Perfect. This is the key. Do activities to create informal relationships. I love it.
Dr. B
We have done several activities that have increased the interest and maintain the motivation needed to stay in school.
* numerous field trips
* guest speakers
* community involvement
* school "clubs'
* faculty/student day : students and faculty get to mingle in one large room
* awards : given during a term such as perfet attendance award, top student award, most likely to succeed award, most improved award, best technique award
I think activities in general are great but ones that focus in the area of the students' degree area is the most important.
1) Fieldtrips
2) Volunteer in the area of interest and receive awards for time served
3) Honoring the day or week assocaited with the field of interest
4) Pinning ceremonies
5) Leadership recognition cermonies
We need some type of program that addresses the housing and job issue for our students. Maybe some type of job that the school can hire students for would alleviate the stress of finding an income, and thus help retention.
Many of the sugggestions can be done in class such as birthdays and attendance. Perhaps have a goal the class can work to achieve and the class can earn a reward. Often students enjoy working with each other and meeting their other classmates.
Do all that you can to involve students. Why? You will form relationships and a relationship equates to trust.
Dr. B
Very good idea and suggestion- Having students involved can be a powerful retention tool.
Perfect. The only other thing you might consider is advising centered on career themes. This helps to keep the student's vision alive.
Dr. B
At our school we do the following Tutoring, mentoring, student appreciation weeks, holiday contests, student field trips, student contests and school open houses. This has vastley improved our rentation.
You got the idea. Do anything you can do to develop a relationship. Remember, a relationship equates to trust.
Dr. B
I agree, demostarting that the staff and faculty care about its students really has an postive impact. Creating activites for student, events,and recognition can really ease negative feelings as well. Futhermore,students will contiue to excel toward completing their goal achievements.
For sure. Get them engaged and have them form relationships with staff, faculty, and students... then, retention will improve.
Dr. B
Nice idea. I agree with you. A prepared teacher always makes a difference.
Dr. B
I co-direct a student group on campus. For the most part, the students who are engaged in activities are more likely to finish the quarter. They develop friendship they learn to cherish.
We have our annual bike show coming up soon, We have implemented the Student of the Course award, we have even awarded pizza parties to classes with perfect attendance coming back after the christmas break, which is always a bad time for retention. I don't think any of these things helps as much as engaged classroom instruction from knowledgeable and enthusiastic teachers supplying relevant, accurate and consistent material, with good condition training aids and tools.
We have a student counsel and they have been instrumental in bring in a student break area. Car bashes, fundraises for the community.
We have started a Christmas giving tree to help the students who won't have a Christmas for their children. We have an open shop to allow the student work on there on cars for minor maintenance.
Our school does a wonderful job of planning student activities. Car shows, boat show, raffles, ect. The students love it.
In terms of graduation, we allow all graduates to write 2-3 sentences on an index card to be read along with their name. This gives them the chance to get more recognition and recognize those who meant something to them during their time in school.
I think this institute does a good job with orintation but if we added some guest speakers from the industry it could possibly increase student intrest and cause them to want to be more involved.Also if we could visit some busineses(field trips) so students could see the business operation and have the opertunity to talk to people in management and employees so the student could have a better understanding of the material that is taught hopefully would build their intrest and involvement.
We need to have more activities for the sudents to participate in. One such activity that used to be here at this school, was a student mechanics olympics. A saturday was sit aside for students to compete in mechanical projects to win trophys and recognition from fellow students.
