Dedicated to helping people become their BEST selves...
... starting with all children, so they can win the biggest game -- LIFE!
Everyone can learn to do this when they learn essential personal life skills.
This website can help you understand what essential personal life skills are, why it is important for everyone to learn them, and why we believe they should be taught routinely to all children beginning in a quality preschool setting and continuing throughout primary and secondary schooling.
What We Do
Our main goal is to help all people, starting with children, to become their best selves so they can win the biggest game -- LIFE!
We believe this can be accomplished by teaching essential personal life skills in all schools starting at birth and extending through high school.
Most people don’t know what essential personal life skills are,
but they do recognize the problems that can result from the lack of these skills.
We must acknowledge that there are problems related to people lacking these skills,
and that these problems can be prevented if we teach everyone the skills they need
to become their best selves!
It is our firm belief that all children should have access to quality early learning, where they can begin to learn these skills, and also that curriculum to teach these skills should be included for every grade level from K-12th grades. If this were true nation-wide, all our children would be better prepared for life. So, we continue to ask this question:
"Since parents want their children to ultimately get good jobs, and since employers want employees who have good essential personal life skills, why are we not including curriculum to teach these skills in all our schools?"
Toward this end, here are the three primary things that SELF does:
1. We ADVOCATE for quality early learning for all children from birth to 5 years, which is when they begin to learn essential personal life skills. This is the foundation of a person's life, and every child must start to learn these skills to become their best selves.
In order to see this happen, we advocate for our government to cut the wasteful spending, especially on programs that do not help Americans, and instead use our tax dollars to create a better society by investing in families and children, providing funding for quality early learning for all children in the U.S., which is administered by each state, RUN BY THE PRIVATE SECTOR, and which is measured, monitored, and rated by a third party to assure excellence.
We also advocate for essential personal life skills curriculum to be mandated as a stand-alone subject in all schools for K-12th grades so that students continue to learn these skills.
Just like with reading and writing, the more our students learn about essential personal life skills and how to apply them, the more successful they will be in every area of their lives.
Read more about our advocacy work HERE.
2. We EDUCATE through the content of our website, which includes simple sayings and tips, as well as through our free Alive2Thrive curriculum, which teaches about essential personal life skills and how to apply these skills to your life.
3. We INVEST in families in our community by offering our Hand-Up Tuition Assistance program to help hard-working parents of preschoolers if they are not receiving government assistance by offsetting a portion of their tuition at quality early learning centers we work with.
We also INVEST by helping school districts with a Hand Up to help pay for quality curriculum that teaches essential life skills to students from K-12th grades from a short list of approved vendors. Through this investment, we are helping thousands of students around the country learn the vital skills they all need to be their best selves.
This is a stop-gap measure we are taking until the government starts spending our money wisely. The ULTIMATE solution is for the government to use our money to invest in ALL our people regardless of income level or skin color -- our tax dollars should be invested to help everyone become their best selves.
Some education can have a bad return on investment — for example, some degrees cost so much that the degree holders have no hope of paying for the schooling needed to obtain them. Additionally, schools can do a better job of preparing students to make informed decisions about future careers that fit them well. If they did, students would make fewer career mistakes and potentially spend less money on education that does not serve them well.
The chart below shows some problems people may experience in their lives as a result of not having essential personal life skills.
If using a mobile device, please turn the device horizontally for optimal viewing.
| Domestic violence | Broken families, emotional instability, physical trauma, fear, medical expenses | x | x | x | x |
| Bullying others | Social and school problems | X | x | x | |
| Racism | Stress & other health concerns, discrimination | x | x | x | |
| Depression/anxiety | Poor relationships, job loss, family dysfunction | x | x | x | x |
| Suicide | Family trauma, stress for loved ones | x | x | x | x |
| Drug or alcohol dependence/abuse | Poor health, job loss, family trauma, legal troubles | x | x | x | |
| Eating disorder(s) (anorexia, bulimia, etc.) | Poor health, emotional instability | x | x | ||
| Poor job performance | Unable to advance, poor pay, job dissatisfaction | x | x | ||
| Marital/family issues | Divorce, disharmony, dysfunctional family dynamics | x | x | x | x |
| Low self-esteem | Risky behaviors, poor judgment, lack of motivation | x | x | ||
| Incarceration | Family trauma, relationships suffer, future job potential decreases | x | x | x | x |
| Anger | Arrest, incarceration, bad relationships | x | x | ||
| Fear | Family & work relationships suffer, stress | x | x | ||
| Debt | Bad credit, homelessness, stress | x | x | x | |
| Poverty/homelessness | Stress, financial ruin | x | x | x | |
| Poor health/self-care | Medical problems, relationships suffer | x | x | ||
| Obesity | Health problems, hygiene issues, social anxiety | x | x | ||
| Guilt, shame, self-blame | Lack of motivation, depression, anxiety | x | x |
Santoro Education Lifeskills Foundation (SELF)
If learning academic subjects is like the car that drives you, then essential personal life skills are like the steering wheel that guides you. You can’t drive a car without a steering wheel, right?
SELF is dedicated to helping everyone learn important lessons about health, self-character, and relationships with others as early in life as possible. We believe that through learning essential personal life skills as early as preschool and continuing from grades K-12, people will have foundational life skills to help in ALL areas of life.
We can use your help
How to Use This Site
This website is a free common-sense approach to help ALL people become their best selves and win the biggest game: LIFE.
We advocate for and provide a simple means of avoiding or treating some life issues that stem from the lack of essential personal life skills, and the journey starts with the first step.
Please click on the We Educate tab shown at the top of this and all other pages for a peek at all of the free resources this site offers, which range from a full curriculum program called Alive2Thrive to individual short “sayings.”
This site is not intended as a replacement for professional medical care for physical or mental health problems, which should be addressed by a licensed professional.