Check out the recent column by our friend and ally Joe Nathan at the Center for School Change at Macalester College for some stirring advice on getting kids and parents plugged in to college visits and post-secondary options during the month of August.
We all know that our more successful students are prowling college campuses and weighing options by their sophomore or junior years in high school, and Nathan's column provides links to the public and private systems in Minnesota that encourage such free visits for any and all visitors.
The CSC website's mainpage also features a recent event at Macalester and an initiative that everybody needs to encourage greatly: getting much younger kids and their parents, especially students of color and in disadvantaged situations, on track and thinking about post-high school credentials. The site chronicles a campus visit by kids from the Summer Academy, a summer instruction program provided by a partnership of three charter schools in Minneapolis, and notes these remarks by visiting elementary-age kids: "I will definitely go here" and "I want to go to college next year!" The freedom of going to college intrigued some of the visiting 5th grade students, with one noting, "You can play video games BEFORE your homework is done!?!" A Macalester student guide reflected on the event, saying, "You can never start too young to think about college."
--Dane Smith
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