Education isn't just about good grades and test scores.

It's about shaping young people into emotionally resilient individuals who can manage stressful situations and play well with others. Those individuals will grow up and some day take over the workforce. Then they’ll be adults who have to manage their stress and work well with others.

A fundamental piece of their success in life is a strong foundation, something the people behind the Core Project want to help them establish.

"One of the things that I’ve discovered is that I think public education is by far one of the most important institutions in our country. If kids aren’t getting their needs met at home, this is the next best place where that can happen," said Core Project founder and educational consultant Greg Sommers. "Where they don't have skills, they need to develop skills, and if they don’t have that, we’re just going to steamroll on top of them and they’re not going to be able to be any more successful."

The Core Project, a Rathdrum-based business, uses social-emotional learning curriculum to create connections within schools and help students develop social-emotional skills through discussions and activities with a different focus each lesson. Lessons explore topics such as grit, cooperation, attitude, stress, kindness, diversity, school culture and honesty.

"It's the positive culture creator," said Christian McDougall, principal of Timberlake Junior High School, where Core Project curriculum was implemented at the start of the 2018-2019 school year.

TJHS has Core for a half-hour every Wednesday morning. Every class allocates time to it, and the seventh- and-eighth-graders are brought together to share in the lesson and break down grade level barriers.

"The Core Project helps me and the students to really be honest with ourselves and really see what we can improve in our lives," said eighth-grader Benjamin Dirks, who serves as a Core Project student leader. "It's also nice to hear the teacher's experience on certain Core messages. The Core Project is important because it helps us to work with others to prepare us for the workforce in our future career."

Core Project curriculum is implemented in four steps: purchase the lessons, connect with a specialist to set up user accounts, give teachers and staff members access to familiarize with the lessons, and undergo professional development training and consultation. Core Project staff will provide support for schools as they continue with the curriculum.

The Core Project has already been implemented in seven Idaho schools. Health and P.E. teacher Stacie Lawler, who has been in education 16 years, said she immediately noticed a disconnect among students when she came to TLJH five years ago. Since Core has been in practice, she's witnessed a shift in the school's culture.

"I see kids taking more pride in their school, taking more responsibility for helping each other out," she said. "In health, we do random acts of kindness, we talk about social-emotional health, so these are things I’m always targeting kids for, and I feel like they've got a stronger sense of community and wanting to be helpful to one another."

When the Core Project was founded in 2009, it was geared toward professional development and adult employees. A shift to education occurred in 2017, as dependence on smartphones, suicidal trends and overall disconnect among young people were swinging upward, along with the nationwide need to focus on mental and emotional health.

"A simple conversation from human to human is a mystery to some of these students," McDougall said. "It has become more and more evident and again, going to that grit, watching kids come in that are struggling with simple baseline data on how to do math, how to do ELA (English and language arts), it's so crazy to see that to me. This goes to the root of how to be a human being.”

"We’re helping them grow into young men and women. This is it,” Lawler said. “They’re missing out if we’re not taking the time to do this at our school; they may not ever get it. We want kids to be mature adults. We’re trying to make them into these adults that can go on into the world and have some skills to be able to be successful in life."

Info: www.thecorepro.com or 208-755-8781