Four Year Planning with Freshmen

I am so excited that I have recently been able to start the 4-year academic planning process with my freshmen.  Since this is my first year at this high school, it has given me a chance to meet and get to know those students whom I haven't had a chance to talk with yet.  This also gives me a chance to check in with them, talk to them about their grades, ask them if they need anything and how their year is going.  I hope that I can make a quick connection so they will feel comfortable coming to me if they need anything.

Steps to my process:

1.  I have the last part of the alphabet so I printed off a list of all their names, went through their schedules and wrote beside their name the best time to call them to my office. (usually during their study hall).

2.  Gathered the materials for academic planning which include:

• Course offerings for 10th, 11th and 12th grades
• Criteria for Graduating with Honors
• Graduation Requirements
• Sample College Preparatory Curriculum
• Sample Recommended Career Center Curriculum and requirements
• Developing a Four-Year Plan sheet that I created with the graduation requirements on the back

3.  During the meeting, I introduce myself and explain to them why I've called them in.  Most of the students have a scared look on their faces and ask, "Am I in trouble" at which time I smile and tell them I am not the Principal.

4.  I show them the Developing a Four-Year Plan sheet and explain the process and why it's important to plan early.  For example, if they plan on graduating with an Honors Diploma, then we have to make sure they meet the requirements, or if they plan on attending the Career Center, we have to make sure they have certain courses completed by the end of their sophomore year. 

5.  Throughout the process, depending on what they think they want to do in their future, we go online and research a certain career or college and look at the requirements.  At that point they can see why they may need to take 3 or 4 years of a foreign language, or that taking a Dual Enrollment or Advanced Placement course will be beneficial to them.  I love the excitement I start to see on some of their faces at this point and the questions they ask for clarification.

6.  As we write down the courses on the front of the sheet, I have them look at the course offerings sheet to choose classes for each of the grades.  If they have questions about a class, we look at the course description to get a better idea of what the class is about.  This is also a perfect time to explain to them what Advanced Placement and Dual Enrollment courses are and why they may be beneficial to them.

7.  Once the sheet is completed, I tell them that this is not written in stone and we will meet again to make adjustments as necessary.  I give them a copy of the completed sheet and suggest to them that they take the paper home to share with their parents.  I also tell them that I will keep a copy in case they lose their copy. 

8.  I thank them for coming in and the best part...they thank me!

When I first started this process it seemed a little overwhelming to meet with each of the freshmen, but it's been very exciting for the students and fun for me!  I even had a parent thank me and tell me that it motivated her daughter to think more about college.

What is your process for the 4-year plan for your freshmen?

At-Risk Attendance

Within the last two weeks I have been meeting with students with at-risk attendance.  These are students who I feel will fall through the cracks if no one intervenes.  Last week was the first week I met with the students.  There were 12 students I had planned on meeting with at the time.  I met with 9 of the 12 students.  I sat down with them and told them why I was meeting with them, asked them if there was anything I could do to help them, let them know that I was going to keep an eye on their attendance and that I would be meeting with them weekly.  It is funny how they responded to me checking in on them.  I had not expected really any reactions.  What I got was students whose faces lit up at my checking in on them weekly.  I know...they are high school students and their faces don't light up, but they really did! 

I met with the same students this week and there was improvement in their attendance.  I know these numbers will seem alarming to you, but when I first met with the 9 students they had a total of 98 absences all together from the beginning of the year (11 weeks).  This is an average of 8.9 absences per week for the group.  This week those 9 students had averaged only 7 absences! Five of the students had ZERO absences, two students had 1 absence, one had 2 absences and another had 3 absences!  The BEST part; one student asked for peer tutoring and another asked me to help her with college/career planning!!

This week I did have to add students to my attendance list, but hopefully they will soon see improvement as well!

I am keeping a spreadsheet to track their weekly attendance/absences.  When I met with them today and congratulated and high-fived them, they smiled.  I loved it!  My hope is that these students realize someone cares and they continue to improve their attendance, their grades and their self-confidence.

Creating a College-Going Culture

After attending a session at a school counselor's conference about increasing college-going rates, I took the ideas back to my Principal and we began the steps to creating a college-going culture at our high school. There are many ideas and resources available to help do this in any school.

This high school I previously worked at is a very rural high school with a low percentage of  college-going high school graduates.  The principal made this idea one of his goals for the year and communicated to his staff and communicated why this was an important goal for the students.

I don't have all the information I gathered from this session, but it was one of the best professional development sessions I have attended. I will tell you some of the ideas we did at our school.

Some of the ideas that we took from the session and implemented in the first year were:

1.  College Talk - Talk to teachers/staff about your goal to create a college-going culture.  This idea is being sure to talk about college in their classrooms, hallways, advisories.  The idea can be as small as talking about where the teacher went to college to talking about how what they are learning will help them in college to college majors.

2.  College Corner - The principal asked all teachers to create a "College Corner" in their classrooms where they display any college related materials in this area.  Previously, very few teachers displayed college materials in their classrooms.  Teachers went all out in their displays.  They displayed information about their alma-maters, any college materials they could get their hands on, information about college majors, and information about how their class related to college majors.

3.  College/Major of the Week - One of the ideas was to present a College of the Week on a bulletin board in the commons area.  To go along with it, we would present one of the majors from the college as the "Major of the Week".  We used materials that colleges sent to us and displayed them on the bulletin boards and printed out information relating to the major from the college's website.  The best part is we would see students reading information from the bulletin board.

4.  College Week - The principal decided on certain weeks that he would give free "Jeans Days" to teachers ONLY if they wore college shirts or sweatshirts.  The idea of this was to get students and teachers talking about the colleges.

5.  College Pennants -We contacted every possible college we could think of and asked them to send us one of their pennants to display in our school.  We received so many pennants.  During evening or weekend events, you could hear people talking about the pennants and how they were looking for a certain college. It was pretty cool to hear people talk about them.

6.  We've Been Accepted Board - We created a board with the title We've Been Accepted and used Panther Paws (mascot) with the student's name and the college where they have been accepted.  Eventually, students would come to the our office and ask where their Paw was as soon as they were accepted.  It was exciting to see the students take pride in their post-secondary plan.  We were sure to update the board for graduation day.

The second year we implemented some of our own ideas.  I will post in another blog about these ideas.