A school social work intervention called the "Getting Better Phenomenon" is redesigned as a curriculum resource for eighth- and ninth-grade teachers. The activities in the curriculum represent a synergy of provincial learning expectations; academic assessment and evaluation structures; teacher-guided delivery of student-generated "course" content; narrative and strengths-based thinking; and social work systems theory. The unique joining of these fields of thought suggests a new academic paradigm and a new social work preventive counseling paradigm. This occurs through the delivery of a series of lesson plans and activities that are shaped by the students' authentic experience as they talk about the effect that teachers and others had on their journey through education. Certain discoveries are shared, along with the tensions inherent to the new paradigms of thinking within education.