We were lucky to catch up with Rachel Scott recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

As a middle school science teacher, I had the privilege of being one of the adults that the eighth-grade school girls I taught seemed to enjoy being around. I distinctly remember a small group of girls that would eat lunch in my room every day. They’d eat, hang out and just talk openly about their lives and whatever was on their minds or happening at the time. Every now and again, they’d ask my opinion about different experiences–everything from their relationships to challenges in their families, to studying for exams. With each conversation, they got more and more comfortable sharing and listening. I learned about what worried them, what excited them, what their personal, academic and eventually professional dreams were, and even the things they were uncertain about. So much of it sounded like the things I thought and felt at their age. I embraced the chance to guide them and speak into their lives a little bit more each day. They seemed genuinely grateful to have someone to dialogue with. The experience caused me to imagine what it would look like to replicate that same kind of dynamic with more girls in a bigger way, through guided conversations, fun activities, opportunities for leadership development, and other teachers and mentors giving insight and support.

Treasured: Teaching Girls began as an effort to connect to teen girls in an authentic and meaningful way while providing mentoring, leadership development, and opportunities to participate in an authentic, supportive community between girls and young adult women.

Rachel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

“Treasured: Teaching Girls” (TTG) is a 10-module mentoring and leadership development curriculum for teen girls! Designed to teach girls that THEY ARE A GIFT TO THE WORLD, the curriculum is comprised of lessons, activities, team projects and social media challenges that emphasize five core values: IDENTITY, GROWTH, COURAGE, LEADERSHIP & FREEDOM.

TTG is an excellent tool for teachers, youth leaders, mentors, and even parents who wish to guide teen girls along a leadership and personal development journey. TTG facilitators will walk alongside girls as they:

• Embrace their God-given identity
• Develop their gifts and talents
• Promote positive female images in media
• Promote social awareness

Each lesson and the accompanying portfolio activities, team projects, and social media challenges have been meticulously tailored to meet mentoring and leadership development goals for girls from every walk of life. Also, the contents can easily be modified for pre-teen girls or young adult women.

When TTG was piloted in 2013, in a South Florida public middle school, 21 – seventh and eighth-grade girls participated. The program ran as an elective course that met daily for one hour. In addition to test-driving the curriculum components, I collected some data on each girl who participated, to identify any correlations between meeting program milestones and improved academic performance, reduced frequency of negative behaviors or improved feelings of worth and esteem. Pre and post-data indicated the following:

* 85% of participants demonstrated academic improvement in one or more classes.
* 90% of participants demonstrated a lower frequency of negative behaviors
including poor decision making, truancy, referable offenses during school hours, self-harm, inappropriate/disrespectful conduct towards persons of authority and/or peers
* 90% of participants indicated an increase in attitudes of positive self-value.

Of all the things we’ve done over the years, we are most proud of how active program participation supports holistic personal and leadership development for girls. It’s been amazing to see girls blossom in real-time! Their confidence grows, their appreciation of their own gifts and talents expands, and their ability to navigate personal friendships, relationships and interpersonal communication improves, among many other benefits and accomplishments.

Our approach differs from other mentoring programs because it combines a faith base with proven research methods to ensure that girls grow academically, deepen their faith, develop professional and leadership skills, and learn how to engage in a supportive community. Everything we teach can be applied across multiple dimensions of girls’ lives.

One of the most meaningful parent testimonials we have recently received was from a mother of two middle school girls who said, “What you’re doing is unique and is so needed. Most programs don’t connect all these areas well. They either focus on just the faith piece or just the school and professional piece.” – S.U.

When we heard that, we knew that we had nailed it!

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

As a long-time educator, I have a sort of built-in audience for the mentoring work that I do, through the school communities where I have worked. When I was just starting out, I was desperate to “grow a following”. One of my own mentors taught me that I already have a platform and that all my interactions with children, teens, parents, colleagues and now the teams that oversee, serve to build my “brand” and reputation. She told me, “People are watching. Even when they don’t click “like” on your post or click “follow” on your brand page, they’re observing and drawing conclusions all the time.”

I have learned to be intentional about what actions and character traits people associate me with. That way, if/when they interact with my TTG work they can immediately connect it to who I am and the message I perpetuate.

Some time ago, just for fun, I did a Facebook poll on my personal page, asking my connections, “If I were to start a podcast, what would you expect to hear me talk about?” Most of the responses were aligned with mentoring, teen girls, “girl talk” and leadership. I was happy to see that the message I was trying to convey through my life and my work was clear and visible, even to my non-business connections.

I believe that people trust what I communicate through TTG, because they likely view that work as an extension of my expertise and experience in education. I guess you could say I play to my strengths!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I am actually still building my online presence. I recognize that consistency and good content are key to growing an organic following. I have seen that from one week or month to the next, my (small) following engages quite a bit when I consistently post content or share meaningful things. Superficially posting material for likes may garner some short-term growth but long-term brand engagement looks very different.

I follow many different online profiles with fan bases of every size. I have noticed that even people with millions of followers have very low post-to-post engagement (compared to their total number of followers) based on what they post. So much of the real work of TTG is “offline” and “on the ground” so I tend to focus my energy there.

I would give the same advice that I’m following: stick with it! Rome wasn’t built in a day. Also, online followings are not always the best indicator of success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://treasured-one.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sheistreasured_
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sheistreasured
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/treasured-teaching-girls
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sheistreasured

Image Credits
Anthony R. Yorke – Roosevelt Media & Sol Photography