All Things College & Career
Student Success Agency — September 2019
With college application and readiness season in full swing, we can support our students and communities with knowledge, resources, and opportunities to help them follow their dreams and be successful in the process!
Supporting a College & Career Culture
It’s never too early or too late to support our students with a college and career mindset! Educators can implement activities, programs, and resources in their schools to help foster a college and career readiness culture amongst the students, parents, and community. Whether it’s an 8th grader hearing about the ACT for the first time, or a college freshman learning more about scholarship opportunities in their area, we can support our students at any stage.
Here are just a few ways you can support a college and career readiness culture in your school or program:
- Encourage students to talk to their agent about their dreams! Their agent will help provide them with a pathway to that dream and support them with college and career preparation.
- Dedicate part of your counseling office or classroom to college resources including financial aid support, information on scholarships, applications, and specific colleges. -Shout out to our GEAR UP partners at App State who have college pennants hung up all over their walls!
- Hold a career or majors day at your school to present different career paths and areas of study to your students.
- Host a college and career fair at your school and contact local colleges, technical schools, and universities to send representatives to provide more information to interested students.
- Host a job fair at your school and encourage students to bring resumes (their agent can help them craft the perfect resume)!
- Lead group sessions on college and career-related subjects such as applying for financial aid and planning for careers.
- Lead parent sessions to provide knowledge on college and career-related subjects such as applying for colleges, choosing colleges, applying for financial aid, and preparing for tests.
- Connect with local businesses about providing scholarships, career days, or other opportunities to get the community involved!
- Connect with your local government to see what opportunities and promotions they have available to help foster college and career readiness in your area!
- Send out monthly newsletters or set up a website to share important and timely college and career information with students and parents (Let us know if you need support with this and we’d be happy to help set up a page like this one for you!) -Shout out to our GEAR UP partners in Birmingham, Alabama who have an amazing website for students and parents that includes resources, events, and local opportunities!
- Do all of these things VIRTUALLY and DIGITALLY using social media to provide equitable access to all students and parents (e.g. Facebook groups, Facebook live presentations, Instagram page, Youtube videos) — Shout out to our GEAR UP partners in Georgia and Nevada for posting some great content and resources on their social media pages!
- Celebrate successes on all platforms by announcing student acceptances, inviting local college graduates and alumni to speak, and more!
Resources for Educators
CollegeBoard has an incredible website for education professionals dedicated to college guidance. It includes everything from webinars, to preparing students for college, to explaining financial aid, to advising undocumented students.
CLICK HERE for the link to the CollegeBoard Education Professional website!
SSA Collaboration —Events, Opportunities, and Resources
Do you have an upcoming event, opportunity, or resource available to your students that you would like to promote? Our SSA agents can help with that! Send them to us so we can share that with our agents to promote with your students!
This is a great way for us to collaborate as a community, and for our agents to know what opportunities are available in your schools and programs so they can align those opportunities with their students’ dreams!
CLICK HERE to submit an event, opportunity, resource, or school calendar link for us to share with our agents. *This form can be submitted any time of the year.
CONNECT WITH US- SSA Educator Facebook Page
We would love for you to join our new SSA Educators Facebook Group HERE.
You can join from your personal, school, or program account, and the page is a space for our incredible educators of SSA to collaborate, innovate, share, and celebrate! This is a great way to find out how other schools are promoting college and career mindsets with their students!
