Schedule Pick Up Days

Are you getting excited to see your schedules for the coming school year?  Schedule pick up days are coming soon and I wanted to make sure all of you are aware of the days and times when you will be able to pick up your schedules... sorry, I can't email out copies ahead of time.

Tuesday, August 8th: 
9th graders, 11th graders & New to District: 8:00am - 11:00am
9th graders, 11th graders & New to District: 12:30pm - 3:30pm

Wednesday, August 19th:
10th graders and 12th graders: 8:00am - 11:00am
10th graders and 12th graders: 12:30pm - 3:30pm

Thursday, August 10th: 
Make up time for all students who can't attend on August 8th or 9th: 5:30pm-7:30pm

Don't forget, schedule pick up day is packed with lots of activities - finding your locker, getting your school picture taken, picking up your books, etc.

The process is paperless again this year which means that your emergency medical information, health forms, athletic forms and fees needs to be updated and paid online BEFORE coming through the schedule pick up lines.  Those forms will all be on the Worthington Schools website (not counselor website).

I know that every year there are questions about what you should do if you are not available to attend on your designated schedule pick up time.  If you cannot pick up your schedule and books on your designated time, then you can come to school on the other schedule pick-up day/ times.  If you will not be able to attend any of the 3 days, then you will not be able to pick up your your books or get your student ID made until the 1st day of school, but if you want, you can pick up your schedule and turn in any forms on Monday, August 14th or Tuesday, August 15th from 1:00 - 3:00pm.  (No morning pick up's on those dates though because we are all in mandatory meetings both mornings.)

Each year schedule pick up days are two of the craziest days in my office, but I am looking forward to seeing you!

Big Changes in WKHS Counseling Center

There are big changes coming this fall to the WKHS Counseling Center staff.  With the growing enrollment at Kilbourne, we have hired a 5th school counselor to join our team.  Mrs. Himmel is the newest school counselor and she comes to us with over 10 years of experience working as a high school counselor so she will be able to jump right into things without missing a beat.  We are very excited to welcome her to the team!

How does this change impact you?  Well, because our student caseload will now be divided by 5 instead of by 4 it means that we are making a major shift in the alphabet breakdowns.  For students in my portion of the alphabet, I will be keeping the majority, but losing some who will shift to Mrs. Schnell who will continue to have the next portion of the alphabet.  We tried to keep as many students with their current counselor as possible, but obviously there are still many who will be changing to a new face to help.  

What won't change?  The care and dedication we will all give to help support students as you make the transition to meeting and getting acclimated to the new counselors (if applicable).

Here is the updated breakdown of alphabet by student last name:

A - Co:  Miss Abbott

Cr - He:  Mrs. Schnell

Hi - Mi:  Mrs. Himmel

Mo - Se:  Mrs. Mann

Sg - Z: Mrs. Lord

I am going to miss working with all of my students with the last names beginning with the letters Cr through D, but I know you are in great hands with Mrs. Schnell and you will love working with her!  From this point moving forward, you should go ahead and be contacting your newly assigned school counselor via email if you need anything or have any questions.

E-mail

I realize that many students do not utilize e-mail regularly yet, however, it is very important to have an e-mail account of your own (that is NOT your school email account) when it comes to college application time. College applications will ask you for your e-mail address. Often times the colleges will use your e-mail as their way to communicate with you including notifying you of your admissions decision. (This also points out that it is important to regularly check your e-mail.)  It is important that you are not using your school email address because outside emails are typically blocked for student accounts.

Some questions to ask yourself:

Do you have an email account that is not your school account? If not, you need to create one. There are tons of free choices available.

Do you have an appropriate account? In other words, is the name of your account appropriate as the college admissions officers will be seeing the e-mail address when reviewing your application.

Is it YOUR account? A lot of times students just rely on their parents e-mail addresses which works a lot in high school, but when you are at the college application point it is important to have your own account as many of the colleges will ask for your email address and your parents email address.

Do you check your email account regularly?  If not, it would be good to start getting in the habit of doing this.  If you don't because your email account is so filled with spam and advertisements, then you might want to consider creating an email account dedicated to college and scholarship applications that you will use and check regularly.

In addition to having an e-mail account, it is also important to remember to use proper etiquette when communicating with college representatives via e-mail. For example, when you need to e-mail admissions officers for any reason, as well as any other college representatives (advisor, professor, etc.) that you communicate with, please remember that the way you write your e-mail is a reflection of you. Please do not use text talk, avoid ALL CAPS, be mature, and write it in an official format “Dear _(insert their name with Mr/ Mrs)_, Text of your message, Sincerely, _(insert your name)__”.  And remember that the subject line is just a quick summary - it is NOT where your whole message goes.  (I get lots of emails from students with the whole message in the subject line and the actual email is blank.)

Working on establishing your appropriate email account is a great summer activity for students in all grade levels.  

Class of 2024 - No Better Time!

Personally, I find that I need to structure my time or else I can waste a day away and not have any idea where the time went. I am particularly anxious to hear (and see) how productive all of the Class of 2024 seniors have been this summer. Earlier this year, when we met for your individual meetings as well as last year in the full group junior student & parent meeting we talked about some of the things you could (and ideally should) be working on this summer to prepare yourself for the college application process.

We talked about researching colleges, making college visits, asking teachers for recommendation letters, organizing your list of high school activities and awards (into resume format or at least a list), narrowing down your college list so that you have a solidified list about where you plan to apply when we start school next month, preparing your system for organizing all of your intended colleges so that you will be able to keep track of their deadline dates and what materials you will need for applying, reading, doing any prep-work for the ACT/ SAT that you still wanted/ needed to do, working on your essay questions, volunteering, looking for scholarships, and, if applicable, completing all of your summer coursework for AP or IB classes. 

It is a pretty demanding list and a lot of times students think they'll have "more time" to work on it "later" when it isn't summer and they are back in a school mindset. Please remember, that once you start your classes you will have teachers demanding homework, over 7 hours of your day spent in school, plus athletics and other activities occupying your time.  Quite simply, there is no better time!

Summer is also a great time to be able to ask questions of your friends who are home from college about what their experience has been like. Types of questions you might want to consider asking include:

- What did they like best about college? Least?
- What best prepared them for college?
- Did their college search give them an accurate picture of what college would really be like?
- Are there particular things they would recommend that you look at or consider when researching schools?
- How large are the majority of their classes? Biggest class? Smallest?
- What activities did they get involved in on campus?
- Was it easy to make friends at school?
- If they could go back and repeat their senior year over again, would they have done anything different? 

- Would they still have made the same choice about where to apply and attend?

Those are just a few ideas to get you started. In my experience, college students are always more than happy to spend some time talking about their first year (or two) of college. Take full advantage of the opportunity - it really might help guide you in your own college search, or, at the very least, hopefully it will motivate you to get started. :-)

Enjoy the rest of your summer break and if you are a senior who hasn't started thinking about your college application process yet, please get started!

AP/ IB Scores

Scores for those students who took one (or more) of the Advanced Placement Tests in May should be available online today. Many students assume that we know your scores in the counseling office, but we do not receive that information until much later.  To access your scores log in using your college board account information.  

A lot of times students are curious about the policy various colleges have on how they grant credit based upon the AP scores. CollegeBoard maintains a searchable list for the college's policies.

Many WKHS students who took AP Lang were hoping to be able to use their scores to move directly to English 2367 (Composition 2) with CSCC next school year.  Please make sure you have scored a 3 or higher on the AP Lang test in order for this to be an option.  If I need to adjust your schedule to add you into Composition 1 because you didn't get the 3 as you had anticipated, or if you put Comp 1 into your schedule "just in case" and earned the 3 please let me know so that I can adjust your schedule and remove the class that you no longer need.  (Also, don't forget that you will need to send your test results directly to the CSCC CC+ office so that they know you have met the prerequisites to jump directly to Composition 2.)

And, as if AP scores being available wasn't enough, the scores from the spring IB tests will be released tomorrow.

No matter which tests you took, I hope you are happy with your scores!

Summer Assignments

I wanted to remind you about summer assignments for those students taking advanced classes next year.  Hopefully you have started making progress on the work that is expected of you.  It is important to remember that you are responsible for completing all summer work and that it will impact your grade in your class.  Sometimes, in the past, students would procrastinate on completing their summer assignments and then decide at the last minute that they would drop out of the advanced course in favor of the non-advanced version (so, for example, dropping AP US History in favor of regular US History).  If you are planning on switching levels, it is really important that you make that change prior to Saturday, July 15th.  If you wait until after July 15th to decide that you want to change levels, you will still be responsible for completing the summer work because even if you change levels your summer assignment is a part of your academic record and so your grades on the summer assignments will go with you to the new class.

Hopefully you are feeling good about your summer assignments and how you are progressing on your summer work.  If you haven't started, please get moving on it!  If you have lost your summer assignments, please feel free to check out the WKHS Counselor website - www.wkhscouselors.com - as we have posted the assignments your teachers have submitted there as well.

And, for the record, if you do want to drop from an advanced course to a regular class, please just email me at babbott@wscloud.org before the end of the day on Saturday the 15th and I will make the change for you the next time I am able to drop by school.