Karen,
Celebrating success reinforces the student's choice to change their lives. Thank you for your post.
Ron Hansen, Ed. D.
MICHAEL,
What type of activities are offered? Is the scheduled sufficiently varied to accommodate the student's life?
Ron Hansen, Ed. D.
I'm thankful that our school offers many extra curricular activities that compliment the educational experience
Recently, we created a "Bravo Room," for celebrating honor roll, perfect attendance, and exam certifications. The students have really enjoyed seeing their names and names of friends that they've made while in school. We will continue to think of ideas to draw students closer to their goal of graduating. Peer Mentoring has become an involved discussion and we would like to move forward with implementing this formally at our school.
Susan,
Community involvement provides relevance to what they are learning and the opportunity for the community to know more about the school.
Ron Hansen, Ed. D.
Our school has many activities for the students to get involved in. Many of these are community activities as well which helps them meet people that have succeeded in the field already. Great motivation to stay and finish what they started!
Award ceremonies for attendance, pinning ceremonies for graduates.
FUN DAY
Programmatic club activities
Katessa,
These are all great initiatives. Thanks for your post.
Ron Hansen, Ed. D.
1) Spirit Week- During this time students should be allowed to participate in events that bring a focus back to the things that they enjoy within school as well as outside of school. This gets students excited.
2) Summer/Fall Carnivals with various activities on campus for students to participate in for example: dunking booth, pie eating contest, basketball competitions, talent show case, etc.
3) Occasional Pot Lucks providing students with the opportunity to share their different cultural cooking and experiences often gives students a meaning and a sense of belonging. I have witnessed students show such an appreciation for getting to know a little more about others through the sharing of food. It is quite interesting.
When students are able to participate in events that are related to school unity and not feel the pressures of having to be graded or evaluated it helps to bring them a sense of belonging. The sense of pride somehow attaches on to them and they are able to gain an appreciation for their school and their reason for being enrolled.
DANIEL,
This does help the student feel connected.
Dr. Ron Hansen
We do christmas newyears and all other holladays to make the student feel at home
Lynn,
All good ideas. All worth implementing. I recently read about Dance Floor theory and how it applies to education. I think it speaks best to items 3 and 4. No one likes to dance alone nor does one person dance with everybody. A busy dance floor with people interacting with others makes for a lively experience.
Dr. Ron Hansen
1. Orientation programs to ease transition
2. Monitoring students for early warning signs
3. Social programming with students and staff
4. Participation in campus organizations and activities
5. Exit interviews
We have already established some of the suggested activities at our campus such as student study groups, extra help sessions and topic-specific workshops. I believe having a "meet & greet" event directly after orientation might be a good addition to our already scheduled activities.
Dorothy,
And you probably can offer food made by students at some of these events. Thank you for your post.
Dr. Ron Hansen
Rodney,
Thank you for your post. Adding a mentoring program or coaching people to be mentors will be beneficial.
Dr. Ron Hansen
We already have several events organized throughout our school to increase student retention, such as Student Appreciation Days, ACF sanctioned events and competitions, Open House demonstrations, guest lecturers and demonstrations, and various Orientation events. However, increasing the frequency of these events, and especially making the events open to the entire student population (instead of just the day-shift students) might help increase the effectiveness of our retention efforts.
We currently have activities that we do in our program such as fieldwork, fieldtrips, a student club, etc... After going through this module I am going to try to institute a mentoring program to see if it will improve our student involvement.
Theresa,
Peers helping peers is a great way to go. Students tend to listen to other students that have "been there, done that".
Dr. Ron Hansen
We have set up a student ambassador program. The student applies, instructor reccomends and Program Director approves or disaproves and an interview takes place with an academic committee. If they are approved they are awarded with a different color scrub and assist campus acitivities and are established mentors.
