Can You Become a High School Student Again?
Seven ways you lot tin aid support students and loftier schools in your customs
by Anne Mackinnon
You care nearly high schools and high school students, and you want to help. Only what can you do? How tin you help your local high school in a fashion that's truly helpful and doesn't just get in the way?
The first footstep is to expand your definition of what information technology means to assist.
Great high schools are "porous," pregnant they have many connections between what happens within the classroom and what happens in the customs. If yous're part of the customs, you can be one of those connections. That's helping.
Students do good when they take support in forming their identities and condign the adults they want to be. When you lot offer students opportunities to learn about and explore possible futures for themselves, you're helping more than you might imagine.
Great high schools are always improving. They're constantly looking for amend ways to set up all their students for the irresolute world. If you lot have insights to share — as a parent, an employer, a community leader, or someone who simply cares — share them. That's helping, too.
Here are some ways to get started:
ane. Be a good neighbor. Introduce yourself. Yous may think of loftier school equally a place with high walls and a guard at the door — a place where students stay in, and members of the customs stay out. Increasingly, though, that'southward not the case. At Furr High School in Houston, for example, students tend a community garden where local gardeners often cease by to say hello and share horticultural tips. Visit your local high school, and introduce yourself to the chief and teachers. Let them know you're interested and open to their ideas about how yous might be able to help.
2. Organize a "back to schoolhouse day" for adults. A few years agone, community leaders in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, organized an effect where adults shadowed students to see what a standard school day was really similar. They were stunned past what they establish: boredom, meaningless work, and an absence of real-world learning. This shared experience motivated members of the customs to create Iowa Big, a citywide initiative that connects students with learning opportunities that prepare them for the challenges of life and piece of work.
3. Offer your expertise. High school is a fourth dimension when students are thinking nigh their next footstep. But the truth is, very few students actually know much about careers across the jobs held past the adults who are closest to them. You can expand students' horizons past sharing your job-related expertise. Offer to talk about your education and career with interested students. Be a guest speaker in a class, or offer to be an advisor, autobus, and evaluator on a pupil project. You can even interact with high school educators to create an internship or work-based learning opportunities for students inside your system.
4. Become a mentor. Nine out of ten loftier school freshmen say they plan to attend college, simply many fewer actually go there. Somewhere forth the way, the headwinds become too strong. Students get discouraged and drop out. They don't accept the right courses or earn the correct grades. They let fears about higher costs overwhelm them. Or they get discouraged by people who tell them they're not "higher material." A mentor can assistance counteract these forces. The XQ College Pathfinder explains the path to higher from a student's perspective, only information technology's just as useful for an adult who wants to help a student stay on the path. Read it, and so offer to be a mentor by contacting your local high school or mentoring program.
5. Bring a problem that needs a solution. Sometimes the best way to help students is past asking them to help yous with a problem you're grappling with in your arrangement, concern, or customs. That's the premise behind several XQ schools, including Grand Rapids Public Museum High School, PSI High, the Bartleby Program, and Iowa BIG. Each involves students in solving problems that require research, sustained effort, original thinking, and teamwork. If you're facing a tough challenge, consider bringing it to your local high school to see if students and teachers want to build a learning experience effectually it.
6. Make high school part of customs revitalization. Perhaps yous're already working on a large solution to a community problem. If and so, why shouldn't high schools be part of it? High school students really do stand for the future of your community. Students' experience now will determine where they choose to live and work, how loyal they are to their hometown, and how committed they are to its future. That's why, in Memphis, the designers of the Crosstown Concourse project accept always imagined a high school at the center of the building. That'due south why the superintendent and her team in Endicott, New York, created Tiger Ventures. If something forward-looking is happening in your town, exist sure in that location's a high school component.
7. Consider running for school board. Sounds hard, right? But, seriously, this is a great style to participate. Being a school board fellow member is tremendously demanding, but information technology's likewise hugely of import and rewarding. A great school lath member is the partner your local loftier school educators need, the advocate your local students deserve. Think near it. To learn more, check out the XQ Super School Board Programme. Order Kit one: Decide. Fifty-fifty if you ultimately make up one's mind it'southward not for you, you'll learn more nearly what a great schoolhouse board can do to amend high schools and get ideas for how you lot tin can contribute.
Do any of these things, and you lot'll exist an advocate for high schools and high school students. Do you have other ideas? Delight let us know, then nosotros can share them.
Source: https://medium.com/xqamerica/seven-ways-you-can-help-support-students-and-high-schools-in-your-community-f6681e520d3a
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