You can assist your students in planning for their transition from school to college or career through strategic multilevel interventions. These are based on eight essential components that provide teachers and school counselors with a thorough and complete strategy to equip students for success in college and careers following their graduation from high school.
Patricia Martin (2010) is the Assistant Vice President for the National Office for School Counselor Advocacy with The College Board. She delineated and described these eight components as the following:
- College Aspirations: Increase students’ awareness of higher education opportunities and nurture a desire in them to attend college through building a strong support system and assuring them that they can succeed.
- Academic Planning for College and Career Readiness: Provide a comprehensive academic program that provides a pathway for students to achieve their college and career goals.
- Enrichment and Extracurricular Engagement: Provide a wide range of opportunities, both extracurricular and enrichment, that will help students develop the skills they need as well as align with their specific interests and aptitudes.
- College and Career Exploration and Selection Processes: Facilitate an informed decision-making process for students to make college and career selections through the use of relevant experiences that correlate with appropriate academic preparation and future goals.
- College and Career Assessments: Encourage students to prepare, participate, and perform well in assessments designed for college and career guidance.
- College Affordability Planning: Ensure students and their parents or guardians have all the information necessary to review the costs of college, the available options to pay for college, and the financial aid application process and scholarships available, along with eligibility requirements.
- College and Career Admission Procedures: Furnish the appropriate information about college admission processes or career applications to students and their parents or guardians to enable them to make the most suitable decisions.
- Transition from High School Graduation to College Enrollment: Equip students with resources in both their school and community that will guide them successfully in their journey and transition following graduation from high school to enrollment in college.
Martin (2010) recommends components one through six be applied beginning in elementary school, through middle school, and on through high school. Components seven and eight are relevant for high school only.
Each component is further divided into these four elements:
- Context
- Cultural Competence
- Multilevel Interventions
- Data
The transformative process encompassing these components and their elements manifests as “equitable outcomes” resulting in students achieving college and career readiness (Martin, 2010). You will learn more about this transformative process in the next lesson.
Assignment:
Review the eight components you would teach in your classroom. You need to plan your delivery of the information. For this assignment, you will create a chart, table, or graphic organizer to address the following:
- Choose four of the eight components of college and career readiness discussed in this topic.
- Describe a college and career readiness lesson you could teach to your students, incorporating the four components you chose.
- Include at least one learning activity per component.
- Provide a call-to-action for each component regarding what students and their parents or guardians could do to apply that component.
