This brief, 30-minute session, will take place over zoom so that parents can grab their lunch, hop on the session, learn about the Honors Diploma, and continue on with your day. The zoom link will be emailed to all parents Friday morning and it will also be posted on the Counselor website. I hope to see you online this week to learn all about the Honors Diploma!
First, I hope you had a great spring break! I am looking forward to seeing you and hearing about your time off from school.
Next, for the purpose of this post... All students looking to earn free college credit in classes next year MUST turn in the College Credit Plus intent to participate form by Tuesday, April 1st! This is a firm deadline established by the State of Ohio and we cannot extend it so please make sure you get your forms turned in to us!Just as a reminder, this includes college classes on the college campus, online college classes, college classes taught by college instructors at WKHS (English, Psychology, Government, Sociology, Ethics), and the regular WKHS classes taught by the WKHS teachers which can get you college credit for the exact same class you may have already signed up to take (Pre-Calculus, Honors Pre-Calculus, AP Calculus AB).
If you have any questions about College Credit Plus - stop and see me or watch the videos on the counselor website. (www.wkhscounselors.com). The intent to participate form packets which includes the video sign-off forms are also available on the counselor website.
I hope that you have a wonderful and relaxing break. Good luck to all of the individuals, groups, and teams that are traveling this week.
Have a great week and stay safe!
On Friday, March 7th there were 31 WKHS students inducted into the Socratic Society. The Socratic Society recognizes students for dispalying Personal Effort, Compassion, Lifelong Learning, Integrity and Scholarship. Students can only be honored once during their high school career for inclusion into the Socratic Society. During the ceremony, 7 of "my" students were among those recognized. A huge congratulations to: Leen Abusalha, Mohamed-Saeed Aden, Brady Baringhaus, Ella Beymer, Mackenzie Cain, Kaleb Colegrove, and Eric Collier.
And then on Tuesday, March 11th, approximately 360 Sophomores and Juniors were recognized as a part of the Academic Honors Celebration with bronze and silver keys. Students earn this recognition based upon their grades.
Bronze Keys are awarded to students who have achieved a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher at the end of 3 full semesters. Congratulations to "my" students who accomplished this: John Abbott, Ibrahim Ahmed, Amani Alash, Micah Anderson, Isatta Bah, Gus Baugh, John Beachy, Colin Beckstedt, Rylee Bindel, Adriana Black, Madison Bockrath, Dihan Bouhamidi, Gavin Brown, Alex Bussard, Caroline Campbell, Jose Cano Illescas, Isabell Chen, Vivian Cowan, Michael Dolciato, and Mahmoud Eldresi.
Silver Keys are awarded to students who have achieved a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher at the end of 5 full semesters. Congratulations to "my" students who earned this recognition: Charlotte Aagenas, Lacey Abbott, Callen Acheampong, Joseph Adrian, Aya Ahmed, Sydney Allwood, Esad Alpay, Ama Ampem, Jake Arens, Cameron Armstrong, Gia Aschenbrand, Finn Barker, Emily Bartlett, John Battle, Grace Beattie, Ali Becht, Gray Beckett, Rowan Beckner-Evans, Elizabeth Bennett, Callie Best, Ella Beymer, Sophia Bollentino, Julia Borchers, Safaa Bouhamidi, Akira Boyd, Kaitlyn Bradshaw, Zach Brown, Ryan Burke, Ellie Buterbaugh, Tyra Butler, Kate Campbell, Brayden Capperes, Mallory Carlin, Palmer Cavicchia, Jacob Caviness, Camille Chabannes, Nora Cheslik, Nikos Chimbidis, Sa'Kiyah Coleman, Nathan Corn, Quention Cost, Eliose Cotterman, and Grace Glaros.
I am proud of you all!
Can AI be a useful tool in supporting your college admissions process? Absolutely.
Can AI be mis-used and therefore hinder your college applications? Absolutely.
And that is why it is a tricky area.
Tomorrow, all junior students are invited to attend the Junior Seminar on AI & Admissions where we will spend 20 minutes talking about appropriate use of AI in applications. Juniors, as a reminder, the seminars take place before school from 8:15-8:35 in Room 201. I hope to see you tomorrow morning for this workshop!
There are some colleges that say students must cite any AI resource used in any aspect of their application. There are others that know AI can be a helpful tool in researching, brainstorming, or giving feedback. And nearly all colleges would say that you should absolutely NOT use AI to write your essay or complete your application as a whole.
The best rule of thumb that I have seen and heard related to appropriate AI use in your applications is that if you would not ask a human such as your parent, teacher or counselor to do something for you then you should not be asking AI to do it for you! I think that is a key way to help reframe thinking about AI and your applications.
AI and applications is an exciting, interesting area of growth and we will all continue to learn together.
We have intentionally targeted inviting job representatives that do not typically require a 4-year degree in order to work in the profession. You might wonder why. Well, there is so much time and attention spent in helping students look at 4-year colleges that we want to make sure that ALL students are getting support even if continuing on to a traditional college isn't in their plan. But it is more than that. There are a lot of jobs that you can get a certificate or other credentialling and be able to begin working where you will make more money than you would in just the typical high school diploma jobs.
My niece, Carly, is a perfect example of this option. Carly is a senior at the University of Kentucky. During the summer between her freshman and sophomore years of college she got 2 certificates - one in phlebotomy (drawing people's blood) and one to be a nursing tech. Then, from her sophomore through senior years of college she has worked part time at the UK Medical Center making far more money (and requiring way less hours of her) than she would have earned if she worked at a restaurant or store. Even more importantly, this clinical experience helped Carly have an even more impressive application when she was applying to med school. Let's be honest, did she want to be a phlebotomist or nursing tech for the rest of her life? No. Are those great career paths for some people? Absolutely! But it still was an important part of Carly's journey and has opened up more great opportunities for her in the future.
My hope is that EVERY student will take a few minutes out of your lunch periods to walk through the tables which will be set up in the commons and hallways to talk with the different career professionals. You never know about the various jobs that might peak your interest. Perhaps you will find something that will be a great pathway for your future or there might be jobs that can give you better paying possibilities. At the very least, please take a moment as you walk past our guests to say Thank you to them for giving their time to come and share with all of us!
The next few weeks will be big as students finally receive the college admissions decisions that you have waited months to receive. Most of the schools that have yet to announce their decisions will be releasing them over the next couple of weeks. This can be a very stressful time for students. Try to take a deep breath and relax – you have done the best job to put yourself in the best situation possible with your applications. If you are stressing out awaiting the news, feel free to stop in and see me so we can talk about it.
The reality is that some of the most selective colleges were able to be even more selective than in the past and the percentage of students who were accepted continues to shrink at many schools. This is, in part, because so many students are choosing to apply to a LOT of colleges which means applications are up at many of the schools. OSU recently announced that they had received over 88,000 applications! That is crazy and is a huge jump from the previous high last year which had also been a record so the trend just continues to spiral out of control.
Getting the decision can be hard enough, but often the more difficult aspect is being asked, “Did you get accepted?” by well-meaning friends. Trust me on this one, if they get accepted to their dream school, the students will be telling everyone – you won’t need to ask. If they don’t offer up the news sharing if they were accepted or not, then be sensitive to the fact that more than likely they still don't know or they did not get accepted. Be kind and don’t ask about it as it puts students on the spot to share potentially disappointing news.
For seniors, many colleges are in session during our break and so this is an ideal time to be able to visit the campuses of your top choices. Being able to compare your college choices and to make sure that you are finding the school which will be your best fit before you the May 1st decision deadline is a helpful choice. You can also consider making an overnight visit at the colleges for a different opportunity that you have probably not had a chance to do thus far.
For freshmen through juniors, making college visits is a beneficial opportunity to start identifying what aspects you like most and least in a college. You will have the chance to actually walk around on a campus and imagine yourself being there in the future. People watch, explore opportunities, investigate academics, and engage with the admissions staff to help guide you in your future college application plans. If you are planning to be in town, there are lots of local colleges that you can visit easily. If you will be traveling over break, you can still make college visits wherever you find yourself during break. Chances are good that there are colleges near or along your destination and even if it is not a school that you are considering for the future, it still gives you the chance to get another view of colleges... and this can be incredibly valuable in determining what it is you want or don't want in a school.
The reality is that college is expensive! It is an investment and finding financial options to help make it realistic such as with additional scholarships is important. I know that it can be a time consuming process, but it is worth it if it makes your college degree more affordable.
Most scholarship money does end up coming directly from your colleges, but there are so many other places to look for scholarships and you should consider all of the options to try to help make your college experience even a little more affordable! For example, do your parent's employers (or if you work, your employer) offer scholarships for dependent children? What about your place of worship? If you volunteer for an organization, do they offer scholarships for their student volunteers? There are also countless scholarship search websites where you can complete personalized searches for other qualities and characteristics that would be ideal for you. If you want to see some of these sites, please check out financial aid section (under colleges) on the WKHS Counselors website.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the other Ohio colleges, but I suspect that many of them will follow OSU's lead and soon announce their own testing policy with a return to requiring the college admissions tests as a component of their applications.
Juniors, I know you just took the SAT yesterday, but if you were unsure if you wanted to take the ACT or repeat the SAT again, this news might help you make that decision.
Why are we adding an additional class?
Good question. We try to make sure that the classes we are offering for students will meet as many of the general education (GE) requirements at various colleges as possible. In the last few weeks we learned that Comp 2 is no longer meeting a GE at OSU and Miami.
Do I have to change from Comp 2?
No! You can definitely still keep Comp 2. You can still take it even if you are hoping to attend OSU or Miami you just have to understand that it won't fulfill a GE requirement. Plus, Comp 2 DOES still meet GE's at OU, Cincinnati, BGSU, Akron, and Kent State. It is also fulfilling your senior English course requirement (just like the Literature class will.)
How do I know what to take?
Well, it is a personal decision. I'd suggest that you do the following things to help guide your decision making:
1. Reflect on your purpose of taking the class. Are you taking it because getting GE's done while in high school is important to you? Or are you taking it to get a college experience and you're ok if it fulfills a GE requirement or if it doesn't?
2. Look at all of the classes you have taken and are planning to take that can get you college credit and cross reference those courses with the various GE requirements at all of the possible colleges you are considering. Here are some steps to help you do that:
Freshmen, Sophomores and Seniors - you will be functioning on a late-start schedule tomorrow. This means that you get to sleep in and relax a little bit in the morning. If you ride a bus, your bus will pick you up 90 minutes later than normal. If you walk or drive to school, you can determine what time you want to arrive just be sure to make it to school in enough time to be able to get to your 5th period class at 12:25pm. As I mentioned, with late start buses running 1.5 hours later than normal, this means that if you ride a bus that will likely mean you will arrive to school around 10:10am and you'll have that time until the start of classes to study, eat lunch, and hang out in the Aux Gym.
Juniors - you will ride the bus at the normal time and arrive to school like every other day. You will then report to your assigned testing location by 8:40am so that you can begin taking the SAT right away. The test will conclude in time for you to have a break for lunch before the start of classes.
And then everyone (9th through 12th grade) will proceed to afternoon classes with the following bell schedule:
I also have a few SAT Testing reminders for the juniors: This test is an official SAT so you are strictly bound to all of the restrictions and requirements set forth by SAT. Testing will begin promptly at 8:40am so you will need to report to your assigned rooms (check your email for location assignment). Please be sure to bring your district issued chromebook (fully charged!), your Student ID card, and, if you want, a calculator. And I would also suggest that you bring a watch. Cell phones are NOT allowed to be on in the testing room at all. You should have already completed the pre-registration steps so that you're all set to test. Good luck tomorrow! You will do great!
There is no secret to success! It is hard work, doing what you need to do to push yourself to improve and always giving your personal best even when you don't feel like it. For many of you this might mean that you need to take some time to get organized and prepare for the end of year push. (HINT: if your bookbag looks like this you DEFINITELY need to work on a new organization strategy!) For others it may mean that you need to challenge yourself to maintain your focus as distractions continue to come your way. And yet others may need to find new study strategies that will help you to demonstrate your knowledge. No matter what goals you may need to focus on, my biggest hope is that you will find a system that works and use it. Looking at what you have been doing and being willing to try something different to result in a different outcome is the best initial step you can take. As always, if you need help with getting organized, determining strategies to focus through distractions or for new study strategies, I hope you will come to see me!
I absolutely LOVE my job, but I work incredibly hard at it. In fact, because I love it so much I probably pour even more of my time, energy and effort into what I do each day. I have a part-time job that I also love. I can assure you - they both require hard work, time and dedication. But, they are both incredibly rewarding and meaningful. My guess is that was probably the point Confuscious was trying to make. The reality is that as human beings, we can endure almost any circumstance if we feel the end outcome will be worth it.
The reason I am even talking about this though is that I think there are a LOT of high school students (and probably some adults) who struggle trying to figure out what they want to do in life and are constantly searching for the job that they will love so that they don't have to work. And I believe that is setting you up for failure. Find a job that you will be good at, that you will feel you can contribute and use your personal gifts and talents to benefit others and pursue it with everything you have inside of you. But know that there will still be days or at least parts of the job that will most definitely be struggles and feel like hard, demanding work. Adjusting that expectation can change everything because if you are able to go into the work world with the awareness that you won't love every part of your job and that there will be hard days that you dread (and yes, I can assure you there will be plenty of both), then you will be far less likely to beat yourself up and fall into the mind trap that there must be some other job out there that will be better for you - that you won't feel like work.
There is already so much stress and pressure that you experience as high school students, adding the extra level of stress that you must find the PERFECT job that you love is a pressure you don't need to add. We have so many career exploration opportunities for you and I want you to do them all, but I also want you to understand that you are far from done learning and growing. You will find and explore new paths ahead of you and all of it will contribute to you finding your right place in this world. So try to take the pressure off and enjoy the learning process.
For now, start thinking ahead a little bit. Juniors, don't forget that tomorrow is the Junior Seminar on Choosing Careers/ Majors in Room 201 from 8:15-8:35am. For students in all grades, do you have plans for Spring Break? That would be a great time for you to head out and make college visits, but they are also ideal days to ask a neighbor, friend, or extended family member if you could spend a day shadowing them to learn more about what they do each day. The summer is also a great time to try to get some experience out shadowing and learning about what some of the job possibilities are that exist in the world today so you can start now thinking about what experiences you might like to observe. It doesn't matter to me if you are shadowing someone for one day or doing a full senior project experience, but my hope is that you will ask the people you are spending time with what they love about their jobs, what they don't like, and if they feel like they work hard at what they do... because I suspect you will find that in every job there is definitely a LOT of work involved!
The basic concept is that whatever you're dealing with such as a piece of paper or an email message that you should only handle it once. For most of you, the ways that I see this playing out poorly is when you are working on assignments in class and you have notes, textbook, and a handout such as a lab paper out when the bell rings and instead of placing the notes and handout back where they belong students will grab the papers all mixed together and shove everything into their backpack before rushing off to their next class. This happens in class after class throught any given day. And then, as a result, you are forced to spend more time later sorting through all of the materials in order to re-organize and separate the information for each class. Even though it may feel as if it would take a minute or two longer to put the material from the class into the appropriate folder before heading off to your next class, in the long run, only handling the material once will save you time.
Now, please let me clarify, that doesn't mean you should only spend one moment working on an assignment. If it is something that you are working on in class that doesn't mean you don't still handle it and deal with it at home if the work needs to be completed for the next day of school. It's just the organization side that will hopefully be streamlined.
Also, if you are working on an assignment, look at it and figure out if you have everything you need -for example, do you have the notes, resources such as textbook, posterboard or supplies for projects? Is there is help that you need - for example, do you need to get clarification from a teacher or classmate or assistance from your parent on the work you are completing, or anything else that you'll need to successfully complete the assignment. Gather those items ahead of time so that you don't end up wasting a bunch of time starting and stopping your work.
And while I know that you don't all spend a lot of time on emails, I can assure you that email is a part of your future and the Only Handle It Once strategy is a great approach for managing the "easy" emails.
So, as you go through these final few weeks before spring break I hope you will try to work towards establishing the positive organization strategy of OHIO and Only Handling It Once!
Local scholarships are great because you are only competing against other WKHS students (for many) and, at most, against other students from Worthington or the Central Ohio area. These scholarships are all among the scholarships we have listed on the WKHS Counselor website and I strongly encourage you to take the time to check them out. To find the scholarship listings on the Counselor website - you can use the logo on the right side of the page or hover over the College/ Career tab and Scholarship Search will appear in the drop-down menu.
Many of the local scholarships have due dates of April 1st, but there are some with earlier or later deadlines so it is important to pay attention to those details so that you don't miss out on the opportunities. As you read through the scholarships available, look carefully to determine which ones you might be a good candidate for and therefore want to apply to try to receive. Please remember that time flies and many of the scholarships have requirements such as essays or recommendation letters so it is important not to procrastinate and to get your applications completed on time.
As a reminder, the lunch and learns are brief presentations on a particular topic over zoom during lunch time so that parents/ guardians can join and listen in from home or work while eating their lunch. The goal is that the presentation will take about 15 minutes and then that will give about 15 minutes for any other questions that families might have that we could address as a whole group. We are excited about this opportunity to leverage technology and to meet families where they are so that you can get the most up to date information that we can share with you.
The session will begin at noon on Friday, March 7th. The zoom link will be emailed to all parents and we will also post the link on the Counselor Website on Friday morning.
We know that supporting your son or daughter to deal with the stressors of high school can be overwhelming at times, so I hope you will make plans to join us online over zoom so we can help review useful, timely coping skills that you and your child can put to use immediately.
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