College Advising

that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse

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BYHS College Fair 2015

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College Application Week 2015

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College dream board

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Fall Into a Major You Love: A tree of college majors

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Oh the places you’ll go! A map of college bound seniors for 2015. 

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Professional Advantages Revisited

6.) Review question three from last year, have your greatest strategic advantages as a professional changed? Why or why not? Do these qualities continue to give you a sense of pride and purpose?

I feel that the professional advantages I described are still accurate. Coming from a background that is similar to my students has helped me connect with them. It allows me to use myself as an example of someone who has come from a small town and successfully navigated the world of higher education. It also gives me a good perspective on systemic issues. I can acknowledge that many of my students’ struggles are rooted in larger issues and I can divide my time between working with those individuals and also trying to educate the community on foundational issues.

As a first generation student from a low-income background I have also developed my skills of creativity and resourcefulness. They continue to be extremely useful in BYHS where resources and support are often minimal. I have been able to plan exciting events for students and create new opportunities with them by collaborating with local partners and utilizing existing school resources.

Communication also continues to be key in this environment. It has helped me to foster incredibly strong relationships with the guidance department and a good portion of the senior class. While people at BYHS are not always politically correct, I have been able to meet people where they are at and navigate some really difficult topics.

This year I have also realized that one of my greatest professional advantages in this particular setting is my knowledge of the subject. More than anything, knowing basic facts and statistics about the college realm is what allows my students to trust me as a credible source and keep coming back with their questions. While a lot of it seems like common sense or basic knowledge to me, I am actually a wealth of untapped information about the higher education system for my students.

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Saying Yes

5.) Think about your responsibilities as a College Adviser, then make a list of everything you’d like to say yes to.

College Advising Responsibilities

1:1 meetings

Talking with students about their lives

Educating students on college requirements

Helping students create college lists

Editing student essays

Writing student recommendation letters

Taking students on college tours

Organizing college fairs and college rep visits

Giving class presentations

Planning after school programming and workshops

Helping students work on applications

Helping students find scholarships

Helping students understand and compare financial aid

Data tracking

Signing up students on College Greenlight

SAT/ACT prep

Giving students good news

Educating students on their transition to college

Celebrating their successes!

I love my job. It’s not the perfect job for me. It’s not always as intellectually stimulating as I would like for it to be and it can be tedious and frustrating, but it can also be fulfilling and fun. Most of my responsibilities are things that I want to say yes to. I enjoy meeting with my students and getting to know them well enough that we can work through essays, applications, and recommendation letters together. I love helping them find scholarships and schools that suit them, which are achievable. I like giving them new information through workshops and presentations and giving them new experiences through college tours and college fairs. I’m grateful that I can make them feel even a little bit more prepared for what is coming- SAT/ACT tests, the FAFSA, the transition into freshmen year of college. At the end of the process I get to celebrate their successes. In a school environment that is constantly pointing out their flaws, it is exciting to gather my students together and be able to show the community what they have to be proud of.

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Saying No

4.) Think about your responsibilities as a College Adviser, then make a list of everything you’d like to say no to.

When students who will not qualify for any scholarships ask for help on scholarships

Students have the belief that there is a ton of available scholarship money out there. This can be true for extremely competitive students but I often have students who want to apply for scholarships which are totally inappropriate with their grades and test scores and then I have to try and discuss other options with them.

When students with <2.5 GPA want help getting into 4 year universities/ Giving students bad news

It is always particularly difficult to break it to a student that they do not have the grades to go to a 4 year university. When this happens I really try to build up the positives of attending community college. Often, students who want the “real college experiences” are still very heartbroken when this information comes as a shock to them. I don’t like being the “dream crusher.”

Signing up students on CFNC

Registering students for SAT/ACT

Helping students on demographics for their applications

Helping students complete the FAFSA

All of these fall into the same category. Students have such a hard time completing basic demographic information. It is like pulling teeth. They don’t know their street addresses, their parents’ birthdays, how long they have lived in their current homes, what their zip code is, their driver’s license number, their student number, their social security number. Sometimes I can help to fill in some gaps and sometimes we can call parents for information, but the process is always slow and painful and frustrating for the students and for me.

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Mistakes

3.) What mistakes have you made this year? How are they similar or different than last year?

My biggest mistake is probably my lack of relationships with many teachers. While I am extremely close with the guidance department and collaborate with them often, I do not have many opportunities to collaborate with teachers. I feel that when I try to pull students from a class or request class time for presentations, I am met with some resilience. This is completely understandable, as instructional time is valuable and is also being interrupted by all sorts of testing and other programming. However, if I was able to build a few more strong relationships with teaching staff, I think they would be more willing to give me time with their classes. I faced similar issues last year. Again, I think the culture of the school is very ingrained and is not particularly geared towards the goals of higher education. Hopefully, over time, the benefits of CAC will become more apparent and it will be easier to collaborate with more partners.

 I also did not do a great job of utilizing the College Greenlight platform with my students. At the very beginning of the year I was able to register many of the students who came in. However, even a month or two into the school year, it became much more difficult to get students to use the program. Many of them already had their application started for had their college lists well fleshed out. At this point, I would usually just long their decisions in the GRACE platform instead of going through the process of registering them on the platform when they were already working on their applications. Hopefully, I can start signing up more seniors on the basis of using it in their scholarship searches. I would also like to work on this platform with more juniors who could then use it throughout the summer during the beginning of their college search. 

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Successes

2.) What success have you had this year? How are they similar or different than last year?

I’ve succeeded in inserting myself more into the social culture of the school which has led to better relationships with my students and even some parents. I’ve attended more sporting events and spent certain days of the week setting up a table during the lunch periods for students to ask me questions and sign up for events. While I still do not have many parents coming into my office, I have had several more phone meetings with parents this year.

This year I was able to get a much better head start on college applications with my seniors. Because they were readily scheduling visits with me, many of them were able to submit applications before College Application Week. Compared to only handful last year, a majority of my competitive seniors submitted applications by the priority, early action, and early decision deadlines for this round. Because of this, many of them have already received acceptances to competitive schools, spurring their peers to finish their own applications.

Last year, one of my biggest failures was my FAFSA promotion. Because of a series of snow days and cancelled events, there were not a lot of opportunities for students to work on FAFSA with assistance. This year I started talking to students more about the FAFSA during the first semester to get it into their minds. Now, they are already coming to me in the first week of January to ask questions about completing their FAFSA’s. I have worksheets and FAFSA workshop flyers that will be distributed to every senior, enabling them to seek out appropriate help for FAFSA completion and the financial aid process.

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My Evolving Role

1.) Has your role evolved? If so, why? If not, then why not? What ELSE have you learned about the student body you are serving, the colleagues you work with, and the community surrounding your school?

Yes; my role has definitely evolved during my second year. It took me a long time to build rapport with my students during the first year. This made it difficult to meet with students early on. They were hesitant to come to my office voluntarily and so I would often have to call them out of classes to see them at all. Now, I have many students who visit me on a daily or weekly basis. This has made it significantly easier for me to be thoroughly involved throughout their entire college process. Instead of trying to track down every senior for a quick meeting, I know have a steady cohort who come to me voluntarily while I still seek out the others for check-ins.

I have also learned that this community is extremely difficult to appeal to from an educational or academic angle. Parent and student attendance at sporting events is significantly larger than at any parent night or academic based gathering. Because of this, I have found it difficult to plan after school programming. This year I am trying to put myself into more of the athletic settings so that I can meet with parents one on one and get my name in their head so that they will take the initiative to reach out to me when they have questions.

I’ve realized that this community (including students, parents, and even teachers) often undervalues higher education. It is hard to even get teachers (who all have gone to college) to understand the value of events such as College Application Week. To address this, I am trying to educate the students on job placement rates in their area and at for-profit institutions.

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Bartlett Yancey celebrates college bound

On May 15, Bartlett Yancey celebrated its high school seniors that are headed toward two or four year colleges or the military. As BYs new college adviser, Kelly Noel Waldorf, and other staff members scooped big bowls of ice cream and the students piled on gummy bears and chocolate sauce, conversations turned to summer vacation and where their friends were going next.

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A Big Impact in Its First Year

Just months after graduating from the Duke Class of 2014, KellyNoel Waldorf returned to the classroom in hopes of inspiring high school students to attend college. As a first generation college gradua

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SAT Word Wall

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College Entrance Requirements

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College Acceptances!

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Feedback

2.)  Has my employer or any of my coworkers said anything to me about my work? Did they mention that they liked something that I did or did they give me some advice?

Now that I have become more visible in the school, several teachers have requested classroom visits. This semester I was able to meet with the Advanced Placement classes to discuss topics such as study skills, college-level coursework, and time management. I was also able to discuss financial aid with the Personal Finance classes. The teachers have all been very complimentary about my visits and I am excited to continue working with them in the future.

We have a new principal at BYHS and one of our administration’s new initiatives is ‘literacy across the curriculum’ with an emphasis on word walls. To participate in this project I created an SAT word wall in the guidance office which will also be displayed in the cafeteria. Similarly, I created a college entrance requirements wall for the guidance office and cafeteria. The administration was very excited about this new visibility not only for the guidance department but also for college access specifically.  I created a college acceptances bulletin board on the main hallway which many of my colleagues have appreciated as a positive symbol for our students.