The Goal: a process of Ongoing Improvement

DW: You’ve since developed other applications?
KS: Yes, and they’re interconnected. Because behavior changes attitudes. Or
maybe I should say that attitudes impact behavior. If a student can make a
more responsible decision, and he gets a favorable impact, his attitude toward
the teacher and what he’s doing in school changes. That’s bound to have

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some impact on his learning. But additionally, we have, in the past two years,
really worked on how to deliver the TOC learning process through
curriculum content. Or, again, maybe it’s the other way around: How to teach
content using the TOC processes. Because teachers do not want to interrupt
class to teach a life skill. They have to teach the curriculum.
DW: I understand you’ve introduced TOC to young people in prison
settings.
KS: I went into a juvenile jail in California about five years ago. I spoke to a
new group of juvenile offenders; this was their first day. They were all gang
members. Later the teacher who invited me told me he had been very worried
because I was female and most of them had been abused by their moms. He
was afraid they would back me into a corner and be quite rude. There I stood
in a polka dot dress, from Niceville, Florida, looking like the person who had
put them in jail. I’m sure I didn’t look very empathetic. But I tried to get
them to tell me what they wanted out of life. They said things like. “We just
want to get out of here, lady.” I said, “Do you think that’s enough to keep you
out of here?”
Finally, one boy said to me, “I just want a better life for my kids.” These
were 16-19-year-old old black and Hispanic males. I looked at this guy and I
said, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What do you mean? You have kids?” He
said, “Yes, I have a two-year-old and a baby.”
Anyway we had this goal on this rickety old chalkboard, “A better life.” I
said, “Okay, what is preventing you from having a better life?” They said,
“Jealous people.” I turned around and I said again, “I’m sorry, I don’t
understand what you mean by jealous.” Because I’m thinking to myself, and
not facetiously, “who could be jealous of them, they’re in jail?” And that’s
when they said, “Oh, but if you go back and try to get out of the gang they’ll
be jealous, they don’t want you to leave the gang, you can’t leave.”
They also mentioned prejudice as an obstacle. And as I’m making this list I
am thinking, “I am in over my head.” There was nothing I could think of that
would overcome the obstacles these kids were facing. But I didn’t need to
worry about it. Because they had the answer. They went down the list and

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they added more obstacles like, “my past,” and “criticism,” and about
halfway through they gave me something brilliant: “Me. Myself. I have to
change myself. Right away.”
I later received letters from some of those kids. One of them said, “Before we
had that talk, even making it to 21 was hard to see in my future. But you gave
me hope.” Now I ask you, did I give him the hope? No! It came from him!
But he wrote, “You gave me hope that I can make it if I just follow those
steps.” That last part is so important. This is not just wishful thinking. It’s
giving somebody a process they can use, so that when the person who’s
giving them the attaboys isn’t there, they have the know-why, not just the
know-how to keep going.