On a College Path, and Traveling Together

My favorite school day of each year takes place on a Friday at the end of November. For the past seven or eight years that has been the day on which all of our seniors dress professionally in jackets and ties, skirts and blouses, and line up in our main floor hallway to hand in their college applications.

As they turn in those applications they put their names and the schools to which they have applied on posters which will hang on our main bulletin board until the spring, when they will be replaced by copies of the same students' acceptance letters.

Phil Weinberg

The weeks leading up to what we have now come to call “Professional Day” are filled with activity. Our computer labs are full of seniors completing applications under the gaze of our college advisers. Packs of students all over the building work together and help each other to ensure that applications are completed correctly.

In many ways the senior class develops its collective personality during these weeks, sharing with each other what they have learned from us about the process and supporting each other as they make tough choices.

“Professional Day” is the opportunity for our students to celebrate what they see as the completion of an arduous, months-long process of applying to school.

But our staff at the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology knows this is actually just one part of four years of work that began the day these students entered our school and will not end until they leave us (and according to the latest city data, 69 percent of High School of Telecommunication Arts students enrolled in a two- or four-year college last school year, a rate that is above average for the city).

We know that college readiness is a four year long process, and it is a whole school effort.

So on PSAT day each year our entire ninth grade visits colleges around the city. In early November our entire 10th grade visits schools throughout the region.

As our students become juniors and seniors we organize trips to campuses in western New York, in Pennsylvania, in Massachusetts and in the Washington area.

The college essay is a major project for all students during their junior year. Teachers create “college corners” in their classrooms to raise awareness, and for many on our staff the writing of recommendations becomes a second job.

Each fall we hold a College Fair, inviting college representatives to join the scores of staff members who flood our hallways that afternoon to talk about the universities they attended.

Teachers make that evening’s homework assignment a worksheet requiring students to demonstrate that they have obtained new information about colleges.

When I walked by the Oberlin table this year I realized that just 10 years ago the teacher now representing Oberlin College had been our student, and he had spent a similar afternoon speaking to his history teacher to learn about a small school in Ohio. If we are lucky the same scene will repeat itself 10 years hence.

Building upon the strength within our own community has served us very well. When we take students to visit Binghamton University, our many alumni there provide guidance to those students who are visiting about which of our classes will best prepare them for success at "Bing."

At Ithaca College our alums compete with each other to lead us on tours.

The University of Chicago asked to visit us in person because of our students’ success there.

Three of our teachers are Wesleyan University graduates, and, not surprisingly, Wesleyan is the most popular “reach” school amongst our student body.

The favorite document I have on my bulletin board is a flier from the University of Wisconsin’s Eastern Alumni Scholarship fund. Cleverly promoting that great university to students in the east the brochure reads in part, “No subways … No corner newsstands … No Brooklyn … No Central Park … But I keep coming back.”

Pictured on the front are three happy students, all in Wisconsin garb, all graduates of our school. (Not coincidentally, three members of our staff are alumni of the university.)

But the thing I think we do best in terms of college readiness is to push our students to work hard for all four years that they are with us. We require them to take the most challenging combination of courses at which they can be successful, and we never let them believe that the goal of their work with us is the diploma they will receive when they graduate.

We want our students to know that college, that education itself, is about ensuring that they will have choices later in their lives, choices that will ensure that the work they do and the lives they live will not be dictated to them by others.

Our seniors take full course loads because we know that working hard is a better way to prepare for college than by taking a reduced course load, even if it is a costly budget decision for the school.

We know that the goal of our work is to ensure that when our students leave us they are not simply capable of passing Regents exams, they are able to get top grades at whatever school they next attend.

Every staff member is intimately involved in this effort to help our students be successful in the world after high school, and I think that our students know that when they graduate they are the product of the combined efforts of well more than 100 great educators.