Personal Empowerment
We give students the ability to see the road ahead by walking them through simple exercises that help them build a plan for success.

Cognitive & Executive Function Skills Training
We work with these students with a proven technology (BrainHQ) and other processes to invigorate their ability to assess information, take tests and make smart decisions.

Social Emotional Skills Training
This is a key component of what we do. We work with students to help them get along with other students and relate to parents, coaches and the public in effective and honorable ways.

Healthy Habits & Nutritional Training
An effective life starts from the inside out and so as part of our training, we assist students to understand and engage in healthy eating habits and other essentials such as getting proper sleep.

Parent Empowerment Training
Our targeted parenting training program will help parents to improve their ability to work with and inspire students.

Earned Rewards through Win-Win
The key to getting leverage on anyone is assisting him or her to see the win in taking action. We will show parents and students how to find the mutual win in any situation.

Athletic Performance Training
We work with the scholar-athletes in our program to maximize their performance on and off the field with innovative and effective training.

Cognitive and Executive Function Skills

What are Executive Function Skills?

The Executive Function & Social Emotional Skills (included in the Urban Champions program) are a set of skills needed for engaging in independent, purposeful, goal-directed behaviors. (See Lezak, Howieson, & Loring 2004.)

There are eight Executive Function Skills that Eight critical skills to achieve effectiveness and life-time success:

Emotional control
Initiating
Planning
Organizing
Monitoring
Self-control
Shifting
Working memory

What do the experts say about Executive Function Skills?

No one told the brain that executive function skills were a separate enterprise. It's all unified.
Put another way:

You have to feed good information to the highest levels of the brain.
If not, the brain will become fuzzy and trashier, and brain will be less than useful.
The degradation of speed and reliability of operations in complex processes in thought common to struggling kids is due to their “mental machinery” operating at a subpar way on all levels.

- Comments from our partner from Posit Science who created BrainHQ, Dr. Michael Merzenich.

“You have to TRAIN the entire brain. “It makes most sense to begin by sharpening things for them (student's) at a more elemental level, because higher functions don't go anywhere when all they received from those lower levels is garbage.

When the brain is ready for it, THEN you pound on ‘executive skills.’ About 40% of our training programs do this – they pound on the ‘executive skills’ so that kids cultivate learning skills for life.”

Dr. Michael Merzenich