Caldwell Williams
Author of LISTEN!,
Founder of GoalTenders™ &
I.A. Over the course of more than forty years as an educator in the Los Angeles Unified School District and as a management consultant to corporations such as Hughes, Nestle, Neutrogena, TRW, Xerox, Century 21 Realty and the Federal Aviation Administration, Caldwell Williams has introduced group counseling for disaffected secondary sc
hool students, created a nationally recognized innovative adolescent drug prevention program, founded a groundbreaking public high school, won a U. design patent, counseled executives at the highest levels of corporate America and developed an overarching program to facilitate the most compelling social need in humans Inclusion in their preferred groups. Williams grew up one of eleven children in central Los Angeles. He attended public K-12 Los Angeles schools, graduating from Dorsey High School. He earned a B.S in business administration and a general secondary teacher’s credential from U.C.L.A. There, he met Arlowyne, his future wife. He then earned a Masters degree and general pupil personnel counseling credential from Cal State University, Los Angeles. They raised their two sons, Jeffrey and Phillip, on the Westside of Los Angeles – both attended their local public schools, Bellagio Road, Emerson, Revere, University High and Palisades High: Jeffrey, an actor, is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Phillip, an architect and art director is a graduate of UC Berkeley. Employed as a secondary school counselor Williams focused particularly on boys attending Audubon Junior High School on “social adjustment” permits in 1960-61 and innovated a group-counseling program. As there were no published texts on group counseling at the time, Williams created his own techniques and approaches that resulted in successful graduation of all participants in his group. His success was lauded by noted psychologist, Carl Rodgers, PhD, who observed the program results in 1963. In 1967, as a guidance counselor at University High School in West Los Angeles, Williams, assisted by Jordan Paul, created an off-campus drug abuse, prevention and rehabilitation program called Developing Adolescents Without Narcotics (DAWN). DAWN received national acclaim as the nation’s first such youth drug prevention program and became the impetus for the Los Angeles Police Department’s DARE program. In 1968 newly elected U. Senator, Alan Cranston – whose younger son, Kim, had found purpose and direction in Williams’ off-campus DAWN high school counseling group – offered to seek Federal Government and private defense industry private partnership funding for Williams’ concept of a model public high school in South Central Los Angeles that elevated affective education to co-equal status with cognitive learning. (Forerunner to the current small learning center charter school concept.) At a conference hosted by UCLA in Kerkoff Hall, Williams and Cranston, were unsuccessful in their efforts to gain support of Los Angeles Deputy Superintendent Jim Taylor, deans of education from UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, Loyola, the Chancellor of Cal State University system, though senior executives from major Southern California defense contractors applauded and supported the proposed demonstration school and pledged equal funding participation in a public-private partnership. During the Los Angeles Unified School Districts’ teacher’s strike in the spring of 1970, parents of DAWN youth marched in picket lines with Williams and Paul. There, ideas for an innovative public alternative to conventional curricular approaches were explored. By summer vacation, Williams and parents had persuaded the board of education to allow Williams to create a small, autonomous learning community within the 3000 student University High School to eliminate the anonymity that he observed in alienated, aberrant behavior and student failure. Williams led the design and creation of a school-within-a-school small, autonomous learning community, Innovative Program School (IPS) within University High. There, students were guided to discover a sense of self and become responsible for their own purposeful inclusion in the world. The school operated successfully for eight years, sending graduates to major universities, both public and private. Over time, IPS set mastery of data as the standard for achievement and innovated study techniques that enabled individual progress at each student’s own pace. Student anonymity and failure were eliminated! One student asked for help with her family. Her brother had just committed su***de. Williams began to focus on family and faculty training, dialogue skills – the intentional, harmonious re-creation and exchange of experiences – “listening without defending; and, speaking without offending.” This process eliminated the distrustful, isolation of individual faculty and adversarial relationships between parents and educators, all of which underlay typical public secondary education efforts. Parents attended IPS classes as students in the community. Monthly IPS community meetings were attended by 1000 persons and filled Melnitz Hall on the UCLA campus. Connie Chung of KCBS, the Los Angeles affiliate of CBS, featured an interview with Williams and one student, David Greenwalt, who gave testimony to finding a positive sense of self, purpose and goals through participation in Williams-designed programs. Art Seidenbaum, of Los Angeles Times, repeatedly wrote feature stories on Williams and his affect on Westside families. In 1979, Williams left public education and established a management consulting business that trained corporate managers and executives with his tools of inclusion: achievement, dialogue and change management. For over twenty years his three-part trainings guided top managers at Xerox, Alcoa Aluminum, Hughes, Lockheed, Neutrogena, Nestle, Century 21, Pac Bell, the FAA and others to find an effective leadership paradigm in the rapidly exploding information age. At the urging of corporate leaders, Williams also created a holistic “Road Map to Achievement” student version of his cutting-edge program for their daughters and sons that stressed the skills for focused, responsible learning as organized, systematic thinking and planning individuals. His unique executive planner for corporate clients was copied and marketed as the “Day Runner” and more recently as Franklin-Covey planners. The student version of his training and materials, GoalTenders, was delivered to the UCLA men’s basketball team, public school children in Oakland, Washington, D.C., Dallas, and within LAUSD. Consistent results: 1) Attendance improved 5 days per semester; 2) GPA improved 1 point. Sharon Robinson, director of Jesse Jackson’s Push Excel Program, with her mother, Rachel Robinson, observed a GoalTenders D.C. student workshop and materials. They were thrilled to find a program that offered guidance to the thousands of youth who, at the time, answered Jackson’s ‘alter call’ to commit their lives to fruitful pursuits. “GoalTenders provides guidance enabling:
Discovery of a self-identity;
Discovery of possibilities and a purpose;
Discovery of goals that further the purpose; and,
Learning skills the maximize choices for optimum participation in life.”
They were unable to persuade Jackson’s board that black youth would be receptive to such guidance. Current focus on small, autonomous education communities funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, duplicates what Williams demonstrated 40 years ago to an establishment not then ready for such reform. The election of President Barack Obama and his administration’s persuasive commitment to real improvement of public education through his ‘Race to the Top’ initiative inspires Williams’ re-engagement through publication of his book, LISTEN! In 2012, Williams read a Department of Defense report that the su***de rate for Post 911 veterans reached 19 per day. By the following year the rate had increased to 22 per day. These reports inspired Williams to exit retirement and offer his services. As young veterans successfully completed the two-day intensive and experienced shifted mental warrior paradigms they named the training: “The New Breed Listens!”
