In the last Better Plan post I shared the questions that people would ask William Glasser himself, if he were still with us. (If you have insights or answers to one of the questions, please share them with us.) Today I will post the results of the other assignment I gave during the Toronto talk, that being – What suggestions do you have to get Glasser’s ideas out to the public more effectively?
Those in attendance at the Toronto talk were asked to work with a partner and think of things that could be kept in mind as the organization moves forward. If there was more than one suggestion for the same idea I placed an “x” after that idea. Some ideas have quite a few x’s by them. If we had more time in Toronto we could have refined these ideas even more. However, here they are in their more raw form.
TED talks. x x x x x x x x x
Create a YouTube channel with strategic key words that will attract people when they do searches. x x x x x x
Use social media more. Facebook. Twitter. Blogs. x x x x x x
Writing reviews on Champion of Choice. x x x x
Choose a business model and concentrate our efforts to market choice theory, including hiring people who know marketing. Develop a recognizable brand and logo. x x x
Establish and support the William Glasser Foundation. x x
Model the theory and walk our talk. x x
Training to certification must be quicker for the millennial generation. x
Research. x
Create partnerships with different people, communities, or businesses. x
Let people know about mentalhealthandhappiness.com. x
Be clearer about what is required to be certified.
Keep reality therapy in the discussion – don’t limit it to choice theory.
Reach out to universities and textbook writers. Get the word out to academics.
Develop a graduate curriculum for reality therapy.
Develop a reality TV show on reality therapy and choice theory.
Talk shows – Ellen, Oprah, Saturday Night Live, etc.
Market “Choice Theory in Motion” more aggressively.
Create a database of supporting evidence (annotated) of studies supporting choice theory.
Create marketing for Take Charge of Your Life.
WGI members need to be attending and presenting at other conferences, like the ACA.
Make a movie of Champion of Choice.
Never give up.
Write a book about Rochester School and the experiences we had implementing choice theory in our community.
Find a young person to be his (Bill’s) champion.
Focus on youth.
Providing funding to offer training to principals and teachers.
Produce a film or documentary on Bill and his ideas.
Massive book launches.
Effective one-day workshops.
Filming teachers who are effectively applying RT/CT in the classroom and publishing these examples.
A focused voice from each discipline using choice theory.
We’re getting too old as an organization. We need to connect to youth.
#choice theory
Create a presence on maternity wards and geriatric centers – e.g. material that would help new parents
Introduce CT concepts in the school system at an early age – embed in the curriculum.
There are some very good ideas here. Some of them we can do as individuals, while some of them would need to be addressed at an organizational level. Do you want to lobby for one of these ideas? Respond in the box below and let us know what you are thinking. Thank you to each set of partners during the Toronto talk who came up with these suggestions.
================
“If you don’t like something, change it;
if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”
Mary Engelbreit
The Better Plan . . 
Mental Health & Happiness is growing. If each person at Toronto (and beyond) told one person who is not already in our CT family about this site, http://www.mentalhealthandhappiness.com we would continue to grow and reach a tipping point.
Same goes for people writing a review of your book on Amazon. I don’t want to mention it again too soon — becomes nagging.
You and I are on the same page here. I will emphasize the Mental Health & Happiness website in the next blog. Human behavior is interesting. I thought a lot of people would sign up to follow The Better Plan blog as a result of the Toronto meetings, and a few have, but not that many. I definitely thought a lot of people would post reviews of the biography on Amazon, but to date we still have just 9 reviews. The nagging word does come to mind. Or maybe pleading.
I know that in trying to research resources on the internet, I’ve struggled with all of the different names that people give the realm of Choice Theory- Glasser, Quality Schools, reality therapy etc. In other words, there doesn’t seem to be a tag phrase that would be inclusive to help find more information.
On another note, I did find the Doug Dragster resources for teaching choice theory to students. I wish there were more resources in this area. I am more and more convinced that having teachers who understand is only a small piece of the puzzle. What I need is to teach students to know it and I need catchy little phrases like “Sounds like you need to get up on your front wheels.” (Doug Dragster) to help quickly remind kids to use their thinking and reasoning.
So, as I type this, I realize I could just do that – design the way I’ll teach it in my classroom and I sound like a whiner. The truth is, it’s easier to use a commercial program than to design it yourself. There, I said it, I’m looking for the easy way. But, it sounds better if I say I’m too busy 🙂
Any resources we can get our hands on that help us not have to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, are positive. I think Doug Dragster is definitely an incredible resource.
I think, too, that helping students understand choice theory does need to be complicated. So much of the choice theory principles can be woven into other parts of the curriculum, especially in Health, Bible, Social Studies, and Literature.
Finding a toy car at a store or at a garage sale that could be displayed in the classroom, and labeled with the Total Behavior tags would also be helpful.
I have wanted to create a page on The Better Plan to store choice theory lesson plans and teaching ideas. Maybe we can work on that together.