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Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Beyond the Mechanics: Building College-Going Cultures at Charter Schools

College for All (CFA) is an INCS School Services program that helps charter schools strengthen their college going cultures and college counseling support systems. As INCS’ CFA Consultant one of the most exciting things about CFA for me is the chance to develop and implement projects with the schools. I meet with college counseling staff at each school and together we decide what is most needed. Then I create individualized plans that help the schools grow their college counseling capacity.

At UNO-Dr. Hector Perez Garcia Charter High School and Pritzker College Prep, we developed school profiles that would clearly explain what each school’s characteristics are and how they work. These will be sent with students’ applications so colleges will understand their academic environment and see characteristics that make the schools unique. Both schools have also received instruction on using Naviance, a “full service” application that enables counselors, students, parents, and colleges to communicate with each other and organize the college process entirely on line.

At UNO and DuSable Leadership Academy, we developed a comprehensive calendar of college process and testing dates that paralleled school calendars so counselors would know when they and their students need to get things done. For UNO we’re also working on a series of workshops for parents called “Esquela para padres,” that will provide college and financial aid information for parents in Spanish over the course of a year.

Gary Comer College Prep is creating a series of sessions on college for students. We met and developed a sequenced series of questions and exercises that help students think about their interests and goals as they think ahead to college. I’m also creating a list of summer possibilities for students and linking them with Pritzker, which already has a strong emphasis on having students participate in summer programs all over the country.

In some cases, we have created a college office from the ground up. UNO has a large counseling space in its new building. We worked together to make it inviting and useful. Additionally, we located it in a central and highly visible area of the school rather than in a more isolated wing of the building. This will be a constant reminder to students that college is open to everyone. It’s still a work in progress but the counselors have plans and ideas to work with.

For middle school members such as Galapagos and Catalyst Charter Schools, I developed exercises and classroom activities for younger students that can help them get the idea of college in their minds, such as writing stories about their teacher’s college mascot and having a scavenger hunt for when they visit college campuses—finding the mascot or other prominent site son campus. For Galapagos I also made a presentation to the faculty before school opened about college and the process so we could start to have everyone on the same page when they talk to students about the future.

Each of these projects is just a touchstone for the steps to come. As counselors adapt them to their schools, they’ll be building traditions that will guide them and their students through the college process and on to college itself. The enthusiasm and energy CFA counselors bring to their tasks are creating the necessary conditions for each charter school to be a powerful influence on the road to college.

~Willard M. Dix, INCS College for All Consultant

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