Day 34 - Social Media Readiness for College and Career - BHS Guidance Dept.

This post originally appeared on the BHS Guidance Blog

Alan Katzman from Social Assurity presented to students on 9/28/15. His message was clear in that social media can play a big role in the college and career selection process. Below are some highlights from the event:

• Most teens don’t think about how their social media activities will impact their future academic and career goals. Usually just focused on communicating with friends.
• Everything you post is permanent--even Snapchat and YikYak. Part of Digital Footprint. Some is harder to find than others, but all is discoverable. Anonymity is a myth.
• People who have never met you will make decisions about you based on what they see.
• GPA and test scores are not enough to distinguish students for admission to highly competitive colleges.
• Percent of admissions officers who visited an applicant’s social media page continues to go up every year. 44% in 2016 as compared to 24% in 2011 (projected 57 in 2018). They are not looking to find bad information. They are looking to find out more about the applicant.
• Idea of “social proof” is to confirm idea about someone by seeing that social media profile matches hypothesis. Important to present yourself as you want to be seen.
• 93% of employers look at social media before hiring. Lots of companies even hire directly from social media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter)
• Worst kind of posts for perception would be “I hate my teacher” or being cruel to other students.
• Don’t recommend keeping social media “private” or trying to use an alias account during college admission. They will find you, so be authentic. If you can’t be found on Facebook, it might be a red flag.
• Get their attention the right way--to get noticed and get engaged.
• Demonstrate your passion and commitment. Tell your story.
• LinkedIn profile shows up at the top of Google searches and is a great way to demonstrate interest. Allows you to find communities of people who went to the schools you are interested in. Can put Activity List on LinkedIn. Not just for people in the business world.
• “Demonstrated interest” (whether they think you’ll attend if accepted) is an extremely important factor in admissions and is another thing colleges may look for on social media.

Day 47 - Focus on Freshman - Joe Attubato - BHS Director of Guidance

This post first appeared on the BHS Guidance Blog

As in years past the BHS Guidance staff puts a tremendous amount of focus on incoming freshmen.

An incoming 9^th grader faces many new challenges with the transition to high school. Freshmen are dealing with a new environment, new teachers, more freedom and responsibility, etc. The Guidance staff makes every effort to be in tune with this process and to serve as a resource.

Each year Guidance Counselors meet with freshmen in small groups within the first month of school. We call students to the Guidance Office and introduce ourselves, and discuss the many resources available to them. Although we have found this process useful, we also feel it is not enough. In fact, what we have learned from our freshman over the past several years is that they prefer to hear about graduation requirements, academic expectations, how to go about making a level change, etc.

For a second year the BHS Guidance staff worked with Ms. Sullivan in the health department. Ms. Sullivan allowed the BHS Guidance staff to teach a lesson during her Freshmen health class. The Guidance staff covered and discussed BHS graduation requirements and the importance of identifying resources. One teaching practice that we used again this year was a “ticket to leave”. The ticket to leave is simply a form that we ask freshmen to complete at the end of the lesson so we can gauge if students understood what was covered. Based on the data, we felt our message was clear to a vast majority of freshmen.  We look forward to continuing and refining this practice in years to come. 

Day 34 - New Frontier for the BHS Guidance Department

This post originally appeared on the BHS Guidance Blog

You can also follow the BHS Guidance Dept. on Facebook

As in years past the BHS Guidance staff puts a tremendous amount of focus on incoming freshman. As an incoming 9^th  grader many challenges in the transition to high school can occur. Freshman deal with new challenges such as: new school, new teachers, more freedom and responsibility, etc. The Guidance staff makes every effort to be in tune with this process and to serve as a resource.

Each year Guidance Counselors meet with freshman students in small groups within the first month of school. We call students to the Guidance Office and introduce ourselves and make them aware of the many resources available to them. Although we have found this process useful, we also feel it is not enough. In fact, what we have learned from our freshman over the past two years is that they prefer to hear about graduation requirements, academic expectations, how to go about making a level change, etc.

Last year Guidance staff members met with the Burlington High School Health teachers. Our purpose was to discuss how the Guidance Department can integrate Guidance Curriculum in the classroom. After much discussion and planning, we developed guidance related topics that we felt was most applicable to freshman students. That theme was around understanding graduation requirements and knowing how to take steps when academic intervention is required.

With this topic two Guidance staff members, Ms. Diozzi and Ms. Minty, worked over the summer to develop a lesson plan. During summer professional development the Guidance Department reviewed and finalized the lesson. We are happy to say we saw all this planning come to life in freshman health classes last week. We crossed the line as Guidance Counselor to classroom teacher. As a department we are very happy to be seen in the classroom setting and hope that the freshman class found our lesson useful. Moving forward our hope is to improve and expand the classroom model and teach a lesson at each grade level.