Student Self Leadership Program

Margie and Ken Blanchard co-founded the Blanchard Institute as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization decades ago. The foundation offers virtual and face-to-face Student Self Leadership programs for middle, high school and college students. These courses have been developed from the successful leadership content taught worldwide by The Ken Blanchard Companies for over 40 years. Scott Blanchard, the President of The Ken Blanchard companies is passionate about Blanchard’s corporate social responsibility of investing in students so that they have the mindset and skillset to lead themselves. You can go to the Blanchard Institute website to learn more.

The Student Self Leadership teaches about how to adopt three mindsets:

1. Challenge Assumed Constraints

2. Activate Points of Power

3. Be Proactive

It also teaches three skillsets:

1. Goal-setting

2. Diagnosing where you are in your progress towards a goal

3. Matching, which helps you ask for the kind of support you need to reach your goal

Social emotional learning is woven throughout the programs. All three mindsets and skillsets mirror the topics in Blanchard's corporate Self Leadership course.

We will build three different versions of the Student Self Leadership Collaborative Online using different language and examples appropriate for middle, high school, and people transitioning into adulthood, whether they are going to college, work, trade school, the military, or any other path. In addition to creating the online courses for students, we plan to create a companion portal for adult mentors, like parents, teachers, and coaches, so that they can learn the same mindsets/skillsets and identify ways to support the students in their lives.

A collaborative online is on a platform that features a new topic released each week with self-paced activities. They will be bite-sized—things like watching a video, reading an article, or participating in a discussion or interaction. Once a week, participants attend a facilitator-led session to bring everyone together, answer questions, help them apply what they are learning, and participate in small-group activities. Students who complete all of the activities in the platform earn a digital badge and certificate indicating they completed the program.

Since the content is online, it can go to a much wider audience than in-person training. We can create mega-massive cohorts with students from all around the globe. The activities still create a sense of community because learners interact with real people, and they can do their self-paced work at times that are convenient to them.

The Ken Blanchard Companies has to date successfully launched two collaborative online programs for adults: Self Leadership and Conversational Capacity. More are in the works.

Use our pilot registration form here.

We might feature your photo and name in a course.

Students can earn gift cards for providing at least 20 good quality photos that we add into our library. If students apply for scholarships, they can include their contribution of providing photos to a leadership foundation/company that helps other students.

Students who submit at least 20 "good quality" photos that are approved for use in our photo library qualify to receive a gift card as a thank you. We have limited quantities of gift cards available that we will distribute on a first-come, first-serve basis.

To qualify, photos need to:

• Fit the descriptions in our Photo Requirements List

• Have good lighting

• Show clear images

• Feature students (or students with adults) in their environments during and outside of school

• Include faces of only people who will sign a photo release

Photos should be submitted with a Photo Details Form and the required Photo Releases. You can find all documents above in the How to Submit section.

• Groups of photos that show the same people in different poses doing the same activity will count as 1 submission.

• Groups of photos that include the same people doing different activities will count as separate submissions.

In other words, your shots using the same people will count as long as they’re doing something reasonably different in each image.

At this time, we are not accepting user-generated videos. But if you have an inspirational story that you think we'd be interested in, email us and tell us about yourself: SSLprogram@kenblanchard.com.

We are looking for true personal stories about:

• Succeeding despite having to face big obstacles

• Overcoming a limiting belief that you have had from a negative past experience

• Being proactive and taking responsibility for your path

• Using your knowledge, skills, relationships, passion, or personal vision of your future to exert power in your life

• Setting goals, working towards them, and achieving them

• Working through all the stages of learning how to do something new: excited, frustrated, doubting yourself, and becoming highly skilled

• Receiving support from an influential adult who helped you overcome challenges in your own development

• Anything else that you think would inspire students

Nope. Since you must provide your name when submitting anything on our photo upload sites, we can track the total number of photos you submit.

We will keep the photos we receive in an internal library dedicated to the Student Self Leadership project. Some of them will be used in our course. We will refer to individuals in photographs by their first names unless you deny permission in the Photo Details Form. We will not give away or sell the photos.

You may read the Student Self Leadership Media Library Privacy Notice here.

Every person whose face is featured in a photo needs to sign a Release and Authorization form to provide consent to use the image. Please submit the releases at the same time you submit the corresponding photo(s). If the person featured is younger than 18, a parent/guardian must complete the child form. If the person featured is 18 or older, they must complete the adult form. You can find the forms in the How To Submit section above.

The easiest way to fill out the photo release forms online is to use the free version of Adobe Acrobat Reader which you can download here.

Download the PDF to your machine. And then open it from your local drive. (If you open it in a browser, it will not allow you to apply a signature.)

After you open the document, select the Sign and Fill icon.

Then select Sign Yourself and Add Signature. You can then drag a typed signature of your name to the signature box below.

You can also print the form and fill it out by hand. You will need to scan it or take a photo of it to upload it to the photo submission site.

You can email us at: SSLProgram@kenblanchard.com. If you would like to receive updates, please sign up to be on our mailing list at the bottom of the Contact page.