% of teenagers across Michigan have symptoms of depression. They have had feelings of helplessness, sadness, or loneliness every day for at least two weeks in a row. This has led most of them to stop doing some of their usual activities and caused a change in behavior. The saddest part is that these students often go to a school where people don’t notice, and if they do, they don’t make any effort to help that student. It is so very important that students have educators and peers that care about them and help them to feel wanted and confident. How could you expect a student to want to make an effort in school when they feel alone and hopeless? Here at LifeTech Academy we don’t.
We recognize that a student’s ability to learn begins from within. It begins with how they feel about themselves and what they feel they are capable of. Our mission is to empower students to learn and one way we do that is by offering an extensive training course to work on building confidence and positivity. The Dale Carnegie Training course is offered to all LifeTech Learners and focuses on how to handle stress and worry, sharpening people and communication skills, and self-confidence.
This program can take a student from a place where they are not confident, depressed, and disengaged, and help them change to someone that is outgoing, has an improved work ethic, and an overall sense of positivity. The Dale Carnegie program builds a connectedness among the school and between students and their peers. This training has been described as “life changing” and has allowed students to recognize a situation and approach it in a more positive manner.
It truly does start by providing a safe and positive learning environment for the learners. At LifeTech, the learners know that they are in a room full of love and appreciation, feel that they are being listened to and know that they are important. Once this environment is recognized by the learner it opens so many doors and allows the student to really grow both personally and academically.
Hands on Learning
Hands on learning has been proven to better engage both sides of your brain and leads to increased retention. LifeTech is a strong believer that learning should be through experiences as often as it can be. We incorporate project-based learning into each learner’s curriculum. This is especially important when it concerns younger learners because there is a lot of development as well as teaching of fundamentals in the early years of a child’s education. Our younger learners get learning packets mailed to their houses to help them to better understand the material. There are less of these packets mailed to homes the older the learner gets but the projects are assigned all throughout their education.
Having hands-on opportunities at an online institution is a unique offering but LifeTech recognizes its value and keeps it a part of every learner’s education. Another way that we make things interactive is by taking the kids on field trips. These trips are completely optional but offer students a chance to experience what they are learning. Trips could be going to a museum, park, zoo, or any other activity that learning coaches feel would be a fun way to teach something through experiences. Field trips also offer a social aspect that is hard to find when taking online classes.
Engaging Educators and Curriculum
All of our learning and academic coaches are Michiganders certified by the state of Michigan. In addition to this certification, educators at LifeTech go through an extensive training course on how to engage Learners in an online environment. Along with training on delivering content in an engaging way, coaches have their very own engagement coach available 16 hours a week. Even our educators are constantly learning and looking for ways to develop their skills.
Perhaps one of the most distinguishing things about LifeTech is that we have the ability to offer multiple curriculum to our learners. We meet with each student and match them with a curriculum that will be the best fit for them.
Educators that really work with the students to prepare them for life after graduation. In the real world, the first draft of something you turn into your boss is not always the final product. At LifeTech Academy, if a student turns in a project, and isn’t happy with their grade, they can talk to their learning coach to figure out how they can improve the project to change their grade. What’s important is that the students are learning, improving and growing. We focus on the whole student and want them to develop both personally and academically. Having educators that really care about the learner and engage them in class is just one of the many ways LifeTech will give students the quality education they deserve.