News and information for staff members and the Madison community
Vol. III No. 5 - May 2, 2008
As guidance counselors it's a struggle when we hear our students say, "I came to see you about planning for next year, but you were booked up for the entire week. So I put my name down for next week, but can you remind me about it when you see me?"
Solid theories about how to work with a disengaged student or a high achieving student do not take into account that we have very little time to devote to students in this regard. Research suggests different ways to help high school students navigate traditional academic coursework but none of the research accounts for the distorted ratios we have of student to staff.
Thanks to a grant from the Aristos Program and the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools, at West we've developed the online Personal Education Plan (PEP). The heart of PEP is it collects and stores information students enter into it on the subjects we discuss with them throughout their four years in high school. Even more valuable, the information is accessible to the student, parent, teacher, counselor, or principal, to help support that student in their schoolwork and goals for their future.
For example, an 11th grade male student expresses boredom with classes and is not engaging in school activities. With PEP, I access his profile and note that in 10th grade he expressed interest in an "artistic/humanities path."
I go right to the goals he set of joining a few clubs, job shadowing a few careers, and trying a few hobbies. He says, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that." We start setting some goals over the next few weeks to follow through on commitments he made to himself the year before.
Now I have time to talk about more personal things with him. If he can stick with this follow through plan, it can help him to re-think how his education can serve him and be personalized enough to become more interesting to him.
The important thing is the information is accessible for each student's whole support network; parents, teachers, principals, psychologists, social workers, coaches, etc to help them succeed in school.
We're working on increasing the variety and efficiency of ways in which we help students. We've come up with some handy tools to do so. These tools will be made available district-wide in MMSD starting this fall. We're trying to educate all who work with our students about the tools available.
West Guidance Counselor Len Mormino explains the features of PEP to West students.
Last Updated: Thu May 22 15:05:51 2008
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