The 195-hour program goal is to assist individuals in examining their thought processes and help them discover how errors in their thinking may lead them to act in an asocial, antisocial, or criminal manner.  Programming is governed by a simple straightforward principle – thinking (internal behavior) controls actions (external behavior). Pathfinders uses a combination of approaches to increase awareness of self and others.  The philosophy of the program endorses that each person has the power and responsibility for changing his or her own problem behavior. 

Pathfinders takes students through a process beginning with the examination of how beliefs, attitudes, and thinking patterns are exhibited in various aspects of life. After a process of self-assessment (through the use of activities, surveys, and lecture) the curriculum extensively addresses pro-social skill development and provides opportunity to practice these skills.  Each module is designed to build on previous lessons.

The modules include: Motivational Interviewing, Team Building, Gaining Control, Think, Communication, Stress Management, Anger Management, Problem Solving, Values Clarification, and Motivation.

Content/Skills

• Objective self-assessment  
• Identifying personal stage of change
• Teambuilding: group process, collaboration versus competition, interpersonal trust
• Franklin Reality Model, identifying how beliefs lead to behaviors and results, and how to change beliefs which are not supportive of a positive, pro-social lifestyle
• Identifying attitudes, beliefs and thoughts
• Identifying personal cognitive distortions
• Writing thinking reports, identifying automatic thoughts and key thinking patterns
• Identifying thoughts and feelings  which lead to antisocial or criminal behavior
• Identifying personal barriers to change
• Role playing and modeling positive social skills
• Identifying  communication barriers, active listening, personal perception, interaction styles, nonverbal/verbal communication
• Identifying common stressors, effects of excessive stress, coping with stressful situations, locus of control, relaxation and stress reduction
• Identifying the cause and function of anger, assertive behavior, measuring personal effects of anger, examining styles of conflict, building trust
• Defining a problem, five steps to problem solving, criteria for evaluating solutions, creative and analytical styles
• Increasing awareness of social influences on the formation of values, personal development and growth in the context of culture, clarifying personal values, relationship between one’s values and major life decisions
• Defining personal motivators, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, reactions to unsatisfied needs