KATHLEEN SHEA
Challenge to Excellence
Kathleen Shea
Kathleen Shea is a retired credentialed educator. She wrote and taught a motivational course called Challenge to Excellence to thousands of junior high and high school students, parents, teachers, student teachers, and administrators. She did this through workshops, weeklong seminars, retreats, and leadership conferences.
She is also a certified teacher of the Enneagram, which she taught in the Come Alive Program at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Her last teaching assignment was teaching seventh grade at Chipman Middle School in Alameda, California. This provided her with the tremendous opportunity to really get to know and love her students and convey the principles of Challenge to Excellence daily.
After forty years of making a difference in the lives of others, she now enjoys life with her husband of fifty-five years and loves being the best Gramma she can be to her five grandchildren.
My Motivation
This book is dedicated to my husband, Peter for his patience and validation and to and our three sons, Stephen, Michael, and Peter Ryan for being willing to apply these concepts in their lives. In our journey as family, not only have we all benefitted from these principles, but I believe they have saved our family.
I also dedicate this to my seventh-grade students at Chipman Middle School in Alameda CA for the opportunity to get to know and love them and to realize the positive effect the concepts of Challenge to Excellence had on these priceless, precious angels.
My gratefulness to them is one of the primary reasons I wrote this book.
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Likewise, I dedicate this to my grandchildren and all the students, parents, and teachers I have taught. I believe that it is now time to tell my grandchildren—Kennedy, Brogan, Sierra, Vitaliya, and Sebastian—the story of their Gramma’s motivational course, Challenge to Excellence.
As the years rush by, I feel an urgency to leave a legacy for these precious angels. I may not be able to bequeath them a monetary fortune, but I am trusting that the wisdom in these pages will enable them to live richer lives. I am hopeful that my enthusiasm for these principles will also become their passion.
I also dedicate this to my sister’s grandchildren: Keeley, Raylin, David, Cooper, and Matia. My sister died four years ago from ALS. When I first began teaching Challenge to Excellence, she was one of my biggest supporters. I know she would want her grandkids to have this information.
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