What If School Looked Different This Year?

Every August, educators gather in meetings and prep days asking the same question:

“How can we make this year better than the last?”

We update classroom policies. We tweak our discipline systems. We reword our expectations.

But what if the change students need isn’t found in a better behavior chart…What if it’s found in a completely different mindset?

The Real Issue Isn’t Apathy. It’s Capacity.

When students act out, shut down, or disengage, it’s easy to label it as laziness. But the truth is, most of them simply don’t have the internal tools to do what we’re asking them to do.

• We ask them to collaborate before they understand their own communication style.
• We expect leadership from students who’ve never been taught how to build trust on a team.
• We want them to regulate their emotions, but haven’t shown them how their brain state drives behavior.

That’s the disconnect we saw over and over again.

And that’s why I created GRiT.

What Is GRiT?

GRiT is a relational intelligence curriculum built for today’s students. those growing up in a world of filtered conversations, fractured attention spans, and real mental health challenges.

It’s not about compliance. But it is about rewiring how students see themselves, others, and their future.

GRiT teaches students to:

• Understand their leadership voice and communication tendencies
• Build healthy habits and break harmful ones through neuroscience-based tools
• Navigate emotions and stress with the Peace Index
• Lead like a Sherpa, focusing on empathy and service, not ego

It’s not abstract theory. It’s a hands-on, habit-forming, language-shifting class that students actually use outside the classroom.

A Curriculum Born from the Classroom

GRiT wasn’t built in a boardroom. It was born inside a business classroom in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where students were building pitch decks but couldn’t talk to each other.

Ayden, one of those students, now our Vice President, was five steps ahead of his peers, always envisioning the next idea, but leaving his team behind. The tension nearly tanked the project.

His teacher, me (Kurt Wismer), saw the problem: “We're expecting students to function in teams without ever teaching them how to work with people.”

That experience became the seed for GRiT. Today, Ayden and I are on the same team, helping schools across the country implement the curriculum they wish they had.

Want to Bring GRiT to Your Students?

You’ve got options:

Option 1: Use our 4-day sample lesson plan inside your current class (great for entrepreneurship, business, leadership, and advisory periods)

Option 2: Go all in and adopt GRiT as a standalone relational intelligence course for your school

Either way, you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Book a 1:1 session with Kurt
I will walk you through how to bring GRiT into your building, your way.
🔗 Click here to schedule your call

Let’s make this year different. Not with more rules, but with more relational intelligence.