Letter of recommendation for Janice Hoffman,
December 5, 2002

Janice Hoffman has been a guest speaker in my Living On Your Own classes at Fairview High School for the past four years. She presents wonderful materials on relationships that students can relate to their own lives.

Janice starts her lively presentation by drawing the students in and using students in the class as examples in her explanation of the five stages of dating. She encourages the students to ask questions and get involved. She breaks down dating into very concrete, understandable stages, with sound, logical, moral advice on waiting for intimacy. Her examples are fun and easy for all the students to relate to.

Janice also does an excellent job of explaining the difference between casual sex and emotional sex, and how the former can get you in trouble. She facilitates this in a fun, casual way. She is very comfortable with students, and at ease as a speaker. All of the Mars/Venus materials are well-presented and fascinating to students. They are searching answers on how to relate and communicate with the opposite sex. After her presentation they not only have some answers and tools to use, but also her e-mail address if they have further questions.

Healthy relationships are essential to emotional well-being. This is a topic that is not often taught formally in school bu is so important to students. They are often distracted because of problems with their relationships. When we look at our society and our high divorce rates and the impact it has on children, I think more training should be done to prepare our students for marriage. Janice’s curriculum is very helpful in these areas.

I think students are our best judges of what is meaningful. Every one of my students had positive comments in their speaker reports. The following are a few anecdotal I comments to the question of “How will this information help you in the future?” “Relationships are such an important part of life and if I am informed about them, it will help me so much throughout my life.” “I won’t try to move things too fast in a relationship and I will try to follow the right path to make it work.”

Janice has useful information that kids want to learn and she is also a lot of fun. I highly recommend her as a relationship speaker.

Sincerely,
Sylvia South
Consumer and Family Studies teacher
Fairview High School