Over the last several years we have seen a steady stream of educators using The Go-Giver in their classes, with students at every level from high school to graduate school. The demand for an organized curriculum guide finally became so strong we decided it was time to produce one ourselves. And now it’s here!
In December 2015, exactly eight years after The Go-Giver was first published, we released A Teacher’s Guide to The Go-Giver: A Curriculum for Making a Difference.
Originally intended for adult readers, The Go-Giver touched a chord in readers from all walks of life—including avid young readers, from middle school through college age. Shortly after its publication in 2007, the book was picked up by Randy Stelter, a high school English teacher and athletic director in the northwest Indiana school system. Randy used the book to help enhance his students’ perspective on “what it’s going to take to be successful in the real world,” and has taken his school’s senior class through the book every year since. Soon other educators began following suit, adopting the book as part of their curricula at every level from high school through graduate school.
Now Randy has teamed up with Go-Giver authors Bob Burg and John David Mann to create this Teacher’s Guide, a detailed lesson plan that includes vocabulary lists, assigned readings, questions for comprehension and critical thinking, extensive topics for class discussion, and a set of final projects designed to deepen students’ understanding of the book and to ground its lessons in their own everyday experience.
Designed as a high school curriculum, the Guide’s content and approach can also be readily adapted for use by college professors in higher-education settings.
Bob chats with Randy about how he first came up the with idea of teaching The Go-Giver to the Senior Class and how he introduced it. He explains how he used the book and developed the curriculum. Randy has been teaching the book for nearly ten years and he shares how the way he teaches the material has evolved. We hope you find the interview to be helpful. Please feel welcome to contact us if you have any questions. Click Here to download MP3 file.
With the release of the Teacher’s Guide we have also launched a Facebook group exclusively for educators interested in using The Go-Giver in their classrooms. Teachers at all levels are welcome to join us and share your experiences teaching the principles of The Go-Giver to your students!
Join us at: www.facebook.com/groups/gogivereducators/
A separate PDF file of all the worksheets included in the Guide (designed for easy distribution of individual worksheets to students, in either paper or digital form) is available here.
“As educators, our highest purpose is to help prepare our students to provide greater value to their world and, as a result, live lives of success and significance. The lessons and narrative in The Go-Giver offer students of all ages a wonderful foundation for genuine success.”
“So many of our young people desire a vision for their lives. The Go Giver provides just that—great rules and values to put into place to ensure success from an early age. I can’t imagine a better way to pull students into a positive life view than studying The Go-Giver curriculum.”
“It is exciting to see such an outstanding curriculum for such a great contemporary book. Bob Burg and John David Mann’s The Go-Giver applies to our youth today more than ever—and Randy Stelter’s experience in the classroom, on the fields, and as a leader in the educational system, gives this Guide substance and value. As an English teacher for the past fifteen years, I see unprecedented value in teaching my students these real-life lessons within their reading.”
“The Go-Giver’s principles have helped me grow organizations that improve people’s lives. When I began teaching Entrepreneurship at Rochester Institute of Technology, it was the natural course textbook. I not only believe its meaning is a good way to live, I see the power daily in what it helps our students achieve.”
“In our seminar for juniors and seniors in the College of Business at Colorado State University we use The Go-Giver to help create in our students a sense of individual self-efficacy, personal leadership, and the understanding that they can lead immediately. Everything we do in the seminar fits the words from Lesson One of this Teacher’s Guide: ‘How can I model these lessons in my life?’”
“The Go-Giver introduces itself as a business idea; what we find instead is an idea for all aspects of life. Lessons centered on concepts such as success, authenticity, and influence (among others) will engage students in important dialogue and reflective practice. For a generation often criticized for their selfishness, The Go-Giver and its accompanying curriculum serve to break through the noise and empower students to be their best version possible.”
“The students in my Applied Business Development class read The Go-Giver as part of their curriculum and wrote remarkable stories about how they applied the principles taught in each chapter. They were so excited about the book that they talked about it at home, and their parents starting reading the book and doing the assignments along with them!”
“Reading The Go-Giver not only changed my thinking; as the first book selected to study in our city-wide book club, it changed the thinking of our entire community. By focusing on the principles contained in The Go-Giver with intentionality, positivity abounds.”
“When the first edition of The Go-Giver was published in 2007, I started using it with my advanced leadership college group at our annual retreat. While this new Teacher’s Guide to The Go-Giver was originally developed for high school teachers, there are many pearls throughout that college professors can use with their students. The core concept discussion questions, quick writing and group discussion suggestions, and critical thinking questions all provide rich ideas for engaging college students around the concepts in The Go-Giver. The final project suggestions at the end of the Guide will stimulate possibilities for more in-depth integration of The Go-Giver concepts into our students’ everyday lives. As educators, we ultimately are called to improve the world through our students. The Go-Giver and this Teacher’s Guide will assist us in that noble calling!”
“I have known Randy Stelter for over forty years and have closely followed his extraordinary teaching and coaching career. In this Teacher’s Guide he makes the concepts in The Go-Giver become a reality in the students’ lives. I plan to teach The Go-Giver in my leadership class at the University of St. Francis, and I know this Guide will greatly enhance my teaching.”
“While I am not a teacher per se, I use the principles in The Go-Giver every day in interactions with my children, my patients, and my employees. As parents, doctors, and leaders, we are all first teachers. I am impressed with the way this Teacher’s Guide approaches the concepts of the book through critical thinking. [By igniting our youth and teaching our children through these concepts, we empower them to create positive change in the world while achieving great things.] This book is not just for teachers, it’s for everyone.”
What is success?
“Success” can mean different things to different people. When you hear the phrase, “a very successful person,” what comes to mind for you? How would you define success? Financially? Spiritually? Mentally? Physically? Relationally? Socially?
How would you consider yourself as successful?
What do you think it takes to be, or to become, a genuinely successful person?
Have you ever wished you could ask a highly successful person the keys to his or her success? What questions would you ask them?
Write down the name of a person you consider to be highly successful. This can be someone from history, or someone alive today. In the next two minutes, write down as many questions as you can think of that you would like to ask this person about how they became successful.
(After two minutes)
Put down your pen, form yourselves into groups of three, and share in your groups what you have written.
(After two or three minutes)
While still in your groups, take three minutes to consider this question: “What can you learn from successful people, and how can they influence you today?”
(After three minutes)
Now have one student from each of your groups report to the whole class what you discussed.
In this course you will be reading a book about a man named Joe who learns many valuable business lessons, which also serve as life lessons. He learns these lessons primarily from a man named Pindar, but also from a number of Pindar’s friends.
As you follow along with Joe on his journey, you will also learn about five key principles called the “Five Laws of Stratospheric Success.” Joe will be asked to test out these each one of these five laws by applying it in his own life, immediately, the same day he learns it.
As you read we’ll ask you to brainstorm ways you can apply these five laws in your own lives, too, just as Joe does.
Get immediate access to the special report, Endless Prospects: The Go-Giver Way and sample chapters of the Go-Giver books. Also receive periodic email updates about The Go-Giver Movement along with notifications of new posts.
