Today M and I visited Roosevelt HS. It was perfect, honestly everything I could have hoped for. I am going to describe the event in full detail so stick with me, I might need to go to class and come back to this post.
One thing that was helpful for us is that we got a big chunk of time to spend with the class, it was 9am-11:30 and the time was flexible a bit since their school had a bunch of other stuff going on today- thankfully because we went over a couple of minutes.
The other thing that was nice is that I spent a bunch of time preparing new activities and thinking of SRINQ in terms of large group activities rather than FRINQ activities- because the reality is that in a mentor session, I used to lead groups of 12, which at the time was huge to me– today I led a group of 40. An essential difference that I realized when writing up our lesson plan last night was repetitive activities DO NOT WORK here. An example is the activity where you stand in a circle and play a name game where you introduce yourself and everybody else that came before you in the circle. With a group of 12, that means (excuse my terrible math skills, wish me luck on the GRE) we will only hear the names a total of about 100 times- in a group of 40, not only does that kind of game drag on but that means we hear their names about FOUR HUNDRED TIMES. Talk about a head ache. Great way to make everyone hate you right away.The activity we did which I described in the last post, the Two Extremes game with the list of “stand over here if you prefer this, over there if you prefer that” worked really INSANELY well.
Note for future mentors and for myself in the future: try and give the faculty a heads up (“so we are going to be doing an activity which involves people getting up and moving around”) before you get there, because what happened with us is we told them when we got there, and one faculty needed to go and check in the library if we could use that space, and they were wonderful and supportive so it wasn’t a big problem, but the less I inconvenience anyone the better.
Note #2: we had them in a big circle go around just once and say everyone’s first and last names. Did we remember them all? Not necessarily, but it helped us learn a few, while emphasizing to them that we are not going to treat them as just another number- they are valuable human beings to us!!
So yeah, we ended up using the big space in the library for about 40 minutes and then going back to their classroom. That is where we then did our presentation where we added in a slide about HOW THE CREDITS TRANSFER. Um yeah big huge little detail that I am thankful M remembered.
Note to self: share that info with all of the other students at the other schools.
After our presentation, they OAMed themselves, then we had them write questions on pieces of scrap paper about anything they want to know about college, college life, rigor of work, etc. I collected them and then we went into Google Sites, got them set up there and finally we went through and answered about half of the questions. I sped through all of those other elements because they were awesome and worked out well, but were not extraordinary. I want to focus on the Q&A and type out all of the questions we received because that is way more important, asking them what is on their minds.
Questions received:
- How can I apply for scholarships?
- Do I have to pay out of state tuition if I am not born in the US?
- How supportive are admissions counselors when it comes to transferring credits from high school/college courses, helping schedule classes and doing all the essential things for freshman college students?
- How will finals work if we are on semester and PSU is on quarters?
- Will the credits transfer to out of state college? (We had already explained this one, but we must not have been very thorough or clear)
- How well does senior inquiry prepare you for the complexity/enormous load of college work?
- How are the chemical engineering and graphic design courses at PSU? What’s the difficulty of the classes?
- Will college be easier with all 15 credits [from SRINQ]?
- Is the Rec center available for us?
- How do you know if the college you go to is a right fit for you?
- What is the rigor of the work that needs to be done?
- What sort of things would we be able to discuss with you during this course? Is it restricted to this course or could it be to college too?
- Will the 15 credits transfer to a community college? (I thought we answered this but it sounds like we needed to be less general and more specific- newsletter idea!)
- Do we have access to the fitness center/pool if there is one because we are students?
- If you’re a full time student, how many classes do you take a week?
- What is the hardest thing about college?
- Do you have to know your major before you come to college?
- By taking this class are we gonna be pushed to go to college?
All VERY GOOD questions. Rather than trying to figure out what to talk to them about, just ask- they have such good questions, and I remember not knowing the answer to ANY of these when I was a senior. Thanks for the reminder, mentees!
I’d like to make it more clear to them that we are able to answer any questions and offer support in any way. I know this is dark, but especially with the whole issue of identity and the suicides in the recent weeks of the students who were bullied across the country because of their sexual orientation, I want them to know that we are here for them!
Visit=success.
