A little something from this week...

This assignment was quite eye opening this week for me.  I realized that we really do not have a great community backed program that supports student success, much less have parent programs that allow them to enhance student learning.  We try and even believe that we are doing a great job, and while I am sure it is not the worst, I just believe it could be beefed up a bit to be a win for all parties involved.  I appreciate effort, but sometimes we need to go a step beyond effort when we are talking about the future of our communities.

The following is my discussion post from this week, I included it just so give it an opportunity to be seen, and maybe a little feedback to help tweak the plan to maybe someday make it reality.

My district has a great resource in our College Readiness Counselor's, we have a Career and Technology Campus with a variety of programs that enable students to receive wonderful opportunities before they are out in the post-secondary world on their own.  While this is great, Ms. Hall apparently does not have this resource available to her and her students.  My proposal would be for her to visit with some of the local businesses and develop a Partnership Mentorship Program.  Implement a panel that is made up of a local college representatives, military recruiters, trade school reps, and business partners from the community.  This panel would meet to establish a program that would offer mentorship opportunities, post-secondary research opportunities that would tie a professional with a group of students to research options for the students upon graduation.  The group could meet as often as the panel deems appropriate and successful for all parties involved.  These mentors would collaborate with the students to encourage and educate them on the various opportunities that are available, how they could go about attaining these opportunities, practice public speaking and interview techniques, as well as assist the students in applying for the various opportunities they feel they would like to pursue.  The partners could offer internship opportunities to the participating students during the summer or after school for a couple of hours a week, this would allow the students to gain an understanding of the profession and if they would like to pursue them.  At the end of the program, each student will present a report of some type of presentation on what they learned and how it will impact their futures after high school.



Partnership Mentorship Program
     1.  Establish mentor committee made up of professionals from the community, trade schools, colleges, military, etc.
     2.  Design the goals and objectives of the program, rules and responsibilities.
     3.  Invite students and their parents to attend an informational meeting, and invite students to sign up and participate.
     4.  Set up initial interviews with the students interested, to get a baseline of where they are at with their post-secondary goals.
     5.  Divide the students into groups based on their interviews (those interested in military will be assigned a military mentor partner, college to college mentor partner, etc.).
     6.  Have groups establish a meeting schedule and set a calendar so all groups can be monitored.
     7.  Work the programs procedures and policies.
     8.  Continue to meet regularly with mentors, and in groups.
     9.  Have the mentors meet to collaborate on different strategies used by the different groups, this might help another mentor or student when faced with an adverse situation.
     10.  Have students present their journey to the committee.
     11.  Have students complete a survey to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the program.