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First, a heartfelt note of thanks to the many who made our fall appeal a success. The 24% response rate demonstrates the high level of support felt for TPC’s important coaching work with teens.

Success Story: Read below about the new TPC Coaching Office! It’s a winner and a new way for TPC to provide cost-effective just-in-time coaching to teens.

What else is cooking? While we continue our R&D investment at Amphi High School, we’re also reaching out into our community. We are in conversations with two very different kinds of high schools. Both want coaching programs. Conversations are also beginning anew at the university level.

Our other focus: Fund raising. What a time we picked to start a new nonprofit! Yet, an essential time to provide students support. And, a perfect time to provide community volunteers a meaningful way to support students and our struggling schools. Please read another success story in this issue. Know that coaching is working and with each donation you make a lasting impact.

With enthusiasm and gratitude,
Joan Martin, TPC Executive Director

Coaching Office Open on Campus for Just-in-Time Coaching!

The new TPC Coaching Office is imbedded in Amphi High School.

During 30-minute just-in-time appointments, students sort their choices, put their feet back on the ground and their focus back into their studies.

The Coaching Office is for students who:

• Have pressing issues and want to talk to a coach quickly;
• Have a need that can be addressed in a few coaching sessions;
• Want to try coaching before signing up for their own personal coach;
• Or, would benefit from working with the Coaching Office before being assigned a personal, 1:1 coach.

What Teens Say About the Coaching Office

• “Coaching has helped me become more outgoing and develop trust.”
• “I can speak more about what’s on my mind.”
• “It makes me think of things differently.”
• “I see now that more opportunities are open to me if I don’t close them with decisions I make.”
• “I like how they help me think about multiple solutions.”

Personal Transformation:
A Peek Inside a Coaching Experience

A year ago Ilse felt she was wasting time, lacking focus or goals, and yearning for self-confidence to lead a successful future. Midway through her sophomore year, Ilse discovered TPC’s Success Coaching program.

Ilse and her coach, Lorri, commenced their weekly coaching meetings in February 2010. Together, they developed a coaching relationship based on trust, respect, and positive energy. With Lorri’s non-judgmental support and guidance, Ilse’s eyes were opened to a new way of living, revolving around setting and achieving goals.

Today, Ilse is a hard-working and ambitious high school junior who spends her free time volunteering, exercising, and participating in public speaking

events. These robust experiences are helping reveal Ilse’s formerly “hidden” self-confidence. In fact, she credits her new sense of self-assurance for her improving grades. “Now I’m not afraid to speak up and ask questions during class,” says Ilse. This same confidence is inspiring a fresh perspective on her future as she explores possible career and college options.

As a coach, Lorri is proud of Ilse for evaluating what is or isn’t working in her life and coming up with solutions.

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We started this important work painfully aware of the challenges facing today’s students.

Many capable students face challenges outside of school that compromise their ability to be in school and to focus on their studies.

Only recently have these issues started to capture national attention.

Touch Point Connection has a unique remedy that can be put into action immediately. With coaching support, students grab hold of their lives and their educations. With support from a coach, they dream, set goals and learn to advocate for what they need to be successful.

We wish to thank each of you for your contributions — financial, time and expertise. Our success is because you believed in this mission and stepped forward to help make it possible.

I hope that you will enjoy what we present here and will welcome periodic updates about our students, volunteers and progress.

With Gratitude,
Joan Martin, Founder

Coaching Supports Graduation:
A Peek Inside a Coaching Experience

Meet one of our Volunteer Coaches and read how her coaching provided one of our teens the support she needed to believe in herself and move forward successfully, despite substantial challenges.

Jenny is a bright, engaging young woman who made poor choices during her first two years of high school. Although she matured and improved her attendance and performance by her junior year, she was overwhelmed to see what it would take to graduate. She lost hope and found it hard to stay motivated.

Jane is a married Tucson resident with a full-time professional career. Looking to volunteer since her youngest child left for college, Jane applied to become a TPC Volunteer Coach and attended TPC’s trainings.

Jenny came into the Touch Point program because an astute counselor noticed that Jenny was struggling and suggested she try coaching. Jenny and Jane began their Success Coaching relationship midway through Jenny’s junior year. Jane’s consistency and respectful, non-judgmental presence each week offered Jenny a sanctuary in which to see and make positive choices, commit to graduation in spite of the challenges, and advocate for what she needed to be successful.

Jenny decided to do everything possible to graduate with her class. She took summer school and extra courses each semester. She got frustrated and tired and wondered often if she could keep up the pace… And if it would be worth it.

Through it all, Jane was there for her, listening, reflecting and guiding Jenny toward self-determined solutions that she could put into action.

This past May, Jenny graduated with the Amphitheater High School Class of 2010. Jane was there to celebrate with “her teen” and shed tears of pride at Jenny’s success.

“Jane was my guardian angel,” says Jenny. “She seemed to be the only person who really believed in me and, without her, I might not have made it to graduation.”

Jenny is now enrolled in Pima Community College’s Emergency Medical Technician program.

Congratulations, Jenny!

Jenny’s story vividly demonstrates what many students encounter. Many, like Jenny, have missed so many days of school, they feel they cannot catch up so they simply give up. Many are academically capable yet fail to graduate because of outside circumstances, including chaotic home lives or even the need to earn money to help support the family. With coaching support, they can find their way, renew their determination, and maintain their momentum. A coach is there to support them along the way and to help celebrate each achievement.

Touch Point Connection Successes to Date

• TPC has coached more than 80 distinct students in 1-to-1 coaching relationships; some students are entering their third school year with a TPC coach.
• 555 coaching sessions held through May 2010
• More than 50 highly trained Coach Volunteers; more are on a waiting list to become volunteers.
• The Success Coaching program is integrated into a large, traditional urban high school.
• Data show the model and methods successful.
• This school year we will test on on-site Just-in-Time Coaching Office.

We already knew that coaching was effective for corporate leaders, athletes and performers. Now we know coaching is effective for students!

What We Discovered

• Coaching supports student learning!
• Coaching moves students from the back seat into the drivers’s seat.
• Students become motivated learners with aspirations and goals.
• Students see a path forward and are able to advocate for what they need to be successful.
• When students are motivated and eager to learn, teachers can teach.
• Coaching provides the added support and accountability that many students need.
• Through coaching, students develop competencies and life skills that serve them now and will serve them into the future.
• With enough training and support, community volunteers are eager to do this work.

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By Rich Melin, Special to The Explorer

In this frenetic world, people rush around each day, trying to take care of a long list of challenges. They create agendas for themselves, co-workers, friends – and sometimes a son or daughter.

The result for many teens: in an overwhelmed state, some simply shut down, not knowing what to do next or which direction to go.

Enter the fledgling Touch Point Connection program at Amphitheater High School. It has well- trained “success coaches” working one-on-one with students, helping them eventually — as founder Joan Martin puts it — to be “masters of their own lives.”

“The success coach is the only person who likely doesn’t have an ‘agenda’ for students,” Martin said. “Coaching gets teens ignited about ‘what could be.’ Coaches are a natural approach since no one in this world does anything alone.”

Harvey Morris/Special to The Explorer, Joan Martin, Touch Point Connection founder, and senior Erika Flores show potential volunteers what a Touch Point Connection coaching session looks like.

Whether from “good” homes or troubled situations, teens often can be pressured by life’s challenges – and have a difficult time moving forward. Disinterested teens can become high school dropouts.

If that happens, the statistics are stark: 45 percent in Arizona never finish high school. One of the state’s average two-child family will not finish high school. Each dropout (about half of them never hold a job) costs the social welfare system an estimated $260,000 over their lifetime. Should drugs or crime enter the situation, each person can cost society between $1.7 million and $2.4 million in a lifetime.

Supportive success coaches work with Amphi student participants to accomplish three goals: 1) improve school attendance, 2) get better grades and 3) be less likely to be disruptive in the classroom.

Amphi counselor Sandy Spiewak offers an analysis of the pilot program, which began at the school in November 2008.

“There definitely is improvement among our student participants,” Spiewak said. “The most important part of the program is the supportive connection with kids – accepting each one as they are and just listening to them. My wish is that every student could have a success coach.”

Right now, there’s a waiting list of Amphi freshmen through seniors signed up to be part of the program.

So how does it happen? “Helping teens reframe past situations (i.e., ‘How could you have dealt with the situation differently?’) is a huge factor, said Martin. Three other vital keys are caring and believing in teens, giving them “permission” to make their own decisions, and celebrating successes with them. Traditional counseling is not part of the program, she emphasized.

During the 2009-’10 school year, 60 Amphi teens have been involved with 40 active-roster volunteer coaches. A small cadre of certified coach mentors help the adult volunteers on a regular basis. There’s also a required two-hour “refresher” workshop each month for volunteers.

Teens sign renewable three-month contracts. The success coach and teen can meet weekly in a one-hour confidential session at school only during the school year. With the obvious goal of higher education, Martin says, “We intend to ‘follow’ the teens for at least a couple of years after graduation.”

Spiewak says volunteer coaches are “unbelievable, quality people from all walks of life.” She adds the coaches are “extremely well-trained.”

“You just have to be curious (about the teen) – and patient,” said volunteer Arthur Goldberg, retired internal medicine doctor from Philadelphia. “In one year, I saw a teen become a young man. He blossomed … he talked.”

Volunteer Jane Stash, an IT business representative at Raytheon, gets satisfaction from “watching teens make better choices. They learn to succeed on their own.” Stash is a married, empty-nest mom of a daughter now in law school and a college-age son.

The program works for participating teens.

“My coach listens to me and doesn’t judge,” said senior Erika Florez. “I can focus better now.” “My coach helps me ‘keep my head up’,” said freshman Joel Valenzeula.

“My coach understands my struggles,” said freshman Destiny Cotton. “I’m not as frustrated as I used to be.”

The 57-year-old Martin got involved in educational reform in 1993 after many years as a management consultant. The Toledo native devised the success coach/teen program four years ago after a Seattle client commented, “I wish our kids could have a coach to help them.” That was the start of a similar two-year program in Seattle.

For adults interested in possibly becoming a success coach, a one-hour informational session will be held April 7, beginning at 6:30 p.m., at Every Voice in Action office, 2851 N. Country Club Road. Call 616-2960 to sign up. A few weeks later, an orientation/training session also is scheduled.

Touch Point Connection relies heavily on volunteers because it has raised $90,000 of a hoped-for $200,000 yearly budget, according to Martin.

“Being involved with Touch Point Connection has been one of the highlights of my life,” added Goldberg. “Before retiring, I used to tell people what to do. Now it’s completely different — and very rewarding.”

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