How does the Fast Lane program work? Does it involve multiple departments within the school?
We are committed to produce a professional technician. We have a strict set of rules for the students to follow in order to prepare them for to work force.
Terry, can you share an example of a rule that sets your school apart from your competition and how it's used?
Our school has a food pantry that will assist students with with food items if needed. Food and money is donated through various activities. Our school also offers a great turkey dinner during the Thanksgiving holiday for any student free of charge. The school pays for the food service and staff volunteer their time to serve the food. This really can help boost the morale of a student who is homesick and can't afford to go home for the holidays.
Students always seem to respond to food and it's a great way for people to get to know each other outside of the classroom. Has your school considered doing dinners throughout the year?
Our schools student services office has personnel assigned to assist students with employment, financial stressors, academic achievement ect, ect. It sometimes seems as though we spoon feed our students in helping them deal with "their" issues but we do go out of the way to help them succeed.
In addition to learning vocational skills, many students also need to learn life skills as well. While it may seem like "spoon feeding", these students don't have role models or access to resources that prepare them for some of the issues that they confront.
In many cases, these life skills will serve them far longer than changing technical ones.
We have a orientation for the program I teach to inform student what will be expected and also what they can expect from us.
What do you do to assure that the students become engaged? Is the Orientation simply a presentation of the "facts" or do you get them involved?
Our school is passionate about practicing what we call our "HERO Values"; Wisdom, Caring, Trust, Innovation, Courage, Fun. We strive in our everday encounters with our students to embody any one or all of these values in our desire to change the world one life at a time. To that end, we have a process once every month where all the staff personnel nominate and vote for their choice of "HERO of the month". The person or persons who are chosen get preferred parking spaces for one month and at the end of the year all of the monthly winners are announced and a "HERO of the Year" is voted on. That person gets an award and a preferred parking space for the next year. To get nominated you must show one or more of the HERO Values in your interactions with the students on a day to day basis.
Every week we, as instructors, evaluate every student in the class and we try to find out if the student is having problems. Problem areas include transportation, housing, financial, academics and attendance. If a problem is found the institution tries to help. This demonstrates that the institution is committed to helping the student succeed.
One practice our school performs to demonstrate commitment is the fact that we will call a student if they have been out for more than a couple of days. During that call the instructor will try to find out the problem, work out a solution if possible and encourage the student to come back to school.
There are many practices at the school which would demonstrate our commitment to students and I am not sure on which you would like me to concentrate in order to not make this too long. Please let me know if I am in the wrong direction.
* Every administrator and all main instructors
know each student by name.
* A student absent beyond two days is contacted
by the progran director by phone or e-mail to
check if the student is alright and if there
is anything we could help them with.
* At the start of a new class, we make up a
contact list with fellow students' as well as
all main instructors' phone numbers. Students
know that they can call us beyond school hours
and are respectful only to call us for
emergencies.
We offer free tutoring for our students 3 days a week or any other day by appointment.
How do your students get connected with the tutoring office? What percentage of students are referred and what percentage of them actually use the service?
We have a program called Student of the course that recognises the top performer in all classes every three weeks, this has just been expanded to include our electives. I feel this will help in retention because it will give the students the drive to accomplish more at a time when they are feeling like school will never end.
How are the students of the course selected? Is it simply the instructor's decision or do others get involved? Can the same student be selected more than once? Do you post their picture?
Student of the Course is selected through the electronic gradebook. It is based on the student who has the highest percentage score in lab grade, professionalism grade and class grade in that order. Any student who has had to retake a class is not eligable for SOC for that class, or any student who gets lower than 90% in any gradable category (class, lab, professionalism, attendance) is not eligable. In case of a tie, the instructor is responsible for selecting SOC, or he can give out multiple awards.
Is this something you might try at your school, Susan?
