Hey P-20, Let’s Hang Out!
Greater percentages of American students are participating in all three sectors of education: early learning, K-12, and higher education (Rippner, 2016). The current educational initiatives driving education such as college and career readiness, and the CSU Graduation Initiative 2025 are addressing the need for our students to be ready to take on the rigors of college-level course work and be prepared to jump headfirst into the industries they are preparing for when they have graduated.
Ag Ambassadors at Parkview 6th grade college & carer day.
While this will require a tremendous amount of collaboration between state and local agencies I believe that we are overlooking the role of faculty and collaboration between all levels that can help facilitate the connection between classroom education and real-world possibilities that can help students make college and career choices that will lead to gainful employment in a career they have trained for. Rippner (2016) identifies key pipeline transition points from high school graduation to college entry. These can be addressed through intentional collaboration between high school and college faculty. Developing a culture that sets the expectation that students will attend postsecondary education can be achieved through several means. First, the implementation of college and career days at a single high school or district is important for students to interact with outreach staff from technical schools, community colleges, apprenticeship program, military services, and the university systems. I currently teach our Ag Ambassador course, one of the major components of the course is outreach for the Agriculture and Natural Resources Program. We attend many college and career days throughout the state to share information with students, parents, teachers, and counselors about career opportunities associated with our programs. The Fresno County Office of Education hosts two huge events designed for both college and career awareness. The first event is College night that focuses on community colleges, and universities both in and out of the state. The second event CTE night is focused on career development and has a spotlight on industry representatives, community colleges, and apprenticeship programs that can provide technical training for high paying in-demand careers. A smaller event is the Minarets HighSchool career day, once again focused on college and career. But the difference is that they have banners hanging across the top of the gym banners showcasing the community colleges and universities that their graduates have attended. At the Woodlake High School college and career day, I have noticed that every classroom has college information from school pennants to posters sharing information with students on a daily basis. We also do classroom visitation with our Ag Ambassadors at different high schools across the state. This allows high school students to see students just like themselves who are attending college and being successful. This shows them that it is possible for them too.
Minarets High School Career Day. Notice the College banners Hanging from the rafters.
All of this helps with the second connection question Rippner (2016) asks. Do students have the information needed to make decisions about post-secondary education such as where to go, how to pay, and how to enroll? This can be achieved partially through the college and career days and classroom visitation as discussed above. It can also be done through dual enrollment courses offered at the high school sites and taught either by college faculty or by a qualified high school teacher. Students are taking a college course and working at the college level rigor. Through this process, information can be shared with students on where to go, how to pay, and how to enroll. This can be done directly by a college counselor who helps with the enrollment process or by the faculty themselves. As a college faculty member, I find this an awesome opportunity to promote my program at the community college to high school students that are enrolled. I also bring in information that details who talk to about enrollment, along with a map of the college and which building and room they need to go to. I also give students a list of several counselors that they contact via email or phone call. I share my office hours and contact information so that they can search me out once they are campus so that I can direct them to the correct help they need. Dual enrollment can also address questions about academic preparedness. Taking college-level class, meeting the deadlines for assignments, standards for assessments, and completing college-level projects or writing while in high school can show the student where they are they need help. Dual enrollment can also help high school teachers by sharing with them the college-level curriculum that their students will need to be able to work with. In our Ag Business program, we share the assignments, activities, projects, and assessments with our Dual enrollment adjuncts. This not only prepares them to teach it, but it also allows them to transfer the concepts and rigor to their other classes in order to prepare their high school students for the expectations of college-level work.
This collaboration needs to extend all the way down to the preschool level. The Ag Ambassadors attended several college and career days that were focused on students from grades 5-8 as well. These grade levels are looking to highschool as the next big step, but in order to create a college-going culture, highschool should not be seen as the end as it is in so many students and parents minds. College and advanced technical training should be the end goal. Kirst &Venezia ( 2003) share that there is evidence that the wide chasm between K-12 and higher education is… a major contributor to poor student preparation for college…[and] is particularly disastrous for students of color and students from low-income families. How better to close that chasm by exposing students and parents to college and career opportunities as soon as possible. In my last blog, I discussed college and career readiness and how that helps students decide what they want to be when they grow up. Developing a college-going culture from preschool forward helps to this.
I had the opportunity to participate in my daughter's preschool career day series. Yes, a series! The pre-school teachers asked parents to come in and share their careers with the students and show them what they did, not just tell them what they did but show them what the career entails. Wow, their facebook page shared pics of police officers and K-9 dogs doing searches, firemen using their tools and firehoses, nurses using their stethoscope and blood pressure cuff, heavy equipment operators and the equipment they operate, farmers and the crops and livestock they raise, I was not sure how I could show them what I did? So I did a recruitment activity and chopped down my recruitment powerpoint and added the pics I could find of the other parents from the facebook page and showed them all of those careers needed someone to teach them how to do that and that is what I did as a college instructor, specifically in Ag. Then they played our recruitment games and won hats, pencils, clipboards, pennants with our college logo and information that will be shared at home with parents planting that college-going culture seed in their garden of knowledge.
Maddy the excavator operator
Rocking Reedly AGNR Shades
Corn Hole for prizes
Kirst, M & Venezia, A. (2003, Spring). Undermining students aspirations. National Crosstalk.
Retrieved from
www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0203/voices0203-undermining.shtml
Rippner, J.A. (2016). The American Education Policy Landscape. Rutledge Publication: New
York, New York.
Sam -
ReplyDeleteYour example of existing collaboration between your college and the local high schools seem like a great model for all of us to consider, regardless of the level of education we work with. According to Rippner (2016), “Sustained collaboration is necessary for a continuously strong pipeline.” You are doing the work to establish and support the pipeline that should lead to students finding success not only in college, but along the way as they find meaning in the school work they do to get there. I also think it stands as an example of an Equity model of education (Murgatroyd & Sahlberg, 2016) where students are taught to value lifelong learning. I personally agree with Murgatroyd & Sahlberg that if students see purpose and have sincere interest in what they are learning, they will be driven from within to do the work necessary to learn the skills and thought patterns required in their coursework, and later, their careers.
Your post got my attention today, partly because I have been working on planning a statewide P-20 conference about teacher education. The objective is to get folks from every level of education in the state to come together and find out how to create and maintain a strong pipeline for future teachers. In this past year, I’ve done a lot of reading about the barriers to teacher recruitment - especially for teachers of color. Ocasio (2014) identified four points where potential Latinx teacher candidates faced significant challenges to success: high school completion; college access; obtaining a teaching degree; and cultural issues for Latinx educators in the field. Improving collaboration P-20 could improve access and completion rates for this particular group of teacher candidates, and for all potential teachers to make sure they are prepared for the coursework they will encounter in higher education. Your post gives me hope that we will see improved communication and collaboration throughout the P-20 pipeline that will benefit all students from all backgrounds.
While both your example and mine seem like good ways to foster collaboration, it seems that implementation of policy that would strengthen the education pipeline throughout the state would still require work on the part of administrators and policy makers. As Foley (2015) points out, it is necessary to fit the policy to the community context in order to create sustained success. This would require agents of change to be present not only throughout the educational pipeline, but throughout the state, so that collaboration could take shape in a way meaningful to particular communities and regions. Perhaps leadership programs like CODEL will foster the relationships throughout the state and levels of education necessary to implement policy effectively and to empower the next generation of scholars and leaders!
Foley, A. (2015). Sexuality education policy implementation in two rural midwestern school districts. Sexuality Research and Social Policy. 12(2015)347–358. DOI:10.1007/s13178-015-0205-x
Murgatroyd, S. and Sahlberg, P. (2016) The two solitudes of educational policy and the challenge of development. Journal of Learning For Development. 3(3) 9-21.
Ocasio, K. M. (2014). Nuestro Camino: A Review of literature surrounding the Latino teacher pipeline. Journal of Latinos and Education, 13(4), 244-261. DOI:10.1080/15348431.2014.887467
Rippner, J.A. (2016). The American Education Policy Landscape. Rutledge Publication: New York, New York.
Hi Sam,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your excellent advocacy for collaboration on supporting students from education into the career and detailing the layers where other advocates can step in. I hope you find your personal work rewarding and fulfilling because it’s clear you’re changing lives!
I thought your exemplification of the opportunities and spaces where we can step up was particularly helpful. I grew up in a household where education was part of what everyone did, and it’s taken a while to realize that’s just not the norm and I can make a difference in getting someone to college as well.
One example comes up for me from a family friend who will go unnamed in case they somehow bump into this. But their older daughter had gone to school with my daughter from kindergarten through middle school and living in the neighborhood we saw them regularly; mom and dad had community college degrees, so she worked as a certified technician and he worked as a tech at a local university. So my assumption was that they were prepared to guide and support their child into the world of college and financial aid applications, etc. at the end of 11th grade. But when she was over for dinner one night I asked how the applications were going and she looked at me like I was speaking Martian! As did her mother. I learned that they hadn’t looked into anything, visited a campus or even knew what the FAFSA was! Suddenly the old adage about when you assume and making a donkey out of you and me came true.
So I jumped in and became the expert for her, helped her know the landscape of the application process, got her parents to take her to a few local campuses, and now she’s finishing her AA and looking to transfer to a 4-year college next year! Happy ending accomplished here, but we cannot have a neighborhood dad on every block. Or is that what we need?
Why did our friend’s kid fall into the cracks? Clearly Rippner’s pipeline transition points (2016) that you outline are key to picking up the bulk of students. But we cannot make assumptions that everyone heard the message along the way. Your ag ambassador team sounds like a dream! The future’s so bright all the kids need Rocking Reedly AGNR Shades! Keep it up, Sam!
References
Rippner, J. A. (2016). The American education policy landscape. Routledge.