Saxty Soto, Nancy Cartwright and Principal Ramirez, John Glenn High School

Happy House Founder, Nancy Cartwright, and Happy House President, Carol Loweree, attended the Graduation of the Good Choices program delivered at John Glenn High School in Norwalk, California. The training on the Happy House Good Choices program was done by  Saxty Soto a special education teacher. It is important to note the students in this class were considered the dregs on the school, the students that acted up in class, that other teachers did not want.

The visit to the school started with Nancy doing one of the daily announcements to the whole school over the school’s PA system. She read the precept “Do well” (Flourish and Prosper) from the Good Choices booklet.

Then we had our graduation of 40 high school students who did the program as well as a Grammar PowerPoint course with amazing results! You can read some of the success stories below:

“The Good Choices Course helped me make better choices with helping me understand others feelings and care about people who get hurt and don’t get any respect. Now we need to change our lives so that we don’t do that anymore but make good choices from now on!” Omar G.

“This course helped me learn how to be nice and respect other people. Also to be more responsible also it cleared up how this can make you happier” Jonathan J. 

“The way I can use this course is to not being mean to my brother and sister but to say nice things to them and not hurt their feelings and say the right things” Alice E.

Many more but the main theme is that these high school kids can see that they were making bad choices in life.

Also amazing wins came from the teachers who said that several of the students had literally changed their LIVES around. When we asked for more info they gave an example of one young man who had been in Juvenile hall and once started the Good Choices decided that was it! He was going to change his ways and DID SO! His grades came WAY UP and he is now an assistant to the yearbook teacher as a photographer and is respectful and trusted!!

Another story was of another young man who would hide under his “hoodie” and wore dark colors as well as looking very “depressed.”  Now he shows his face, wears lighter colors and SMILES and even LAUGHS!! Again these are a few of the many wins from this delivery.  

As regards the Grammar Powerpoint, pre and post tests were done and most of the students didn’t answer the pre-test which asked about nouns, pronouns, verbs. That’s as far as they got this quarter. These students are in the 10^th-12^th grade! After the course the post test showed the students got 90-100% correct.

Here are some wins:

“What I learned about Grammar is that it’s important in life to communicate properly and needed to be able to get a good job. I also learned new words that I never heard of and I now like to learning new words!” Afsana A.

“I learned from the Grammar course is how to make a proper sentence with nouns and verbs”.

As Nancy and Carol were departing the school the principal introduced Nancy and Carol to his immediate senior and let him know about the Good Choices program and the results.

There were five other principals from other local high schools in the same room and once the senior heard about the results he asked if his other school could have the Good Choices program! Thus we will be training these other principals!

Meanwhile John Glenn High School will be delivering Good Choices during their summer program!