Life didn’t come with an owner’s manual –
until now.
TOCW is a nonprofit Human Potential Initiative helping people flourish today, and, in turn, elevate the human experience of future generations.
Preparing people for life is one of society’s greatest responsibilities. We’re falling short. TOCW addresses this Preparation Deficit.
To change how we live by changing how we educate.
The future begins today. Be part of it.
School prepares us for work. Not for living.
Today’s world moves faster and cuts deeper than it did a few generations ago. The opportunities are greater. So are the pitfalls. Our children are prepared for neither.
Public education was built to prepare us for the workforce based on a 20th-century, conveyor-belt mentality. We learn math, history, and science. We should. But we don’t learn how to understand ourselves, build healthy relationships, raise children, handle uncertainty, make coherent decisions, care for our health, or manage money.
That knowledge arrives too late for most people, earned through expensive, self-defeating trial and error. For many, it never arrives at all. The cost compounds: personal struggle, plus the well-being of our families, communities, and generations to come.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can’t live what we don’t understand — and we can’t teach it either.
In 2023, TOCW shared a vision with parents, educators, and mental health professionals: an integrated curriculum for late teens and young adults, to close the Preparation Deficit school leaves behind. Their response was immediate:
“We were never taught this stuff either! How are we to support and model what you’ll be teaching our kids?”
Moreover, they told us they needed this knowledge themselves, not as parents and teachers, but personally, to manage their own lives.
“You need to teach adults first!”
So, that’s what we’re doing!
Meet the Curriculum for Living (CFL)
An integrated body of knowledge, insights, principles, and practical wisdom created to help us understand our minds and motivations, the realities of our physical and cultural environments, and how to respond to life’s challenges more consciously and adeptly.
The CFL serves as the primary content resource for all of the various learning resources TOCW develops and produces for adults and young people alike, as well as for the related online forums and communities we’re facilitating to help people navigate life with greater competence, confidence, connectedness, and compassion. TOCW is the originator of the CFL and serves as its steward, curator, and ambassador.
What do we want our children to know, understand, and be capable of when they set out on the bumpy road of life?
Our Initiatives
We can’t live what we don’t understand, model what we don’t live, or teach what we don’t model. TOCW provides the foundational understanding.
Podcast and online learning resources are production ready Learn MoreAdapting the Curriculum for Living for teens and early adults and resourcing independent educators to utilize the CFL in their work.
Foundational content (CFL) is ready Learn MoreAddressing the intergenerational influences that shape how we see ourselves, relate, parent, and in turn, pass on.
Vision developed; seeking partners Help build PREPAREntingCome Learn With Us.
Every TOCW initiative, program, and offering is rooted in the Curriculum for Living — each a different expression of the same integrated knowledgebase. However you like to learn, there’s a place to start.
Our podcast — the accessible, engaging entry point into understanding the perceptions and mindsets that condition, literally, everything we do.
Empower Adults SuscribeOur online Briefings, Symposia, and Forums, that bring to life all aspects of the CFL and place it at your fingertips, at your pace, on your schedule.
Empower Adults Meet LiLiOur interconnected, online forums — the communities that keep us connected and learning from each other.
All 3 Initiatives Join the conversationOur resources for home-schooling, micro-schools, and transitioning from school to life.
Teach Kids Resources coming soonEngage.
Live more intentionally. Parent and teach more effectively. Contribute to our community. Keep growing.
We’re fellow travelers, blazing a trail. Engage with us. Share your insights. See how you can help — and benefit.
This connects you to TOCW’s Monthly Update — updates on what’s “going live” and when, new developments, and opportunities to make a difference. One email a month, nothing more.
Give yourself a better today.
Give kids a better tomorrow.
TOCW invites you to invest in yourself and the future by taking advantage of what we offer, sharing your ideas, getting involved, supporting us financially, and spreading the word. You know things and people we don’t know!